HTC Desire HD review

The Desire's successor finally lands but is it an improvement?

The definitive HTC Desire HD review
The definitive HTC Desire HD review

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HTC desire hd review

The HTC Desire HD has an 8MP camera, making it one of the best from the brand so far. It's only bested by the Windows Phone 7-powered HTC 7 Mozart on the market, by dearth of the fact that has a Xenon (proper) flash.

But the Desire HD comes with a dual LED flash, which although slow can double as a video light and torch. Beat that, Xenon.

HTC desire hd review

While the modes are simplistic, there is a little bit of range on the camera shots you can take. Using simple slider bars, you can alter the contrast, sharpness and exposure, and these go a long way to altering the quality of the shot you get.

One problem is said shots do look a little, well, camera-phonesque. There's a processed quality to some of them, especially in overcast conditions, that you might not expect from an 8MP offering.

HTC desire hd review

The shutter speed is awesome though, and it's very easy to capture the picture you want when you're ready to go in less than four seconds, less if you turn off auto reviewing of pictures.

HTC desire hd review

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The standard shots can look a little over-processed with some digital artefacting, although they look good on the phone screen

HTC desire hd review

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The macro mode is non-existent; instead HTC's auto focus can handle pretty much any scenario - even as shown here, less than 5cm away from the subject

HTC desire hd review

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Touch to focus allows you to take a shot that highlights a certain aspect of the photo - here we've touched the tree

HTC desire hd review

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And here the sky - the difference in detail and light levels is impressive

HTC desire hd review

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Bright light is something of a hindrance to the small-sensored 8MP camera, but it doesn't completely destroy a shot if you focus on the right area

HTC desire hd review

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Here's our subject taken in normal, automatic mode

HTC desire hd review

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And again with high exposure

HTC desire hd review

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And again with low exposure

HTC desire hd review

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Here's an oddly purple shot taken again in automatic mode - as you can see below, the change in effect is quite marked

HTC desire hd review

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With high contrast

HTC desire hd review

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With low contrast

HTC desire hd review

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With high saturation

HTC desire hd review

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With low saturation

HTC desire hd review

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The digital zoom is average - here we took a photo using some exposure and contrast tweaking

HTC desire hd review

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Zoomed in it looks relatively similar - we've seen worse digital zooms, but it's nothing in the same league as the Nokia N8

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 grew 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.

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