Why the Desire S is the best phone around at the moment!

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colonel

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2005
584
39
london
If you look at my signature you can see how many phones I have had.
In fact I have had many more, just can't be bothered to update my signature.

So why the Desire S ?

I mean its a mid-range phone right!. No swanky dual core or 1920x1280 screen or nvidia GTX 3D chip, etc.

Well heres the thing.

There will always be people that need the latest for something, maybe a game, maybe a massive screen for browsing (like they can't browse at the office or at home) but the majority of people have two usages of a phone:

1. A Jobbing phone. A phone that is actually used to make phones calls alot of the day. Here a Nokia 6700 or lower trumps the bill!
2. An email phone that can be used to browse abit and occasionally use an app

The problem is that no phone can do both well. Simply because a phone that is too big for 1 can be too small for 2. A phone that does 2 soaks up the battery, etc, etc.

So why the Desire S ?

For many years I have been hoping for the following to come together and it has never been delivered to date:

1. Smaller/lighter device
2. Large screen, say 3.5" or bigger, that goes to the edges. In glass mind, not plastic!
3. Metal body, with quality feel and joy of ownership
4. Touch buttons. Yeah, I like real buttons more, but at the end of the day they get dirty and are mechanical and thus the weak point of the phone
5. Clear bright screen, at least 800x480
6. All the mod cons. Android 2.3 is clearly a very together OS (although WP7 and iOS are great as well)
7. Store apps on the SD card, which is replacable
8. Front facing video camera
9. FM radio (bye bye iphone)
10. Great browser, mutiple emails accounts
11. A super-large and useful list of apps
12. A battery that can get me through 1 business day and 2 weekend days
13. Good quality phone calls

Well the Desire S is it.
It ticks all the boxes.
It is compact, stylish and beautiful to hold and it works slick enough to forget things about speed.
Its a phone I can really use, it just works and fast!

No unecessary 4" screen, no weight, no silly proprietry usb connector, free cloud to store contacts and diary, reasonable battery life, enough memory internally and a replacable card.

Sure I would like double the battery life, double the cpus, but do I really need them ? no.

From the total pain of the HTC Universal through all the incarnations of WM and iOS, I feel I have finally come home

at least for another 6 months .......

PS: I can strongly recommend the "case-mate barely there" hard shell. A bit difficult to get on but protects the back and sides well without adding bulk to the phone or detracting from the shape
 

NexusCrazy

Senior Member
Feb 16, 2011
218
68
Blackpool
Got to agree 100%. Ive had every iphone and both of googles phones i do say the Desire S is like having a combination of both but even better. Althought I dont need to root the Desire S as much, as it does and looks very well, a big part of me really wants it rooted. Now that would be having my cake and eating it aswell ;-)

Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
 

nodeffect

Senior Member
Mar 7, 2011
527
216
great review, but there's a question.... does the screen scratches without using the screen protector ?
 

.sh4d0w.

Senior Member
May 1, 2011
260
35
Bucuresti
great review, but there's a question.... does the screen scratches without using the screen protector ?

It has Gorilla Glass.... it shouldn't scratch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibs7EKrTZv8&feature=BFa&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=12
Not sure it will still work after that.. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KAc_pq35w4&feature=BFa&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=14

And if you realy want to break it here is what to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYgq03_yPdk&feature=BFp&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=13
 
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nodeffect

Senior Member
Mar 7, 2011
527
216

but are all gorilla glass the same? The one the droid x has, maybe have a better glass quality?
 

ben_pyett

Senior Member
Oct 28, 2006
5,566
2,332
London, Colchester, Wivenhoe
great review, but there's a question.... does the screen scratches without using the screen protector ?

It may have gorilla glass (its on their website), but can appear to scratch.

As I've read within this forum and my own phone has proven....there is a layer on top of the gorilla glass, effectively a coating which can scratch....as my has. But the scratches are tiny and only visible from certain angles and therefore don't inhibit the viewing experience.


