HTC Desire Z

Had the 'z' for a few weeks now and I love it.

I switched up from a nokia e71 and the thing is quite a bit larger, but ive had no problems carrying it in a pocket and in general use. Its a great physical size (you wouldnt wnat it much bigger, but the screen size is great).

As a phone it's a great smart device (ie portable computer) but it is not as 'clean' as the nokia (the nokia is a great phone, but a crappy smart device). For example, on the nokia front screen i can just start typing the name of a contact and it brings up the list of matches, then i can scroll up to a name and a menu pops up for 'call/text/etc'. Android has one program (phone) to call, another (messages) to text. Plus picking a user automatically calls them (no options, no confirm, i made lots of mistaken calls in the first few days).

On the plus side, the syncing with google contacts is brilliant. Im happy to lose some of the ease of phone use to get all my digital life available on the phone at all times. gmail, gtalk, contacts, web all wonderful.

Some reviews have said that the battery is lucky to last a day, but i find that at the end of the day its about 1/2 gone. Its hungry, but worth it for the brilliant features.

Keyboard is very useful (typing is not quite as quick as a full 101 keyboard, but you can bang out text at a pretty rapid rate). Some have said the keyboard flip is a little loose and i would prefer it to be a little tighter, but I have had no problems at all with it. Keyboard gets +1

Cant rave about this device enough. It's not the best phone OS in the universe, but the thing is great for carrying your online life 24/7.

Some useful apps: 'unlock with wifi' (unlock when on home wifi network, turn off gps), astrid task/todo (syncs with google tasks), dropbox (syncs files brilliantly), call confirm (stop phone being too eager to call people), 3g watchdog (monitor data use).

(Posted on 4/05/11)

They should DEFINITELY make a white one :) Or at least other colours to choose from! <3 But veryyy good phone indeed. (Posted on 29/04/11)

I am writing this review on the phone itself, which shows my impression of the phone. Lets look at it one step at a time

Design- Brilliant design. The slide out QWERTY keyboard with the "Z Hinges" are strokes of brilliance from HTC designers. A lot of the CNET reviewers had complained that the hinges feel weak. To a certain degree they may be right. On the other hand, if you spend $500 on a phone only to play with the slider, I doubt it will last long. There have been plenty of praises on the design, and I agree with the majority of it. With the exception- The phone is heavy. This is the downside to having the physical keyboard. it does put an 30-40g to the overall weight. Having said that, it is something I am not overly concerned, as I made the call to buy the handset after specifically looking at the weight

Feel and Use- I am a guy with fat thumbs, so a touch screen was not a really practical option for me, and as such I went with this handset, and I have not regretted it. Very easy to use once you get your head around HTC's menu system. The Screen is very tactile and very responsive. Unlike the Wildfire which I bought from here, it does not suffer the lack of touch recognition due to the bigger screen real estate. If you have used a HTC phone with Android and HTC Sense, you will feel right at home.

User Experience- This is where this phone really impresses me. If $500 (well $535 for me actually, price dropped by $35 after I ordered and waiting for the shipment), This handset does not disappoint. The 800Mhz Qualcomm processor may read slow on paper, but I have yet to experience that lack of speed. In fact, I put it through its paces next to my wife's Galaxy S (equipped with a 1GHz Snapdragon Processor) running the same app, not only did this phone keep pace with the Galaxy, at times, it was outpacing the Galaxy. The Startup and shutdown of the phone was just as quick with the QuickStart option. This part also depends on available RAM on the phone, which brings me to my next point.

Phone by default comes with 512 Mb RAM, which while should be enough - isn't. This is where HTC Sense does injustice to the handset. You have to constantly keep on top of the phone and use apps like Advanced Task Manager to kill running apps to free up RAM. Sense loads up and continues to load up unnecessary widgets such as weather and news updates, Youtube etc. unless you force stop these services, they will continue to hound you. And this results in Battery drain. This brings to the next part- Battery

The Battery in the phone leaves a lot of room for improvement. With moderate use and utilizing GPRS/Wifi- you will get just about a day's use out of the phone, after which you must pull out the charger. Even less if you are watching video or playing games (or your kids playing Fruit Ninja). compared to this, my Blackberry 9780 gets about 2-3 days of heavy use (email, voice, sms, mms, a-GPS use etc) before pulling out the charger. This is one area HTC should really focus on- optimizing bettery life, failing that, stopping so many native Sense apps running in the background and draining the battery. This brings us to HTC Sense

