HTC Desire Z Review

The HTC Desire Z sports an excellent design. It is very stylish and looks sleek. It has dimensions of 119 x 60.4 x 14.2 mm which makes it quite compact by smartphone standards. It weighs a bit much at 180 gms, but the weight is justified by the slider design and the build quality. The body of the HTC Desire Z is composed mostly of metal which lends it most of its weight. It feels solid, sturdy and durable in the hand. It could probably be used as a projectile weapon in emergencies, but I wouldn't recommend that.

The Desire Z comes with a 3.7 inch S-LCD capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, the new Android standard. The S-LCD display is better than standard LCDs, but not as good as the SuperAMOLED displays found in the Galaxy S. The capacitive touchscreen is very responsive. Below the display are the controls - Home, Menu, Back, Search and an optical trackpad. The 4 row QWERTY keyboard slides out from under the display. On the left lies the volume rocker and the microUSB port, while on the right you will find the camera key. The top edge sports the 3.5 mm audio jack and the power key. The 5 MP camera is housed at the back with the LED flash.

The HTC Desire Z comes with the latest version of the Android OS - Android 2.2 Froyo. It comes with the HTC Sense UI, which is one of the best custom Android UI shells. It is almost identical to the older version of HTC Sense but there are some improvements. The Desire Z is powered by an 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor and comes with 512 MB RAM. It also has 1.5 GB internal storage and supports up to 32 GB microSD cards.

The processor is a bit low on MHz, but the OS performance is flawless. The UI is extremely fluid and there is no lag. It comes with the Android Market which gives you instant access to over 100,000 apps and games.

The HTC Desire Z comes with a nice 5 MP camera with an image capture resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. The camera has a nice interface which is intuitive and gives you access to all the customization settings you will need. It comes with a set of nice effects and a lot of advanced settings. It is also equipped with autofocus and LED flash.

The image capture quality is quite good, it's one of the better 5 MP cameras. It can also record 720p videos at 25 FPS in the 3GP format. It also comes with a multitouch enabled image gallery which allows you to browse through your images easily and share them on Facebook, Flickr etc. You can even access other content using DLNA and content from Facebook albums, Flickr etc.

The default video player is quite good. It can play 3GP, MP4, DivX, XviD videos by default. The 3.7 inch display is adequate when it comes to watching videos. There's also the stylish music player which offers features like Album Art, music recognition and the other frills you would find in any music player. The audio quality is excellent and there's a built in stereo FM radio too.

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The HTC Desire Z comes with all the connectivity options you would ever need. It has GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA as well as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP. It comes with the default Webkit based browser in Android. It also has a built in GPS transceiver with A-GPS. There is absolutely nothing to complain about, when it comes to connectivity options. It is powered by a 1300 mAh Li-ion battery which lasts for slightly less than 2 days with moderate usage.

The HTC Desire Z is an extremely stylish phone which sports a superb slider keyboard design. It is one of the best Android phones to date and comes with the latest Android OS and powerful hardware. It also has a 5 MP camera and all the connectivity options you may have heard of. I would definitely recommend it.