Among the best announcements in the recently concluded 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the official debut of what is considered the Nexus One clone or the Nexus One with Sense UI among techies. This is the HTC Desire, also known as the HTC Bravo which is no doubt one of the most powerful smartphones on the planet.
It is powered by the same powerful 1 GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon processor and runs the latest Android 2.1 Éclair OS using the popular HTC Sense UI. It is not surprising that a comparison between the OEM parent behind Google's Nexus One and its own Desire gets the limelight between would-be owners of either and potentially remorseful owners of the Nexus One.
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Head to Head Comparison
Specs-wise, the two are essentially twins. Apart from running the same OS powered by the same processors, they both have a stunning 3.7-inch Wide-VGA AMOLED capacitive touchscreens with multitouch input technologies with the same accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors. They both use the same 5 megapixel autofocusing camera with LED Flash, geo tagging and D1 (720 x 480) video capture.
Both sports the same monoblock form factor and styled similarly but with the Desire enjoying an edge with 0.4mm thinner body. Ergonomically, the Desire uses an optical track pad whereas the Nexus uses a more conventional trackball.
Both are 3G phones on the dual band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA but distinguished by their frequencies. The Desire has 900/2100 frequencies that only work in Asian and European markets while the Nexus has the 850/1900 exclusively for US markets. But they both have the same WiFi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, A-GPS and FM stereo receivers as well as 3.5mm headphone jack.
Battery life is one curious difference. The Desire has a more powerful 1600 mAh Li-Ion battery (1400 mAh on the Nexus) but you get a significantly shorter talk time of 6.6 hours while the Nexus gets 10 hours on the same 2G network. Standby time shows a reversal of fortunes, you get a more generous 340 hours on the Desire and just 290 hours on the Nexus.
Obviously, the main attraction to the Desire handset is its latest Sense UI that differentiates HTS handsets across many HTC OS implementation like Windows Mobile, Android and Brew devices. That makes straight out upgrade to new Android versions difficult as HTC still needs to rework its Sense UI on the new version. This explains while HTC Hero users are still stuck with the old 1.5 when the 2.1 has been available for a long time now. Still. There's no guarantee of an upgrade as there seems to be a higher priority developing new models like the HTC Legend meant to replace the Hero, rather than working out the Sense UI into the upgrade.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, both handsets represent the bleeding edge of smartphone sophistication and both have different markets to cater to and neither will suffer any remorse getting either. As an open source OS, there is no lack of genius modifying one to look like the other so that a hacked Nexus ROM could have a Sense UI and tweaking either to have whatever new features new upgrades have is just a matter of time. But no matter, both the Nexus One and HTC Desire are excellent Android specimens with features that define what upscale smartphones really mean.