HTC Desire Z review

So I'm on the hunt for a new phone again. I've been using the Google Nexus One since May. Don't get me wrong - for the most part, I LOVE my Nexus One. It's been by far my favourite Android phone for multiple reasons. It's usually the phone that gets the newest ROM upgrades both for official ROMS and unofficial ROMS like CyanogenMod. In comparison to the Milestone, it's blazingly fast. It does have a few idiosyncrasies like having a schizophrenic screen once in a while but all in all, it's a great phone.

The one thing that I really struggled with was not having a physical keyboard. In general software keyboards work really well. However, if you try to write long emails or write blogs, the space you lose from using an on screen keyboard not ideal. So I've been looking for a replacement that would meet my needs - an Android phone with a keyboard that works on the Rogers or AT&T. One such candidate is the HTC Desire Z.

I was originally quite skeptical about the HTC Desire Z primarily because of its 800 MHz processor which on paper makes it slower than the Nexus One. The fear for the lack of clockspeed is that there are rumours that Android will not support Honeycomb on anything less than 1 GHz.

So I welcomed the opportunity to review the phone before I decide whether or not to bite the bullet to pick it up as my primary phone or not.



My first impression of the phone is that it's hefty. It's slightly longer, slightly thicker and definitely heavier than the Nexus One. While I'm not one to shy away from big clunky devices after owning devices such as the HP Ipaq 5500 and the HTC Tytn II, this is definitely a phone that you feel in your pocket.

The materials used on the phone are actually quite nice. I like the choice of burnished metal in combination of a rubbery finish for the sides giving it a bit more grip. However, the end result somehow makes it look cheap at first glance. The burnished metal unfortunately comes across looking quite plastic.

The Desire Z also loses the trackball for the optical directional pad. Having the directional pad to me is a really nice plus because many devices like the HTC Desire HD and Samsung Galaxy S series now forsake having that feature. I'm of the opinion that the Android still needs a trackpad especially when writing long documents. Not having the magnifying glass feature like you do in iOS can make it challenging when it comes to editing at times.One thing that I do miss about the trackball though is the fact that it would light up acting as a visual indicator as opposed to an audio indicator of events.



The display measures 3.7” with a resolution of 800x480. Apparently it’s a super LCD which is presumably better than a non super one. On the plus side it’s a very clear and virbrant display with a decent viewing angle. Minuses are that it’s pretty reflective and it’s black levels aren’t that great. Overall it’s a great display.

Another really nice feature of the Desire Z is the dedicated camera button. Given that my phones are generally my primary point and shoot camera, it's nice not to have to hunt and peck for where the camera app is. The camera seems to be the same camera as the one on the Nexus One. There are some additional features such as 720p video capture and ISO settings that are a nice touch. There's also an effects feature that is neat but not something that I personally find that useful. In comparison to pictures I've taken, the pictures taken seem marginally better than that of the Nexus One. However, compared with the iPhone 4 or Samsung Galaxy S the Desire Z’s camera image quality is noticeably worse.



Unlike previous HTC phones, the landscape keyboard is not so much a slide out keyboard as it is more of a flip over keyboard. It's a bit hard to understand that design decision because it makes exposing the keyboard so much more cumbersome then sliding it. It’s also kind of annoying because it’s easier to move the screen when you’re using the phone. That said I got used to it after a few days.



The keys are actually well spaced out, though at a glance I thought there weren't enough keys to be useful. Unlike keyboards of the past, most keys have a use of the "fn" key making it very consistent. There are a few nice touches which I really like. For one, they space bar is deadset in the middle and is also fairly wide. There are two hardware buttons for frequently used apps. I have mine mapped to Wordpress and Evernote. There are two shift keys and two "fn" keys also promoting a really balanced keyboard. All in all, there are nothing but positive things to say about this keyboard once you get the feel of it.



One word of caution; you can damage your MicroSDHC card if you push the cover on the slot down without fully inserting the card (Howard’s note: it wasn’t me!).



A big part of getting an HTC device is HTC Sense. HTC Sense made a really big splash in the days of WinMo when the OS had a poor home screen experience. When it was first released with phones such as the HTC Magic, it was much better than the native home screen and there were no other apps that could match it in terms of function or form.

However, as a home screen, HTC Sense has made very little progress since then. There are many other Android home screens that do a much better job then HTC Sense does. The ones I've tried and liked are Home++, Panda Home and ADW Launcher.

Some of the more useful features from those home screen replacements are being able to configure the dock screen at the bottom of the home screen. This gives you the option to place apps that are the most commonly used by you that are not necessarily the phone app. HTC Sense does not allow you to configure the dock and the inability to configure the dock limits its usefulness and is also remnant of a feature that was useful when they first came out. Other apps have evovled while HTC Sense still remains the same.

Another app that is really dated is HTC Peep, the Twitter client. There have been no significant improvements since it was first released over a year ago. Improvements that I would have liked to have seen would include a conversation view for Direct Messages or Replies for instance. Perhaps even the support of multiple accounts. The same goes with the HTC Photo Gallery app. It's dated, clunky and doesn't synchronize with Picasa

However, all is not lost. For the most part, the widget functionality of HTC Sense continues to be very good. An interesting thing about the HTC Sense widgets though is that they launch apps that you otherwise would not be able to natively launch. It confused me at first but once I wrapped my head around that, it actually made a bit more sense.

The one that I use the most is FriendStream. It's a way of being able to see all of my Flickr photos, tweets and Facebook notifications in one place. I like that I can also like and comment directly from it. This would have been much better if it also integrated with newer services like FourSquare as well. I really wish AOL Lifestream would make a widget like this. Once you launched the FriendStream "app", you'd gain access to a few more options such as filtering by status updates, photos or links.

The weather widget is actually a weather and time widget. That becomes more abundantly clear when you look at how it works with everything else. There are small little things in the HTC Picture Frame widget that makes it so much better than anything else there is out there such as the ability to jump to the picture in full screen by tapping on the Picture Frame on the home screen.

There are a number of really nice text input features that come through HTC Sense that are a welcomed improvement to Android. The first is the text magnifying glass that is very similar to the feature on the iPhone. It comes across as a square. HTC Sense also includes the text select feature that is similar to that on the iPhone which is also another welcomed addition as well.

Another app that caught me by surprise was it's non-Gmail email application. I had fully expected it to be nothing more than the native Android Exchange/IMAP/POP client but it offers that and so much more. I like the fact that you can sort your mail by conversations, favourites, unread, flagged, appointments and attachments. It makes it for a client that is as close to Outlook as I would hope. All in all, quite powerful.

One of the things new that was launched with the Desire Z and the Desire HD is HTC Hub. It's quite similar to the services provided by Lookout (aka Flexilis). The services listed are Make Phone Ring, Phone Location, Lock Phone, Erase Phone, Forward Calls and Forward Messages. The last two features are ones that Lookout doesn't provide but I couldn't get the online HTC services to work for me either. All in all, the idea is good but it needs to work for it to be useful.



There are a number of down sides to the device though. The first is that the battery only lasts about 6 hours on my usage which isn't tremendously long. It's also quite a heavy device and although Quadrant Benchmarks scores the Desire Z to be higher than any other known device like the Nexus One on 2.2 or the Moto Droid X on 2.2, it doesn't always feel like that.

RF performance is quite good. Sound quality is average - I found it a little fuzzy sounding.



My final verdict is that the Desire Z is the best phone with a horizontal keyboard out there. Despite it's software flaws, it is a decent device. It’s so good that after returning the phone I ran out and paid full price for one.

Written by Kelvin Kang with contributions by Howard Chui