I talked my cousin into getting a Desire HD instead of the mediocre Wildfire he was being offered. Having now used said Desire HD I found it quite disappointing, don't get me wrong its not a bad phone and has some great things going for it. Firstly the build quality is suspect, the actual phone itself is sturdy enough but there are two separate plastic panels on the back for the battery and Sim/MicroSD both of which feel like they were constructed from selection box plastic, removing the battery cover was a scary experience as it really was close to breaking.

Upon firing it up for the first time we were treated to a tedious process of filling out various pieces of info, including a phone number so it could tell all your friends about HTC Sense, after what seemed like hours it finally got going only to ask the same information all over again upon trying to use anything. The screen looks great especially for browsing the internet or viewing movies even if it did have some frame rate issues, unfortunately HTC only talked a good game when it came to sound, boasting all sorts of wonders and slagging off squeaky speakers on other phones, despite having SRS and Dolby Mobile the sound it actually produces is mediocre and the epitome of squeaky speaker, even the iPhones mono effort was able to vastly outclass it. Camera quality was also pretty unimpressive, indoors in good light pictures were pretty noisy and the camera app itself was fairly lacking in features, instead palming you off with some cheesy filters.

The HTC Desire HD could have been a great phone but I feel HTC have let themselves down here, mostly by making silly claims like "A screen and sound system that will blow you away" when its probably one of the weakest mobile speakers you'll hear this side of the year 2000. If you completely ignore any of HTC's claims and have no expectations then this phone will fare a lot better as its a pretty competent phone, but you just can't help but feel it could have been so much better.


PS. Sorry if I hijacked the thread, I was too lazy to post a new one.