Vodafone offers HTC Desire for less than Nexus One

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£5 a month less for a better phone - which would you buy?

Vodafone creates a Nexus/Desire battle royale
Vodafone creates a Nexus/Desire battle royale

Vodafone has finally announced a UK release date for the Nexus One phone, but it's the contract costs that carry an interesting sub-plot.

Vodafone will be offering the Nexus One in stores, which means it will be in direct competition with the HTC Desire, which is a very similar phone with a few design tweaks and an improved overlay. (Compare the various Vodafone HTC Desire deals).

But the HTC Desire is the cheaper device: £30 per month will give you 600 mins on a 24 month contract with a free phone, where you have to add £5 per month for the same deal with the Nexus One.

With the Nexus One you get a noise cancelling microphone, as well as connectors at the bottom to allow you to pop the phone in things like car GPS docks.

Data - we need more data

Vodafone has also improved the data allowance for the Nexus One - with the HTC Desire you only get 500MB of data per month, but with Google's phone there's 1GB mobile data on offer, plus another 1GB through Wi-Fi hotspots around the country.

Over the course of the 24 month contract this means users will be paying £120 more for the Nexus One compared to the Desire, and in our tests we found HTC's own phone to be a superior model.

But of course, you can decide for yourself: do you want more data, a trackball and noise cancellation, or a cool Sense UI overlay and £120 in your pocket?

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Gareth Beavis
Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.