I must also agree and echo the thoughts of @colonel it is a great phone!
 

olyloh6696

Senior Member
Oct 20, 2009
7,674
1,556
27
Manchester
If you look at my signature you can see how many phones I have had.
In fact I have had many more, just can't be bothered to update my signature.

So why the Desire S ?

I mean its a mid-range phone right!. No swanky dual core or 1920x1280 screen or nvidia GTX 3D chip, etc.

Well heres the thing.

There will always be people that need the latest for something, maybe a game, maybe a massive screen for browsing (like they can't browse at the office or at home) but the majority of people have two usages of a phone:

1. A Jobbing phone. A phone that is actually used to make phones calls alot of the day. Here a Nokia 6700 or lower trumps the bill!
2. An email phone that can be used to browse abit and occasionally use an app

The problem is that no phone can do both well. Simply because a phone that is too big for 1 can be too small for 2. A phone that does 2 soaks up the battery, etc, etc.

So why the Desire S ?

For many years I have been hoping for the following to come together and it has never been delivered to date:

1. Smaller/lighter device
2. Large screen, say 3.5" or bigger, that goes to the edges. In glass mind, not plastic!
3. Metal body, with quality feel and joy of ownership
4. Touch buttons. Yeah, I like real buttons more, but at the end of the day they get dirty and are mechanical and thus the weak point of the phone
5. Clear bright screen, at least 800x480
6. All the mod cons. Android 2.3 is clearly a very together OS (although WP7 and iOS are great as well)
7. Store apps on the SD card, which is replacable
8. Front facing video camera
9. FM radio (bye bye iphone)
10. Great browser, mutiple emails accounts
11. A super-large and useful list of apps
12. A battery that can get me through 1 business day and 2 weekend days
13. Good quality phone calls

Well the Desire S is it.
It ticks all the boxes.
It is compact, stylish and beautiful to hold and it works slick enough to forget things about speed.
Its a phone I can really use, it just works and fast!

No unecessary 4" screen, no weight, no silly proprietry usb connector, free cloud to store contacts and diary, reasonable battery life, enough memory internally and a replacable card.

Sure I would like double the battery life, double the cpus, but do I really need them ? no.

From the total pain of the HTC Universal through all the incarnations of WM and iOS, I feel I have finally come home

at least for another 6 months .......

PS: I can strongly recommend the "case-mate barely there" hard shell. A bit difficult to get on but protects the back and sides well without adding bulk to the phone or detracting from the shape
Nice review, you are write it ticks all boxes, but most pl now a days want the brute power and force for heavy gaming, browsing etc... therefore many ppl get the sgs 2..

it's a real shame as i would like to see some big development going on here on the DS...

i've liked it since the start, so hopefully i can get one too!
 

.sh4d0w.

Senior Member
May 1, 2011
260
35
Bucuresti
Yeah, well some people, would feel awkward walking down the street, holding a big THING at the ear....(if you don't use a bluetooth headset)

If you want something purely for gaming and browsing use a laptop.
If you want a PHONE, that actualy fits in your pocket, that you can also use to check your email, social networks, browse the web on a decent sized screen, and when you get bored, play some games you can download from the market... :D you get--> DESIRE S
 

olyloh6696

Senior Member
Oct 20, 2009
7,674
1,556
27
Manchester
Yeah, well some people, would feel awkward walking down the street, holding a big THING at the ear....(if you don't use a bluetooth headset)

If you want something purely for gaming and browsing use a laptop.
If you want a PHONE, that actualy fits in your pocket, that you can also use to check your email, social networks, browse the web on a decent sized screen, and when you get bored, play some games you can download from the market... :D you get--> DESIRE S
yeh you have a point :p although, i have already been used to gigantic screens over the past year! (tg01, sgs2, galaxy tab)

so how do you guys find using the 3.7 inch screen? is it sufficient for good web browsing, gaming?

i havent actually used a desire s in person yet!
 

ben_pyett

Senior Member
Oct 28, 2006
5,566
2,332
London, Colchester, Wivenhoe
yeh you have a point :p although, i have already been used to gigantic screens over the past year! (tg01, sgs2, galaxy tab)

so how do you guys find using the 3.7 inch screen? is it sufficient for good web browsing, gaming?

i havent actually used a desire s in person yet!

