HTC Desire S review

Oh, we liked the HTC Desire. It still sits at the top of our 20 best mobile phones list, proudly casting a belittling eye over HTC's own Desire HD, the Samsung Galaxy S, Google Nexus S and even Apple's iPhone 4 juggernaut.

Though the HTC Desire's technology is now being surpassed, it's aged beautifully thanks to some timely price drops. However, all things must come to an end (or at least be supplanted by something new). The HTC Desire S has arrived to take over from its predecessor in the Android race.

In many ways, it's quite similar. We'll still be looking at a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 screen, Android overlaid with HTC's Sense UI and a 1GHz processor. However, HTC hasn't totally rested on its laurels.

Our colleagues at T3.com grabbed some HTC Desire S video footage which you can watch below.

The RAM is increased for the upgraded Android 2.3, there's now 1GB of built-in memory and it's made with a premium aluminium unibody shell.


The only real disappointment from a spec point of view is that 1GHz processor – it's single-core, while its competitors slowly move to dual-core for the higher-end phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2.

While it lacks the processing grunt of the LG Optimus 2X, we commented in our review of that phone that the Android experience wasn't actually made any faster or smoother than the original Desire by the addition of Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2, so it'll be interesting to see if it can be as slick as ever on one core.


The Desire S also brings improvements in video recording, with 720p HD capture now supported, though the sensor stays at five megapixels.

The wireless technology has also had a welcome boost, with 14.4Mbps HSDPA 3G broadband and Wi-Fi 802.11n support both added.

The battery is also slightly larger (up to 1450mAh, which is still smaller than a lot of the competition), though HTC is claiming as much as a 20 per cent increase in standby and talk time.


It's available SIM-free for a little over £400, but looks set to be free on contract from around £35.
We're told the retail version will ship with a microSD card, but the size will vary between retailers – 4GB looks set to be the average.

LG Thrill 4G: Out Soon

Announced: 21 Mar 2011
Market Status: Not yet released
Release date: unknown

LG Thrill 4G, is the first US version of the LG Optimus 3D. It features a glasses-free 4.3" parallax barrier LCD display with 480x800 pixels, blazing fast 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP4 chipset, and two 5MP cameras on the back that allow for stereoscopic stills and video capture. The frame rate is 30fps for 1080p Full HD in 2D mode, and 24fps for the 720p HD 3D video capture.

HTC HD7S: Out Soon

Announced: 21 Mar 2011
Market Status: Not yet released
Release date: unknown

HTC HD7S is a re-branded version of the HTC HD7. The phone is equipped with a 4.3-inch WVGA Super LCD display which is the largest in the WP7 lineup, but even more intriguing is the fact that the phone will ship with an updated version of Microsoft's platform supporting copy and paste. On the hardware side you get a 1GHz single-core processor, while in the camera department you have a 5-megapixel snapper.

iPhone 5 may be announced this June after all, or not

June and Apple's WWDC is coming, but still there are no rumors on the iPhone 5. Yesterday two independent reports indicated the iPhone 5 will be launched at the end of June and the opposite thing - it will not launch until September.
According to the South Korean news outlet ETNews.co.kr Apple will announce the iPhone 5 during the upcoming WWDC and will release it as usual by the end June simultaneously in many countries including South Korea (SK and TK).

The Loop, on the other hand, claims it has its sources who are still keen that there will be no iPhone 5 announcement at the WWDC. They insist it will be released in September instead.

Previous rumors have it that the iPhone 5 will have a dual core A5 chipset, an 8 megapixel camera, bigger internal storage (and screen eventually), NFC support and even a metal casing. We guess we'll only know for sure this June.

Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II dual-core CPU will run at 1.2 GHz

The Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II is a pretty powerful beast as it is with its Exynos chipset featuring a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and Mali 400 GPU. However Samsung obviously decided 1GHz is not good enough for their flagship so they are adding even more oomph to it.

The company's Estonian office has just confirmed through their Facebook page that the two CPU cores will be running at 1.2 GHz, rather than the previously announced 1GHz. That update brings the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II to the top of the Cortex-A9 class, in pure computing power, at least.

It's a surprising move, we admit. We've never seen processor specs jump midway from announcement to release but that's obviously the case, The Galaxy S II official microsite no longer lists the exact technical specs of the CPU, so we can only assume something's cooking there for real.

Update: We just got a further confirmation from an internal source that the Galaxy S II CPU has indeed been updated to 1.2GHz.

What we don't know yet is how this new chip compares to the new Qualcomm Snapdragons, featuring 1.4 GHz dual-core Scorpion CPUs. We guess we'll see about that in a couple of months time when the Galaxy S II and the HTC EVO 3D will both be finalized.

It should be pretty obvious by now that 2011 is going to be as good a year for Android fans as 2010.

Nokia to Release 40 New Devices In 2011

Nokia N8
It would appear that Nokia shouldn’t be counted as out for the count when it comes to the mobile space, as the word is Nokia is aiming to launch a bundle of devices this year in a bid to regain their dominance of the smartphone arena.

According to an article over on Tech2 and by way of Hindustan Times, Nokia is looking to launch 40 new devices this year with 12 of those devices being smartphones. Apparently a Nokia exec close to the development has said… “We will be launching 40 models in 2011 of which at least 30% would be smartphones.”

Nokia has recently seen hard competition from the likes of BlackBerry and the iPhone, and a recent report by IDC claims that Nokia market share in India has fallen, although Nokia disagrees.

According to the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report, IDC claims that Android is the most favourable with the masses, which is followed by BlackBerry, Apple’s iOS, then Symbian and Windows Phone 7, although again Nokia disagrees with the figures.

Personally it doesn’t surprise me that Android is tops and Symbian is way behind, but with the ever changing landscape of the smartphone arena what OS is tops today can quickly change, although I would say Nokia has a way to go to get anywhere near that top slot.