HTC Desire X review

Maps

The HTC Desire X comes equipped with the excellent Google Maps application, offering up a fully comprehensive mapping solution.

Google Maps allows you to explore the world, route plan, check traffic and locate your nearest restaurant with ease.

On the Desire X we were able to pinpoint our position using Google Maps within three seconds, however it too at least five to fully load the maps.

Once loaded, browsing around the apps and zoom between levels is a pleasingly smooth experience, with the HTC Desire X keeping up with our movements and happily rendering new areas in a couple of seconds.

As well as the Maps app the Desire X, like all Android handsets, comes with Google's free navigation application, which provides turn-by-turn directions.

We found that the Desire X was a more than capable sat nav replacement, providing timely alerts and managing to keep our GPS lock on at all times.

Apps

As the HTC Desire X is an Android device you're blessed with Google Play, giving you access to hundreds of thousands of free and paid for applications.

Some manufacturers can go overboard with pre-installed bloatware, but thanfully HTC has been pretty restrained with the Desire X, which just a handful of apps appearing on the phone.

First up there's the Dropbox app, which doesn't come as a surprise as HTC has a partnership deal with the file sharing firm.

The good thing for the consumer is that every HTC customer gets a free 25GB Dropbox allowance, allowing you to easily store your media safely in the cloud and access it for any computer, tablet or smartphone.

It's a great little app which is easy to use and allows you to manage your documents, photos, videos and anything else you may want to store in the cloud in handy folders.

A neat little app is Flashlight, which as you may have already guessed, allows you to use the rear facing LED on the Desire X as a torch.

Fire up the app, press the power button and the LED will come to life, press again and it will get brighter, once more and it'll get brighter still. One last press will turn it off.

It may be a bit of a novelty, but we found it very useful when trying to navigate up our driveway at 3am, and we can see its advantages in a power cut.

Just make sure you do remember to turn it off, as it'll eat through the Desire X battery in next to no time if you provide your pocket with constant illumination.

Polaris Office allows you to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on your phone in a simple, if not slightly feature-less manner.

It's perfect if you need to make a quick amendment on the way to a meeting, but we'd find it difficult to create a whole document from scratch on such a small display.

Rescue is a service which allows someone to remotely login to the Desire X if you require assistance with the phone.

This app will only be required if you phone up a help line after experience a problem with your handset, and the person on the other end will talk you through the process.

A lot of people have heard of the music matching app Shazam, but HTC favours one of its rivals, with SoundHound making it onto most of the Taiwanese firm's handsets, including the Desire X.

Accessed via the icon in the app list, or by the shortcut in the music app, SoundHound can listen to a short clip of music and then tell you want song it is, providing links to lyrics, album and artist information and ways to buy and download the track.