I'm not a gamer myself, but love the phone and its size is the reason that I bought it and didn't wait for the sensation.

Find it perfectly adequate for browsing....but then I'm coming from from HTC Touch Diamond 2.
 

olyloh6696

Senior Member
Oct 20, 2009
7,674
1,556
27
Manchester
I'm not a gamer myself, but love the phone and its size is the reason that I bought it and didn't wait for the sensation.

Find it perfectly adequate for browsing....but then I'm coming from from HTC Touch Diamond 2.
yeh... i also don't see much of an advantage of dual core when it comes to gaming..

i tested angry birds on my sgs 2 , OSF, ipod, and tab, they all run the same!

same with spiderman mayhem city.. (although a bit laggy on the OSF, but that could be because of the 600 mhz cpu)

dual core only really shines in web browsing.... it's soooooooooo buttery smooth when viewing heavy flash content.. no lag what so ever!!!

i also wouldn't really play games on the desire s , as i do most of it on the big screen ;) (galaxy tab)
 

maxxur

Member
Jun 19, 2009
46
4
I also went for the HTC Desire S simply because it's the best phone for me atm. It's got the stable build (i'm coming from the HTC Legend, once u go aluminium...) and it's just super powerful.

People's first reaction will probably be "it's not super powerful! Tegra2 is way more powerful!". No, really, Tegra2 is too powerful. The Desire S gets 60fps in neocore where Tegra2 gets 75 or 80 perhaps? That's not a big difference, keeping the batterylife of the desire s in mind.

Also, i just tested out the srs sound enhancement. I thought my Galaxy S had decent sound (5.1 option), but holy f*ck, this must be the best sound I ever heard from a device (testing with high fidelity headphones). I've had the ipone, magic, legend and galaxy s before. I also have srs sound enhancement on my laptop, and it's very hard to spot the difference in percepted quality. Strange thing reviews haven't talked about this before.
 

FK1983

Senior Member
May 4, 2011
377
27
South, UK
After playing around with my girlfriends Desire S for a few days I am not liking it much tbh, yes the sense ui is cool but everything else runs slow and choppy for a 1ghz cpu adreno 205 gpu and 768mb ram, and for gaming, well, not impressed at all, my old SE X10 ran games better for some odd reason (my guess being htc sense slowing everything down)

Nice little phone for general use (and definitely a girls phone) but anything demanding you see it soon struggle.
 

olyloh6696

Senior Member
Oct 20, 2009
7,674
1,556
27
Manchester
After playing around with my girlfriends Desire S for a few days I am not liking it much tbh, yes the sense ui is cool but everything else runs slow and choppy for a 1ghz cpu adreno 205 gpu and 768mb ram, and for gaming, well, not impressed at all, my old SE X10 ran games better for some odd reason (my guess being htc sense slowing everything down)

Nice little phone for general use (and definitely a girls phone) but anything demanding you see it soon struggle.
i suspect it is more to do with un-optimised software... the dhd and incredible s with the same hardware, absolutely fly with general peformance and gaming.. htc will hopefully rioll up another update :)
 

colonel

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2005
584
39
london
After playing around with my girlfriends Desire S for a few days I am not liking it much tbh, yes the sense ui is cool but everything else runs slow and choppy for a 1ghz cpu adreno 205 gpu and 768mb ram, and for gaming, well, not impressed at all, my old SE X10 ran games better for some odd reason (my guess being htc sense slowing everything down)

Nice little phone for general use (and definitely a girls phone) but anything demanding you see it soon struggle.

thanks for the positive thoughts everyone!

in terms of your quote specifically, mine doesn't run choppy. Are you upated to 2.3.3 ?
haven't tried turning sense off but probably can.

