HTC Launches the Desire HD(Evo) and Desire Z(G2)

[Bateluer]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/15/htc-desire-hd-first-hands-on/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/15/htc-desire-z-hands-on/

Pretty much as expected, HTC, non carried branded Evos and G2s. Not to say they are bad phones, they are really good phones. They're just not new.

The news, imo, is htcsense.com. It adds features that are missing from Android that Google should have added a long time ago, remote lock/wipe, tracking, etc. Even though there are apps that do these things very well, like WaveSecure, basic functionality should be baked into the OS.

 

[zsdersw]

I really like the Desire HD.. seems a good substitute for the Evo.

 

[Bateluer]

I really like the Desire HD.. seems a good substitute for the Evo.

The Evo felt 'off' when I handled it in the store, purely personal opinion though. And I prefer a hardware keyboard too.

 

[Headcase_Fargone]

I like where HTC is going aesthetically, but I'll keep my kickstand thanks. It seemed gimmicky at first, but I use it all the time.

 

[zsdersw]

The Evo felt 'off' when I handled it in the store, purely personal opinion though. And I prefer a hardware keyboard too.

I normally prefer them too, but if the compromise for having one is either a small screen (like every non-Storm Blackberry before the Torch) or a slide/flip mechanism (like too many phones), I'll easily switch to a virtual keyboard.

 

[Deeko]

Color me unimpressed. The Dezire Z is underpowered, and what's up with the 4 row keyboard? C'mon, HTC, you know how to do this right:

As for the Desire HD, another meh. The HD2 came out what..a full year ago now? This is practically the same phone with a bit better video camera & Android (which, by the way, I'm running on my HD2).

The smartphone market has gotten awfully stale...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

its not that underpowered. did you see the ridiculous boot time video on Engadget? It's like 2 seconds.

 

[Deeko]

Yes, the boot time is impressive. Correct me if I'm wrong, the Qualcomm MSM7230 is basically a Snapdragon with a better GPU, but the one in the Desire Z is clocked 20% slower. So it might be better for gaming, but for day-to-day use its slower than the Snapdragon...and lets be serious. As I mentioned in my last post, Snapdragon just isn't anything special anymore.

 

[Bateluer]

Yes, the boot time is impressive. Correct me if I'm wrong, the Qualcomm MSM7230 is basically a Snapdragon with a better GPU, but the one in the Desire Z is clocked 20% slower. So it might be better for gaming, but for day-to-day use its slower than the Snapdragon...and lets be serious. As I mentioned in my last post, Snapdragon just isn't anything special anymore.

I believe the 7230 is also 45nm vs 65nm in the original though, should bring improvements in battery life. Not sure what other improvements Qualcomm made, finding details and performance of the various SoCs is difficult in the best of times.

 

[cronos]

I'd love to get a 'GSM Evo', but of course they didn't release it with AT&T 3G band

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yes, the boot time is impressive. Correct me if I'm wrong, the Qualcomm MSM7230 is basically a Snapdragon with a better GPU, but the one in the Desire Z is clocked 20% slower. So it might be better for gaming, but for day-to-day use its slower than the Snapdragon...and lets be serious. As I mentioned in my last post, Snapdragon just isn't anything special anymore.

snapdragon isn't so special, but its processing power is fine. People always point to OMAP and Hummingbird as faster but that's because they bundle some serious GPU power. In terms of CPU power, the Snapdragon is fine.

800mhz might be 20% slower, but with good OS optimization, it should be fine. The iPhone 4 is clocked that fast too no?

I think HTC has done a fine job with its phones and making them run well. The Droid Eris held up perfectly fine on its old ARM11 528mhz processor. Made the Droid 1 look slow at times.

 

[Deeko]

I said "The smartphone market has gotten awfully stale", not Qualcomm or HTC

Hardware-power-wise, there has been very little innovation this year. Sure, there's SuperAMOLED, front cameras (which Nokia has had for years), and 720p video. Good things. Hummingbird, as you mentioned, ups the ante for GPU power. But what about raw CPU power? As you mentioned, all those high-powered chips have roughly the same A8 core. Its ok, but come on, this is a tech site...since when was ok good enough? Why shouldn't we be demanding more power than last year's technology? ARM is working on dual-core Cortex A9s for a reason.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Oh... well come on, I think the minute Apple announced the 3GS and talking about Cortex A8 and then HTC started touting the 1ghz Snapdragon processor in the Nexus One, a lot of us started going AMD-Intel on the mobile CPU market.

