HTC Desire review: The 2010 Android flagship that put HTC Sense on the map.
The phone that made HTC Sense famous.
HTC Desire was the company's breakout Android flagship — essentially a Nexus One with HTC Sense, the skin that made Android feel friendly and customisable. It cemented HTC as a top-tier Android maker at the dawn of the platform's rise.
01Display
62/10062/100 — right at the average for flagship phones of 2010.
02Camera
50/10050/100 trails the 54-point cohort average for flagship phones of 2010.
03Performance
52/10052/100 puts it above the 49-point average for flagship phones of 2010.
04Battery
52/10052/100 trails the 55-point cohort average for flagship phones of 2010.
05Build
64/10064/100 puts it above the 58-point average for flagship phones of 2010.
06Value
58/100At 58/100 this is one of the strongest value showings among flagship phones of 2010 — 13 points above the cohort average.
- HTC Sense gave Android a polished skin.
- 1 GHz Snapdragon, AMOLED screen.
- Optical trackpad.
- microSD + jack.
- Only 576 MB RAM filled fast.
- WVGA resolution.
- Sibling of the Nexus One — less "pure".
- Average battery.
How this review is built: every section score, spec row and comparison on this page comes from SpecEagle's tracked catalogue — scores weight measured specs against the 50-phone cohort of flagship devices released around the same time. We don't publish invented lab anecdotes. Spot an error? .