Should I buy a Desire?

Doc Daneeka

Hey all, just looking for peoples opinions on this.

I curently have a Hero and its been a great phone but am now eligible for upgrade on Meteor and am trying to decide on whether to get a phone now or wait for next releases.

Of the Andorids on the market I am swayed towards the Desire over the Samsung Galaxy purely on aesthetics. Not particularly interested in the Desire HD (too big) or the Desire Z (no use for slide out QWERTY).

Dilema is that the Desire is around for a while now and am wondering if its worth waiting for what comes next. Considering there is nothing announced yet are we looking at 4 to 6 months before we see a new offering from HTC or Samsung in the shops?

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Doc.

Pimp Ninja

Desire is the best phone I ever got. If you can live with short battery life, charging it every night, then go for it.

Tea_Bag

im almost in the same situation as you, got a hero and looking to upgrade, but i dont have alot of money to throw around and this time i want the phone to last more than a year (like my hero), so ive been very careful about jumping into a new contract.
ive ruled out the desire, because its quite old tech now (sorry desire owners, no offence, but im looking at 12-18months down the line) and the desire HD because its too massive.
my friend has a galaxy S, and i dont like it at all. feels and looks so cheap!

so the options?

desire Z looks good for me, but there is some new phones in the barrel.
Samsung will be announcing a new flagship phone soonish, (its not the nexus S either!) and we can expect a dual core arm processor coming to phones in Q1 2011, which will absolutely blow away the competition in performance and gpu rendering. it'll make any single core phone look seriously dated.

i think im going to wait it out a bit. give it another month, and wait for the announcements to roll in. Samsung will probably announce something before christmas, even if its not ready by the end of the year.

Doc Daneeka

Interesting regards the upcoming Samsung phones but I guess the question really is when will we see them in Irish stores? If it's 5/6 months away then it's a long time to wait.

Tea_Bag

Doc Daneeka wrote: »

Interesting regards the upcoming Samsung phones but I guess the question really is when will we see them in Irish stores? If it's 5/6 months away then it's a long time to wait.

thats a fair point, but i think irish stores are catching up to UK (slowly, but sureley) I went into Meteor yesterday to look at the Z, and i was quite supprised to see how many android phones they had on offer. i got my Hero when it first came out, and i had been pestering meteor for weeks before they got it. the technical staff hadnt even heard of android. now its flooding the market, and there is definately a large demand.

Venom

Doc Daneeka wrote: »

Interesting regards the upcoming Samsung phones but I guess the question really is when will we see them in Irish stores? If it's 5/6 months away then it's a long time to wait.

The HTC Desire has been the best phone Iv had to date and Iv yet to see anything since it launched to make me want to trade it. While I can't comment on the forthcoming Samsung phones, the current ones don't run the latest Android OS and build quality seems pretty naff.

mickoneill30

There'll be no new phones in the shops before Christmas and we'll be hearing of new models a month or two before they arrive in Ireland so it'll be Feb / March before we see the next big Android phone.

So if you're OK with waiting for that length of time then that's OK.
The only problem is that if you buy a phone now and the next big thing comes out in 6 months you're stuck with your current phone until you can upgrade again. But that's a perpetual problem. Used to happen with PCs. They matured enough so that it doesn't happen any more but smartphones are going through that now and probably will for another couple of years.

I've had a Desire & a Galaxy S. I'd go with the Desire any day over the Galaxy. The hardware on the Galaxy S is fine but the software is buggy. Even after applying fixes to my Galaxy to speed it up it's not as good as the Desire was. The screen on the Galaxy is great but that's not much use if it's telling you that it's waiting on an app to respond.
It's kind of embaressing to show somebody an Android phone and then have it take ages to open something. The Desire never did that on me.


If I was buying one now I'd get the Desire HD as that has more memory than the Desire (the only issue I had with the Desire) but you said you don't want the big screen so that's not really an option.

raeGten

I can totally recommend the Desire. It's a great phone. I moved to Meteor to get it and as they don't put any of their crapware on it you can just upgrade straight away as HTC roll out their updates for Android and Sense which they've been really prompt releasing (so far anyway). That plus the fact that it's meant to be getting the new Sense upgrade means that HTC at least still believe the phone is worth supporting.
To be honest, if I was in the market for a new phone right now I'd go straight for the Desire HD over any other phone. Battery life is a concern on any smart phone but that's just something you'll have to live with. I've heard the Galaxy S is particularly bad but I'm sure a lot of the problems can be fixed with s/w updates. That brings me back to HTC and the Desire tho. I'm so looking forward to getting the new sense in December (if the rumours can be believed that is) and I'd find it so frustrating if I was stuck with a phone that wasn't getting any updates or getting them a year after everyone else.
Go for the Desire HD and "suffer" the bigger screen. At least you'll be buying the very latest tech on the market and with HTC you can be fairly confident that your new phone will keep improving with new updates for at least the next 12 to 18 months. If you just can't stand all that screen real estate then deffinately go for the regular desire.