What’s in a name? Would a Nexus One by any other name still be as sweet? Yep. In fact, it might just be a bit sweeter.
Though it lacks almost any indication as such, Google’s Nexus One is actually made by HTC. HTC reserved the rights to the hardware design, and today they’re making good use of that decision with the announcement of the HTC Desire. It’s essentially the Nexus One reflavored to HTC’s liking.
After the Nexus One launched, a good number of gadget geeks went clamoring to HTC in hopes that they (or Google) would release a compatible port of the custom user interface overhaul that can be found on nearly any recent HTC-made Android handset. Alas, it’s not going to happen – the Nexus One is Google’s phone, and thus will always be 100% vanilla Android, just as Google intended.
The HTC Desire, however, is a different story. Sure, it may look almost identical to the Nexus One – and sure, it might be an almost spec-for-spec match. But the Desire is HTC’s phone, and thus, it runs Sense. Its got everything you might expect from a Sense-enabled handset, from multi-touch all around the OS to Flash in the browser.
Like the Nexus One, the Desire runs Android 2.1 on top of a palm-meltingly fast 1 Ghz CPU. Its got the same (stunning) 3.7″ AMOLED touchscreen, and the same 5 megapixel camera. The only real physical change is the jump from a standard trackball to an optical trackpad, just as we saw with the also-just-announced HTC Legend.
While HTC’s not sharing any details on when us folks in the US can get our mitts on it, Europe and Asia should see it hit by sometime in April.
Update: We just got the promo video for the HTC Desire – Check it out here.
Might be what I’ve been waiting for.
It appears all the things that we dreamt about the Nexus Phone has been infused with the HTC desire, hopefully this one can live up to the expectation of the users: ..More: http://bit.ly/htc-desire-nexus-on-steroids
I think this is what I’ve been waiting for.
/me goes off to change panties.
Whoa! that is cool. Any ideas what the carrier might be?
My girlfriend and me had a problem with the Nexus One. When we were shopping for phones this weekend, we couldn’t find one to play with!!!
Buying a super phone without trying it out? That started pushing us to other phones like the Droid.
Having HTC release this will be awesome, because we can actually physically use one!
Win for HC! Win for Google! Win for users!
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When the Hero came out I said ‘give me Sense UI on a Snapdragon!’, but seeing how rapidly Google is pushing out updates to the Nexus One and how slowly HTC is updating their custom roms has made me wary of getting a non google-experience phone.
I had a chance to fiddle with this phone, let just say through some google friends doing android dev and the speed was disappointing. It was especially noticeable when playing games because the delay was so bad it made it impossible to effectively play them which made me wonder about the difference between the android community and iphone. I think for the most part iPhone apps are designed to be optimized for one phone as opposed to the Android much like Windows Mobile, the apps are being developed for many phones yet at the same time they are not very sensitive of the fact that each phone is different. They cant expect the app to demand the same amount of memory resources from any phone or expect the same touch/multi-touch accuracy or sensitivity. More often now we are seeing that android apps are too demanding rather than meeting the standards of the lowest common denominator, yet that too is a double edge sword since it would also lower their development creativity to have to water down their app in such a way.
Here’s a list of a few goods and bads so far for the HTC Desire, feel free too add your own opinons to the list: http://www.baduku.com/topics/htc-desire_240
Optimization to a standard hardware platform.
That, my friend, is the difference between Apple’s offering and everyone else’s.
one thing that still works for Nexus one is the Google experience. If you are a heavy google products user, you may still like gmail, calender, push mail map integration more on nexus one.
Depends what you like more , a cool intuitive Sense UI or snappy experience in google products.
But I definitely like the physical buttons and optical trackball.
help me out here – why does this phone support flash in the browser and N1 doesn’t?
By the time it’s launched (2Q), Flash 10.1 will have been released and available to Android.
But will you really be able to watch much of anything? For example, I don’t think the phone is powerful enough to watch hulu. Than again, I may be wrong.
You would be wrong, check out this video demonstrating flash on various phones http://newteevee.com/2010/02/14/brightcove-pushes-mobile-video-with-flash-10-1-support/
lol My N900 can watch Hulu so I should hope this can
Another GUI on top of Android is NOT what I want – Google got it right, it doesn’t need tarting up.
