HTC Desire C
I have to admit, I’m getting quite spoiled by all the high-end smartphones I get to review that can serve as your one-stop shop for communication, playing media and making videos. But not everyone is looking to shell out a couple of hundred dollars just to have the most cutting edge phone of the week. If you’re looking for a reliable device that won’t leave you penniless and begging for doughnut money on the street corner, then the HTC Desire C may be the phone for you.
Unlike the HTC One Series, the Desire C is an entry-level option that targets those who, primarily, wish to use their phone as a social media device, and communicate and share content through Facebook and Twitter, and surf the Internet for articles and videos. Granted, most smartphones on the market these days offer these options, but few of the lower-end devices offer as fluid as an experience as the Desire C.
With the dimensions 107.2 mm x 60.6mm x 11.95mm and its curved edges, the Desire C is smaller and rounder than most most HTC devices. In fact, it looks a fair deal like the keyboardless BlackBerry Curve 9380 (109 mm x 60 mm x 11.2 mm). And they both weigh 98 g with the battery. The capacative touchscreens are similar too. The Desire C has a 3.5-inch screen with of a resolution of 320 pixels by 480 pixels while the Curve has a 3.2-inch screen with a resolution of 360 pixels x 480 pixels.
As the BlackBerry is primarily known as an e-mail and texting device, this similarity makes sense. By creating a BlackBerry-shaped phone, HTC provides a social media device users are instinctively comfortable with and makes communication easier. At least, in theory. Admittedly, I had a little bit of a problem typing on the phone’s screen because of its small size. The phone can literally fit in the palm of my mammoth hand. It is clearly designed for the long, slender fingers of a 15-year-old cheerleader and not for my over-sized, slightly-swollen digits. Still, I managed to get used to it after awhile.
Like the One Series, the Desire C runs Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.3) with the HTC Sense 4.0 skin over top. Despite only running at a speed at 600 MHz on a single-core CPU and coming with a paltry 512 MB of RAM, the phone is surprisingly fast. Programs aren’t as as fast as say on the HTC One X or the Samsung Galaxy SIII but there’s very little lag time when accessing software or loading media. And the smaller screen and underpowered setup also provides good battery life. The 1230 mAh battery provides up to 7 hours of talk time and up to 20 days on standby.
Music playback is impressive. Like other HTC phones, the Desire C uses Beats Audio which provides crisp sound. Videos look good too, provided the bandwidth is strong. The phone I tested was on Virgin Mobile’s 3g network which was often giving me download speeds of around .49 Mbps and uploads of .38 Mbps – which is slow. The streaming players were sometimes reducing the video quality to compensate and reduce buffering times. But when the connection was stable, the videos were vibrant. (Even if the screen itself might be a little small for some users to fully enjoy them.)
You can always download the video clips as there’s plenty of options for storage. The phone comes with 4 GB of internal storage but can take a microSD card of up to 32 GB and you get access to 25 GB Dropbox account.
When it came to making phone calls, I was pleasantly surprised. I knew that the in-call volume would be good because of Beats Audio, but I was worried that since the phone’s body ended well before my mouth that someone on the other end would have difficulty hearing me. But it turned out to not be an issue at all. My end was clear as well. The mic did pick up a bit of background noise but not enough to be concerned about.
In fact, the only place where the phone falls down a bit is the camera. There is only the one so video calling is out, unless I guess, you have no interest in looking at the person you’re video calling. But the bigger issue is that the camera just isn’t very good. The 5.0 MP camera takes both photos and videos, but unless you have a fair bit of light to work with, the image comes out quite fuzzy. It’s usually fine for sharing candid shots on Facebook or Flickr, but it’s not something you’d want to use to take serious photos.
All in all, the HTC Desire C is a great, little phone – especially for the price. The HTC Desire C is available at Virgin Mobile and Sasktel for free with a three-year plan and a Rogers for a penny. Fido offers it for $30 with a two-year contract. To buy it outright, the costs vary from as low as $99.99 at Sasktel to as high as $200 at Fido.