HTC Desire Z - Review

“The Desire Z is great for typing and everyday smartphone features, such as mobile internet and apps. But its camera isn’t great and the slow processor causes games and videos to judder”

Heavy smartphone with a keypad

HTC's Desire Z: Perfect for email addicts?

As I picked up the HTC Desire Z for the first time I immediately noticed how heavy - 180g - and thick - 14.6mm - the device was, a world away from the svelte bodywork of the HTC Desire that the Z is often confused for.

But the Desire Z does have an excuse for its extra, ahem, girth - a physical keypad that appears when you push back the 3.7mm touchscreen in a sort of ‘up ‘n’ over’ style.

Typing on the keypad was a nice experience as the individual keys are well sized and decently spaced out - handy for my fat fingers. Two programmable shortcut keys are also available if you want quick access to, say, a specific app directly from the keypad.

The BlackBerry style “Home” button on the Desire Z’s front is unnecessary though, since it only lets you slide left and right through the smartphone’s seven homescreens - something more easily achieved by swiping the touchscreen. The button’s also overly sensitive.

Since the Desire Z runs Google’s Android operating system overlaid with HTC’s Sense user interface, the phone’s layout is very similar to other HTC smartphones, such as the Desire. This is a good thing for anyone’s who’s used an HTC device before.

No deals for selection

The smartphone’s web browsing experience was pleasurable, loading pages quickly and laying them out in such a way that text was easy to see. Flash support - something the iPhone 4 doesn’t offer - meant I was able to watch videos and other multimedia content embedded into websites.

Pre-loaded with HTC Sense

The metal accents are a nice touch

Although the aforementioned touchscreen doesn’t offer the industry’s highest resolution, text, pictures, games and videos all still looked excellent.

For example, I was impressed by quite how sharp some videos appeared. Just be warned that because the phone’s only fitted with an 800MHz processor - 200MHz slower than the industry standard for smartphones - multimedia content occasionally judders during playback.

It’s possibly for this same reason that the phone lacks an HDMI port - ruling out any live streaming of 4oD from the phone to your living room TV. Though the phone can send pictures using the DVLA wireless data transmission standard to other compatible devices.

If videos and games are what you love doing most on your smartphone then don’t buy the HTC Desire Z, since its physical keypad is the strongest signal that the phone’s targeted more strongly towards email lovers - much like a Blackberry.

Fitting just a 5Mp camera to the smartphone is a little stingy on HTC’s part, I thought, and the cameraphone suffers as a result - producing dark, blurred or pixelated images on landscape shots.

Such photographic downsides can be curtailed, to a certain extent, by adjusting the camera’s control features for sharpness and saturation.

Slightly slow processor

Close-ups were good, but landscapes were rubbish

Close-up images tended to turn out quite well though, it’s worth noting, and I managed to capture a sharp and vibrant image of some flowers down my road.

If you’re the type who’s plagued by calls from previous partners and such then you’ll love the Desire Z’s “Blocked Callers” app, which does exactly as the name suggests. Just be sure you keep the person’s number in your address book because random numbers can’t be blocked at will.

The battery life of the HTC Desire Z isn’t anything to write home about. HTC states that the phone has a 400-minute talk-time and 430-hour stand-by life, but I constantly found myself reaching for the charger.

Call quality was good overall. The only problem was that I kept unconsciously snapping the keypad open during calls, trapping a finger between the keypad and screen in the process.

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