You've had a N95. You remember that from back in the day. No one really measured CPU power except for the WinMo PDAs. All that mattered was a smooth UI and that you didn't run out of memory. To me that's all that matters. I don't care if the iPhone is a 1ghz or 800mhz or a 600mhz. It just has to run fast. But it seems like we care about it so much on Android and WinMo. I think that just has to do with the fact that the OS isn't perfect yet and we need all the speed we can get. But quite honestly, it's not like the CPUs on phones have been flying in leaps and bounds in the past. the iPhone 2G and 3G used the same processor over the course of a year and no one complained. No one realized how much faster you could get until the 3GS came out, and not many people had a problem with the older devices until now where iOS 4 causes the 3G to really slow down to a crawl.

And we all remember the rehashes of 528mhz ARM11 processors from HTC right? HTC Touch to Touch Diamond to Hero to Droid Eris.... yeah...I'd love to have the next CPU now and dual cores and quad cores and what not, but I guess the reality is things don't move THAT fast even though new devices are coming out left and right.

 

[Deeko]

Well, Android and Windows Mobile devices have *needed* the extra power. Back in the day of the N95, interfaces were simple, browsing was dumbed-down, the devices were measured on what they could do, rather than how well they did it. Now, they all do everything...so the standard of measure has to change along with it. I've used enough Android phones to know that the current crop of hardware isn't enough. You can say its Google's fault for not optimizing the platform, and maybe you'd be right...but that doesn't mean Google's going to fix it. If more brute force gets past the platform's shortcomings, then I'd like more brute force.

You say people didn't complain about the iPhone's speed until they realized how much better the A8 in the 3GS was. Well...doesn't that prove my point? Just because what we have now is good, doesn't mean that better wouldn't be, well, better. For exampe - reviews of Flash on Froyo are mediocore, saying its nice that its there, but it runs choppy and/or slow. Considering how much Flash support is a hot-button issue in the Android vs iOS debates, don't you think adding more power to make that Flash more usable is advantageous?

 

[preslove]

You say people didn't complain about the iPhone's speed until they realized how much better the A8 in the 3GS was. Well...doesn't that prove my point? Just because what we have now is good, doesn't mean that better wouldn't be, well, better. For exampe - reviews of Flash on Froyo are mediocore, saying its nice that its there, but it runs choppy and/or slow. Considering how much Flash support is a hot-button issue in the Android vs iOS debates, don't you think adding more power to make that Flash more usable is advantageous?

battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life battery life

Speed's nice as long as you still have juice to use it.

If these run on 45 nm instead of 65 nm and favor optimization over clockspeed then I think that is a positive because it should lead to much better battery life(...).

 

[kaerflog]

Saw both videos.
Seems like the Desire Z moves around quicker than the HD.

 

[JimmiG]

I said "The smartphone market has gotten awfully stale", not Qualcomm or HTC

Hardware-power-wise, there has been very little innovation this year. Sure, there's SuperAMOLED, front cameras (which Nokia has had for years), and 720p video. Good things. Hummingbird, as you mentioned, ups the ante for GPU power. But what about raw CPU power? As you mentioned, all those high-powered chips have roughly the same A8 core. Its ok, but come on, this is a tech site...since when was ok good enough? Why shouldn't we be demanding more power than last year's technology? ARM is working on dual-core Cortex A9s for a reason.

Yeah, dual core at 1.5 GHz is coming. What's being released now are filler products so they will have something "new" out for the fall/xmas shopping season. Dual core won't likely start appearing in actual devices until next year. That's what you'll want to wait for if you want to have something truly next-gen.

Also don't forget Froyo, which brought the same kind of performance increase you would have expected from an entirely new CPU.

It's not a bad phone, twice the GPU power of the Desire, three times the internal storage space, more RAM and potentially better battery life thanks to the 45nm process (though they reduced the capacity of the battery from 1400 to 1230 mAh). If you already bought a phone this year, it's not very exciting, but for those still rocking first-gen, ~500 MHz Android 1.x devices, this would be a very big upgrade indeed.