My Cellphone My Terms

Let’s take a look at the new HTC Desire Z!

A review of the HTC Desire Z seems to be timely here in Canada as we gear up for the Christmas season. This cell phone  is available on Bell’s network for  $79.95 on a three year term for those holiday shoppers looking for gifts.  If you are wondering what’s the difference between the Desire Z and the Desire, well it has a new Z-hinge slide-out keyboard and touch screen. It is essentially the HTC Desire with a slide out keyboard, the regular HTC Desire just has a touch screen and its larger cousin the HTC Desire HD (available in the US) also is without a keyboard. So for those cell phone users out there who feel more comfortable with a keyboard maybe this phone should be on your check out list.

The Good

The Desire Z has many great features which makes it on the holiday list this season:

• It runs Google’s Android 2.2 which is the latest version of this operating system (at the time of this post) and it supports Flash player 10
• A nice a sleak touch screen interface with a 3.7 inch display with a bright and colourful resolution of 480 x 800 pixels
• The Z comes with a sturdy aluminum case which gives it a robust and sturdy feel to it
• A QWERTY  keyboard which is nicely positioned for typing and your fingers don’t hit the bottom of the screen when you type and the small rounded keys have a little space between them which makes easier to type on along with 2 keys for dedicated functions like running your favorite apps
• The phone comes with a 5 MP camera with autofocus and an LED flash. It is also capable of recording 720p video.
• This cell phone comes with a pre-installed widget called FriendStream which ties together Twitter, Facebook and Flickr feeds into one group for great social media interaction

As with the other HTC cell phones this phone comes equipped with HTCSense, a service which allows you to do many cool things, like remotely track your phone using GPS, remote wipe technology, intelligent ringing – when your phone is in a bag it rings loud and when you are in the meeting and you turn your phone over it doesn’t  and a whole host of other cool features.

See the HTC Desire Z in action:

The Bad

Well no cell phone is perfect lest of all the Desire Z. Given all the features that comes with the HTC Desire and HTC Desire HD the only real reason to get the Z is that you need a keyboard for typing on. So here are some of the notable issues you should be aware of:

• Well the sturdy feel and aluminum casing and slide out keyboard comes at a small price its lot heavier than the Desire at 140 g, which makes it feel a bit weighty compared to the Desire
• Getting use to using the FN keys for things like punctuation  can take some getting use to given that there is also a shift key there as well
• The battery doesn’t seem to last as well as its predecessors

And the slide out keyboard isn’t as smooth as it could be and I’m concerned about the sturdiness of the Z hinge which might now allow the phone to last the 3 years a contract may last.

Conclusion

This is a good phone to have IF you need to have the keyboard addition, otherwise it doesn’t do a whole lot more than its counterparts like the HTC Desire which has a faster processor under the hood.  For those who need the keyboard, this phone offers the best of both worlds a full QWERTY keyboard along with the cool features of the HTC Desire.

So let us know, which one do you prefer the HTC Desire Z or the HTC Desire?

Either way be smart, get the best cell phone deal for your new HTC Desire cell phone.