HTC Desire (U.S. Cellular)

Pros: Screen is fantastic, pin sharp and beautiful. The Sense user interface is slick, smooth and many great customisations.

Camera is fantastic, and will easily ourperform the 3GS camera and many 8mp camera's on phones for colour and sharpness.

Cons: Screen in direct sunlight outside can be hard to see due to reflections.

At first the battery can be drained in 6-8hrs, after a few full charges this is fixed, or replaced with a higher capacity battery. Just a bit worrying when you first buy it.

Summary: First using the Desire the Sense user interface really strikes you along with the screen (the screen is only very fractionally less as high resolution as the Iphone4, but nothing you can actually see when using it unless you use it at nose length). The smooth scrolling, swishing of panels, and very slick widgets to customise the user inteface to how you want to work, and display the information you want is exceptional. Many of the times you find yourself not needing to bother with application as you've set up the widgets to display what you want infront of you all the time and the HTC widgets tend to be of a much slicker, and higher level of finish than the normal basic Android ones (although normal Android ones are available also).

As mentioned earlier, the screen is truely beautiful. The only issue is the high gloss which in very bright direct sunlight does mean you can't see what you are doing unless you turn to put the phone in your shadow. Annoying when you forget your somewhere very sunny and quickly grab the phone for something to then need to shadow it to see it.

When I first started using the Desire I found the battery a bit of a problem for how fast I could empty it. Part of this seemed to be the initial heavy use of a new gadget, and also reading the HTC forums seemed to be a chemical issue in the battery. Once it had been fully charged a few times it settled down and I was able to get 2-3 days out of a charge. Up till then I was considering the larger replacement battery, but thankfully not needed.

Unlike the CNET review, the lack of a HDMI port isn't a big deal as you have a standard micro USB connection and a MicroSD card. Want video off, you just plug in and it's a big USB drive and you drag and drop your files on/off.

The camera is also very sharp and detailed, with accurate colours. Compared to my older phones with 8mp camera's on them, while a lower resolution the response times and clarity really make the pictures off the Desire a no contest win over them. The links from you photo's directly to Flickr and Facebook also make things very useful and quick to send online.

And then there is Flash! It's great to have a phone which displays a website exactly as it is on your desktop. It's perfect, utterly fantastic! If you want to log into Facebook and run a game as you do normally, you can. No having to fiddle around looking to download an app for it (if they've written one that is). It does things exactly as you are used to. No change, no compromise. It does the internet how it should be done.

Best thing for me though is it's freedom. I have total control over how it looks, feels, and displays what I want and how I want it. The freedom of Android coupled with a beautiful device and spec list make this one of the best phones you can purchase currently. Love it! :)