I use the phone for phoning, emails and browsing. And some apps, but the games I like, like tower defense and stuff, run really well.

I had NOVA on my previous iphone 4. A great game to demo it but not comfortable running a full 3D shoot-em-up on such a small device for more then a few minutes.
Maybe if I was 15 again .....

Its the form factor of the Desire S which I really like.
Its just small enough to be comfortable but has a screen thats quite useable.

Look, I wouldn't want to browse on it all day. If I needed a portable browser I would take my ipad. Under 10 inches does not really cut it for long term browsing.
Which is why I think a 4" or 4.3" screen is a step too far, not a big change in browsing but a larger battery drain and an uncomfrtable phone to slip in your pocket.

Maybe the Desire S2 wil have dual core in 12 months. Wouldn't say no to that if the kept it compact, but for now this is the best of the bunch for me anyway!
 

Iachimo

Senior Member
Jan 10, 2011
65
9
For me
Desire->Desire GD->Desire S
Sofar ive not looked back.
Awesome piece of hardware (even stock)

Sent from my HTC Desire S using XDA App
 

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    If you look at my signature you can see how many phones I have had.
    In fact I have had many more, just can't be bothered to update my signature.

    So why the Desire S ?

    I mean its a mid-range phone right!. No swanky dual core or 1920x1280 screen or nvidia GTX 3D chip, etc.

    Well heres the thing.

    There will always be people that need the latest for something, maybe a game, maybe a massive screen for browsing (like they can't browse at the office or at home) but the majority of people have two usages of a phone:

    1. A Jobbing phone. A phone that is actually used to make phones calls alot of the day. Here a Nokia 6700 or lower trumps the bill!
    2. An email phone that can be used to browse abit and occasionally use an app

    The problem is that no phone can do both well. Simply because a phone that is too big for 1 can be too small for 2. A phone that does 2 soaks up the battery, etc, etc.

    So why the Desire S ?

    For many years I have been hoping for the following to come together and it has never been delivered to date:

    1. Smaller/lighter device
    2. Large screen, say 3.5" or bigger, that goes to the edges. In glass mind, not plastic!
    3. Metal body, with quality feel and joy of ownership
    4. Touch buttons. Yeah, I like real buttons more, but at the end of the day they get dirty and are mechanical and thus the weak point of the phone
    5. Clear bright screen, at least 800x480
    6. All the mod cons. Android 2.3 is clearly a very together OS (although WP7 and iOS are great as well)
    7. Store apps on the SD card, which is replacable
    8. Front facing video camera
    9. FM radio (bye bye iphone)
    10. Great browser, mutiple emails accounts
    11. A super-large and useful list of apps
    12. A battery that can get me through 1 business day and 2 weekend days
    13. Good quality phone calls

    Well the Desire S is it.
    It ticks all the boxes.
    It is compact, stylish and beautiful to hold and it works slick enough to forget things about speed.
    Its a phone I can really use, it just works and fast!

    No unecessary 4" screen, no weight, no silly proprietry usb connector, free cloud to store contacts and diary, reasonable battery life, enough memory internally and a replacable card.

    Sure I would like double the battery life, double the cpus, but do I really need them ? no.

    From the total pain of the HTC Universal through all the incarnations of WM and iOS, I feel I have finally come home

    at least for another 6 months .......

    PS: I can strongly recommend the "case-mate barely there" hard shell. A bit difficult to get on but protects the back and sides well without adding bulk to the phone or detracting from the shape
    1
    great review, but there's a question.... does the screen scratches without using the screen protector ?

    It has Gorilla Glass.... it shouldn't scratch.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibs7EKrTZv8&feature=BFa&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=12
    Not sure it will still work after that.. :D

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KAc_pq35w4&feature=BFa&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=14

    And if you realy want to break it here is what to do:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYgq03_yPdk&feature=BFp&list=WLAA558F5B26E101BE&index=13