The HTC Sense, while should be under Feel and Use, I classified it under User Experience as This unique offering from HTC is a real class breaker. Both the HTC Sense and HTC Hub meshes really well with Android, except its rather annoying habit of running so many native apps in the background.the media player of the Sense is definitely an impressive piece of addition. While the sound quality is definitely up there with some high quality mp3 players, you will not get that quality with the supplied pair of headphones. Your best bet, to get the true beauty of the sound is to invest in a good pair of Noise Isolation in-ear buds. I am certain if you can fork out $500 on a phone, you can fork out and additional $60-$70 for a good pair of headphones. For the Social Networking addicts, this is also non negotiable feature of the desire. You will be able to stay on top of updates from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr with ease. In addition to this, you have the built in security featues ensure they stay private. And this brings us to the next part- Security

Google has created a unique Screen locking feature in the form of Pattern Recognition. This is ideal for people who can remember patterns and shapes rather than numbers. The Pattern matching security is also far more viable as unlike numbers, human brains remember patterns better. In addition, in the event you lose your phone, utilising HTC Sense Hub, you can send a signal to phone to locate it within the house, or in the event it stolen, you can send a full system wipe and Lockdown signal to the phone. This ensure no data falls in the wrong hands. The thieves will effectively have a unsellable brick on their hands.

There will be a tendency to compare this phone with the Desire or the Desire HD. For people who would like to make this comparison, I would recommend going to http://www.maggadget.com/android-warriors-htc-desire-vs-htc-desire-hd-vs-htc-desire-z/ and reading the spec outline there. if you want the Largest Screen Realestate in the market, but ready to forgo the physical keyboard, then the Desire HD is a definite win, but if you can sacrifice a little on the screen area, and want a physical keyboard, then the Desire Z definitely worth consideration despite less RAM than the Desire. (Posted on 17/04/11)

This phone is really good, I have had it for a day and a half now. I haven't found any problems with the phone so far besides the fact that the internet setting for the phone (APN) hasn't been set. I don't know about other network providers but I'm currently with Optus and I spent hours trying to work out how to get the settings set. I even called up Optus and the tech support guy couldn't help me either. This was because it wasn't a phone they specifically have settings that they can sms to you. I found out a site (link below) that will help you get the 3G connection working for all other providers not just Optus.

http://ausdroid.net/apns/

Also for Optus where it has "APN Type" and saying internet DON'T PUT internet!
I found that you need to have that as default and it will then work and Optus 3G will become available to have as your internet type. This is what I had to do for Optus and I'm not sure about other providers.

I hope this helps other people that are having trouble. An overall summary of the phone is that it is a fantastic phone and I am so glad I bought this phone.

Mobicity is great with service. While buying the phone there were no hidden strings and I knew exactly what I was getting and knew exactly what I was doing. Delivery was super quick, I got it within 2 days of ordering and buying the phone. Mobicity is great and I will definitely be coming back to Mobicity in the future. (Posted on 2/02/11)

Not the fastest phone on the market but haven't had any issues with performance yet.

Overall it feels like a desire that has eaten too much ice-cream, a little heavier and fatter. Once open the phone is very comfortable to hold while typing. People with small or extra large hands may find it awkward. The space above the top row of keys is ample and makes typing much easier than other devices I've tried.

The screen is vibrant and clear. Watching HD vids on youtube is great on this phone.

Haven't really used the phone enough to test battery life fully but seems pretty reasonable under short intensive bursts of gameplay and app testing.

The hinge takes a little to get used to after using flip phones. It feels slightly looser than I expected from watching youtube vids but still feels solid enough for now. I imagine that if I used and abused this phone everyday for 3 years like my previous phone the hinge would probably break at some point but it's about time I started being more careful.

Android 2.2 is what it is - awesome - not unique to this phone so won't review it.

Phone took ages on pre-order but worth the wait. Mobicity staff were very helpful the whole time. It's not their fault it took ages.

Phone came with 8Gig card already installed, headset, 1 battery, htc wall charger with UK plug with removable usb cable, htc car charger, mobicity added an adapter for the UK plug, a generic australian wall charger with removable usb cable, a bag to stash it all in.

While a little more expensive than most other Android phones this one is still reasonable value if you're looking at a top end mobile phone. If you're after a high end phone with a keyboard it can't be beaten IMHO. (Posted on 22/11/10)

Just got mine today, can't put it down! :D
It's fantastic~ (Posted on 16/11/10)