Couldn’t agree more.
The author is wrong. This is Windows-based. Unbelievable error but this is the Internet and people seem to post without so much as proof reading much less fact checking these days.
what the heck is wrong with you? are you communicating with us from a parallel universe?
check the specs here http://www.desirehtc.com
and shut up.
Sense UI is actually very useful and “makes sense” more than android’s plain vanilla shell
I like this very much…………
Gee, what a surprise, HTC, who makes their living making branded handhelds for other companies, and then also selling them under their own brand in a different skin, has done exactly that. Who ever would have seen that coming?
A phone announced today with specs of a phone announced 2 months ago that won’t be ready for another 3 months. Sounds like it’s already obsolete.
I am a Mapquest employee. I am very bitter that you guys write five articles every time Google sneezes; yet you fail to mention a single word about the monumental progress we have been making in the past few years. For one, look at how advanced our street view is: full HD 35mm photos that are so clear you can hear a pin drop, rather than the pixelated street views on Gogle Maps. I’m so bitter I can’t even swallow.
I am a Mapquest employee, too. In fact, i am your boss. Get back to work NOW!
I agree that the world has become all about Apple and Google, but… My MapQuest … I used to like your maps but ypou had a brand advantage and let it die and Google and even Bing Maps came and ate your lunch.
Integration with Ford Sync is nice but not something I can retrofit to my Mustang so uninteresting and StreetView is cute but not day to day.
Perhaps if you were to sort out the basic web experience, work with someone like Waze to get some reach and buzz going and innovate rather than just copy you’ll be less bitter and TechCrunch may give you more love (Bing Maps for instance has started creating new things rather than playing catchup to Google)
This guy posts all the time with this exact same (non-sequitor) post. Your just feeding the troll. (and I’m feeding you…)
Very interest. I guess they say the hardest place to look at the box is from inside the box.
“so clear you could hear a pin drop”? Methinks you mixed metaphors.
Regarding the content of your comment: With all due respect, are you kidding me? Your interface is cluttered and overrun with intrusive ads, the site loads like 3 times slower than Google, and your version of StreetView is not significantly better than Google’s (your image quality may be better — which I didn’t personally see — but their implementation of the UI around it is far superior to yours).
No offense, but Google stomped you in the map game. They forged ahead and you’re now playing catchup and not very well, it seems to me.
I looked up where I live on mapquest after you mentioned this and I was sorely disappointed. The level of zoom and detail available was far inferior to google maps.
Anyone in the market for a new phone today has to be not only overwhelmed by the number of choices, but also by the rate at which these offerings are changing. If you bought the Droid, you must already have buyer’s remorse because the new phones look like they blow the Droid away.
hello htc, i m happy for you and ima let you finish, but here’s what i want: i want a rugged android phone, one that i wont have to add in a rubber case to protect it. i don’t care if it has the snap dragon or any other dragon, i want battery life that lasts for more than a day even if it’s slightly slower (i ‘m not exactly running gcc on my phone). i want a more responsive touchscreen and i want you to remove the silly trackball. remember: phones are supposed to be used, not just looked at.
I am loving the HTC Desire: http://www.desirehtc.com It looks sooooo good!
but does it have full Exchange support as well as gmail/gcal
will you be able to get rid of sense UI and run android without interface (and then get all updates quickly like nexus one)?
also, no noise cancellation mike on desire?
same phone…except you are handcuffed to Windows Mobile. It is like taking something good, and making it garbage.
Umm… no… it’s still running Android. Did you just choose to not READ anything about the phone?
Does anybody knows where HTC (smart)phones are made? I want add them to my “made in” website: http://www.ProductFrom.com but can’t find any info about their origin.
thailand
Looks good! It’ll be interesting to hear which carrier(s) it lands on…
HTC is killing them but they need to stop rolling phones out like a chicken laying eggs. Sad part is this phone might not even make it to the States.
Does anyone know if the HTC Sense UI handles copy/paste differently from the N1?
Wahooo! I want that new one!