HTC Desire S

[Drillbit]

Picked up a mint condition black piece cheap from a phone hawker. This is a model not seen in the US. For a mid end it is surprisingly well built. The band you see in the center is really its metal frame and access to the battery, SIM and micro SD card comes from pushing out the matt plastic shell underneath. The phone felt very zippy for a single core device; the HTC Sense 3.x is quite well optimized. Overall it reminds me of a mini Desire HD and the final take to the Nexus One "Passion"/HTC Desire design theme. The Desire S is roughly the same size and weight as the Nexus One/HTC Desire, with a 3.7“ SLCD screen that is very clear and crisp. It feels really good in the hand.

I sort of noticed the lady hawker who sold me this, herself appears to be using an HTC Incredible S with CyanogenMod. The Incredible S is the GSM version of the Droid Incredible 2.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[Drillbit]

If it ever was carried in the US, its only with small regional carriers, making it a very minor player and locked into a CDMA mode. In contrast, this was a common HTC model for the rest of the world.

[Varjak]

Yeah, I thought we got this too; but didn't (and haven't) taken the time to confirm it.

[phoenixskyrider]

Everything works perfectly with HTC Desire S and the aluminum unibody construction method, makes it more attractive. HTC Desire S is for fast operation, strong stills camera, excellent cloud integration, and stunning design. But when it comes to slow notifications bar and Wi-Fi antenna issue, I don’t think it’s that good. What's more disappointing is that its single-core, while its competitors move to dual-core. The battery that is slightly larger in size claims to increase the standby and talk time by 20 percent.

[Drillbit]

My niece is using it now and she's very happy with it. Instead of giving people some low end phone (Galaxy Y, HTC Desire C or Wildfire C), for the same or lower price, a mint condition once top Android phone will offer a far better experience. Never really encountered wifi issues on my HTC phones, which in my ownership experience seems to have better range than Samsung's. Note that HTC tends to place their antennas either on the top or on the bottom of the phone, so holding the phone in those areas may induce a death grip effect on the reception.

Most of the work on the phone is likely to be for calls and text. If I have to go with a used HTC dual core, that would be the Sensation at least, and a used one will costs more than the Desire S. Plus its bigger, and my niece really liked the HTC Desire size. Before I gave it to my niece, I toyed with the phone and find the interface surprisingly quick for a 1GHz single core device, so good tweaking there by HTC.