JUST as I had set my sights on getting the Desire the announcement was made that the HD version is coming out.
Now I know you can never win the upgrade war and you can ALWAYS wait for the next best thing, but this is more than an upgrade, it has an HD video camera which should make it awesome. I wanted to get a video camera anyway and this could kill two birds with one stone, or two flies with one swatter as the Germans would like to say
So I was wondering... who has delayed THEIR purchase to wait until October (is it even October or are those just vicious rumours?).
Not only that but has anyone an idea how much it is bound to cost? I seem to be coming to the conclusion that Orange is best to go with instead of Swisscom. I cannot believe that I am roaming pay-as-you-go on a UK O2 phone and paying less than local customers on their contract rates (I pay 33p a minute roaming and here I see prices between 0.50 and 0.80 Francs per minute for calls)
I thought there was something else I wanted to say, but it escapes me for now.
Thing is, it might come out in October, when will it be available in Switzerland ? When will you actually be able to get one yourself ? The Desire it out for a few months already, where is yours? :P
I would definitely wait for the HD, rumours are of an announcement in mid-Sept and launch in Q4 2010. From what I know of HTC, the original Desire is now overdue a replacement... despite the fact that they can't seem to sell enough of them.
I agree. While the Desire already has an HD camera, the Desire HD will have a much bigger screen - and I love big screens.
HTC tends to release their phones in the UK first, followed by all of mainland Europe a week later. Within 2-3 days they sell out until a month or so later. So if you want one in October (or when it actually becomes available), you might one to pre-order as soon as you can. That's what I'm going to do.
There's a lack of big screen phones in Europe - so the HD is going to sell like crazy (like the Galaxy S right now).
The HD is bulky and the design does not appeal to me. For one, I like the hardware buttons on the Desire. The HD will have touch sensitive ones, I hate those. No haptic feedback.
Its bound to be bulky, battery drainer and costly...
Me too. I'm going to get a batman utility belt at the same time to carry a full magazine of spare batteries... oh, what's going on with the quality of the screen for the Desire HD? Is it meant to be an improvement on the Desire? I ask because the iPhone 4 seems to have a sharper screen than my Desire which makes me craaazy
:-) The iPhone 4's screen is sharp indeed. But it's not like the Desire's is a klutz - I take a bigger screen with the Desire's resolution over the "Retina" Display any time. What's up with that "Retina" thing anyway? I don't exactly have super vision but can still see pixels around letter on the iPhone 4's screen...
I'm sure they will come up with some smart and awesome way to conserve battery life. As long as it lasts a full day with my usage I don't mind. Even if I had an iPhone 4 it would be put on to charge before I go to bed anyway so the extra battery life is negligible.
As for screen resolution. It's like making a comparison between having a 50'' 720p TV versus a 42'' 1080p one. Most people would choose the bigger TV.
The only thing that the iphone 4 has over the Desire (IMO) is the camera. Even then I prefer to take pictures with a point and shoot.
So is the iPhone 4's :-) The flash is completely useless and the low-light performance sucks. It produces very noisy images. It's mainly luminance noise so it looks more like film grain but it still sucks. The Desire's cam produces lots of chroma noise, which sucks even more. But in the end, neither cam produces usable pictures and a dedicated cam is required anyway, rendering the whole discussion moot :-)
It's interesting you say that. Pioneer (and I have a Kuro) have exactly the same philosophy. They say there is NO point in having a 1080 display at anything under 50 " so they don't provide it, instead making a 720 display that kicks the shit out of everything else at that size. (Kuro means black, and the blacks are BLACK).
Most people, though, just see the 1080 as the be all and end all -- I love my Pioneer at 720p and not only that but every tried downloading a 1080 film? lol good luck! Star Wars in HD 720p takes up 30GB, I can't even imagine what it would be in 1080.
Ah yes, I didn't specify, sorry! - I meant the entire Star Wars Hexology (what the hell is the correct word?), so parts I through to VI. So 5GB per film. If you are saying 12 to 15GB, that is a markup of about 2.5 to 3 times. Ouch.
btw, I take it you are a bit of a film buff then, check out Popcornhour ( www.popcornhour.com ). Absolutely love it! It plays all formats, especially the notorious mkv format which, at the time I bought it, no hardware player could do. It streams all media to TV (wirelessly from iTunes if you are so inclined) and you can install jukeboxes on to the hard disc, so my whole video library is jukeboxed on it (i.e. whenever I add a new film I run a program that automatically generates the HTML needed -- including IMDB ratings and cover pics).
I think I will stick with 720p downloads as they are just about the same size as my laptop screens and can be downloaded in a decent time without annoying my ISP with unreasonable bandwidth hogging
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After that aside... what is the conclusion? wait for Desire HD in Suisse??
They are around 55GB in 1080p, and look amazing on a 50" plasma. 720P would have bigger borders, whereas 1080p fits it like a glove. Terabyte HD's are now so cheap, and 100MB cable internet so widespread(here at least) that I don't see any reason not to get them at full quality.