HTC Desire C review: Welcome aboard

Introduction

Are you a seasoned Android user looking for ICS on a budget or a learner ready for that big step into smartphones? Is it the journey or the destination? HTC will be pleased to welcome you on board either way. And they're making sure you start on the right foot.

Meet the Desire C. The little one at the feet of giants. The adopted child of the blue-bloods in the One family. The HTC Desire C is about half the size of a One X and has only a fraction of its processing power but the C in the name doesn't only signify compact, it also stands for comfort and capability.

   

The Taiwanese have a solid record in the entry-level smartphone segment. To be fair, their pricing is not the most competitive but the build, fit and finish of their smartphones are hard to beat. Beauty anyway is in the eye of the beholder, so here are the solid facts about the Desire C.

Key features

• Light and compact
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 3.5" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480)
• 600MHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 MSM7227A chipset, Cortex A5 CPU, 512MB RAM, Adreno 200 GPU
• Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with HTC Sense 4 UI
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with hotspot functionality
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity
• 5 MP camera, geotagging, face detection
• VGA video @ 24fps
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• microSD slot (up to 32GB)
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer, proximity sensor
• Polaris Office doc viewer / editor
• 25GB of free Dropbox
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Smart dialing
• DivX/XviD video support
• HTCSense.com integration
• Adobe Flash support
• Surprisingly good audio output

Main disadvantages

• Feeble CPU
• Modest retail package
• Fixed-focus camera
• No front-facing camera

That's a long list of features showing HTC have done their homework. Entry-level phones are usually ranked by the best bang-for-the-buck and the Desire C appears equipped well above the average. The biggest doubt is cast by the single-core 600MHz Cortex A5 processor but running Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box is a nice way to make amends. This market is all about give and take.

   

The Desire C is super compact and lightweight for an amazingly comfortable feel in hand. It's still very well put together and oozes the usual HTC quality. Follow us after the break for more on the design and construction.

Standard retail package

The HTC Desire C has the same eco-friendly packaging as the One series phones: a rounded foam box in a sleeve of paper. The phone comes with a standard microUSB cable for charging and transferring data, a set of headphones and a wall charger.

 
The Desire C retail package

It has the Beats Audio technology, but HTC didn't throw in a Beats headset - it would've been a ridiculously generous bonus to a 200 euro handset. Still, the standard set in the retail package has decent sound.

HTC haven't bundled a memory card either. 4GB of built-in storage should be enough to get you started but a card will soon be a necessity.

Android-ish gallery

The HTC gallery is a custom job, but stacks photos just like the vanilla Android gallery. The app automatically locates images and videos, no matter where they are stored. You can choose to show/hide camera shots, All photos or All videos.

A tap on the Albums dropdown lets you view local or online albums. On the cloud side, you get Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, Picasa or SkyDrive.

 
The Albums app has a new look

Once you pick one of the "stacks" (each representing a folder), you're presented with a grid of the photos. Some files have an icon indicating it's not a still photo but a video instead.

   
Browsing the image gallery

You can also mass delete images, but you can't copy/paste images across folders - you'll need a proper file manager for that. There are some basic editing tools - crop, rotate and effects (auto enhance, sepia, vintage, etc.).

  
Mass deleting photos • Basic image editing tools

The HTC Desire C supports multi-touch and you can take full advantage of it while browsing your images. You can zoom up to 100% with a simple double tap on the screen. The implementation here is extra smooth too.

 
Zooming in on a photo

Capable video player

There's no dedicated video player onboard the HTC Desire C, which means that video files have to be accessed via the Gallery.

The Videos app is part of the Gallery

The video interface offers a view mode toggle (full screen or best fit) and you can scrub through videos. There's a shortcut that lets you adjust screen brightness and another one to take screenshots of videos.

Video support on the Desire C was a mixed bag - as expectd, 1080p and 720p videos were a no go. It was able to play most standard resolution file formats we threw at it - AVI, MP4, MKV - though it did choke on some old XviD-encoded AVI videos.

Unlike the One series, Beats Audio enhancement is not available when viewing videos; it only works when listening to music (more on this below).

Subtitle support is available, although you have to have a subtitle file in the same directory as the video to be able access the subtitle options. These include the ability to select a subtitle file (if there is more than one in the same directory), as well as adjust the character encoding, which can be useful in getting those non-Latin subtitles to work.

 
 
Playing video • Adjusting the subtitle options

Final words

HTC has stepped out of its comfort zone with this one. It's not their first attempt at a smartphone for the masses and the Taiwanese are definitely getting the hang of it. The Desire C is firmly in the tradition of the two Wildfires and the Explorer. By another tradition honored by HTC, even their entry level offerings get the latest software and the combination of Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 4.0 is the phone's key selling point.

What we have here is a trimmed-down version of the Sense UI but it's by no means a massive deal-breaker. After all, even the HTC One V had to accept cuts like the missing leap view and the non-customizable lockscreen. Anyway, with microSD card support, flash playback and ICS, the Desire C is a pretty good catch.

The flipside is, the hardware doesn't quite keep up. It's actually as low-end as it gets. But it suffices for two things - run Ice Cream Sandwich glitch-free and stay within budget. The Desire C is clearly cheaper than some of its direct competitors and that's fairly surprising coming from HTC, which usually prices its phones quite steep. The premium is well worth it most of the time, considering the solid build quality of the gadgets.

The Desire C will not let anyone down in terms of build and finish but it should take account of the fact that the market has evolved to a point where dual-cores are calling the shots in the midrange.

Of course, HTC will tell you it has the One V in the market of the affordable dual-core droids and their Desire C is targeting a different, lower segment. We don't think anyone will disagree but still, a certain Sony Xperia U is priced unsettlingly close.

For a couple of euros more (less than 20 really) you get incomparably more processing power thanks to the two 1GHz cores of the Xperia U's NovaThor chipset. The screen size is the same but with FWVGA resolution Sony's smartphone makes all the difference. The auto-focus still camera and HD videos are important advantages too. We like the glowing strip that matches the screen color too. Overall, we would've told you right away that your money is better spent on an Xperia U, was it not for its limited storage capacity.

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