Review: HTC Desire for Virgin Mobile
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The Desire runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and HTC's Sense user skin on top of it. Though some of the familiar Android UI elements are present, Sense is what gives HTC devices an experience all their own. The software is comparable to that of the HTC One mini and One max. Virgin's impact on the UI is minimal.
HTC's lock screen is among the best available on Android devices. The lock screen offers customizable shortcuts at the bottom of the screen. If you set a lock code, the camera will still open, but you'll need to enter the code to go from the lock screen to any other app. The lock screen can be loaded with content, if you wish. For example, it can be set to show your photos or the media player. The weather and time are always displayed on the lock screen.
With Sense, HTC is taking a slightly different approach to the home screen. There are three home screen panels, but the left-most panel is reserved for its BlinkFeed service. As is common to Android devices, users are free to add their own home screens. Sense allows you to anchor any of them as the main home screen. The home screens can be customized in any way the owner might like. Press-and-hold on the home screen, and the necessary tools pop up to make it your own.
HTC has its own ideas for the main app menu, too. When first booted, the Desire shows only a small handful of apps in the app menu, which looks spartan. The default view shows only 9 apps per screen, but that can be changed to show 20. Apps can be dumped into folders, sorted alphabetically or sorted via user preference. Apps can also be hidden completely.
The system settings are arranged like most Android devices, but HTC changes the colors, fonts, and icons to make it fit with the Sense UI. The system settings offer plenty of control over the device.
The Desire has a dual-core Snapdragon 400 processor, with each core clocked at 1.4GHz. The processor is paired with 1GB of RAM. This combination provided the Desire with more than enough power to operate smoothly. I didn't have any problems with the Desire or its applications. Everything worked well.
BlinkFeed
BlinkFeed is a social news reader that links with your Facebook and Twitter accounts and also pulls down articles from the web. HTC packages it all together in a digital magazine-style format to give it some visual appeal. It competes with third-party apps, such as Flipboard. The newest version of BlinkFeed automatically sets up some feeds for you (as long as you sign into Facebook and Twitter), and even works with Instagram and Google+.
The availability of content was pretty limited when BlinkFeed first arrived early this year, but it has since grown to a respectable number of sources. Big news web sites are represented, as are categories for finding the latest happenings about your favorite hobbies. Further, the app lets users manually add RSS feeds, though the process to do so is somewhat clunky. Lastly, BlinkFeed lets you check out what's going on around the world be downloading additional "editions" from other countries.
It's a decent-looking app, though I wish it offered infinite scrolling instead of page-jumping when you want to scan more content. Speaking personally, I would prefer to disable BlinkFeed and stick with Flipboard. However, it can be useful if you prefer to read through your Facebook and Twitter feeds at the same time.
Calls and Contacts
The Desire's phone app is straightforward to use. There are three tabs: call history, dial pad, and favorites. The tabs can be edited if you wish (you can rearrange them or substitute in several other options). The dial pad lets you dial actual numbers or type in your contacts' names. In-call options run the norm, including adding a line, send to speaker/bluetooth, mute, and so on.
The contact app has been enriched with content pulled from your social networks, though not to the extent that the People Hub does on Windows Phone. The contact app lets you sort between your various contact sources (phone, SIM card, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) with a drop-down tab. When scrolling through the full contact database, the app shows you the most recent social network status update from each content, be it a Facebook post or Tweet.
Messaging
The Desire packs all the standard messaging applications, including Gmail, email, Google+, Hangouts, and SMS. Users can select either the Hangouts app or HTC's messaging app to handle SMS/MMS. At this point I'd recommend Hangouts over HTC's app. Hangouts handles not only SMS, but IM too, and that gives it a bit of a functionality boost over HTC's app. Also, it looks better and ties into your other Google services. Hangouts isn't perfect, though, and it takes a bit of getting used to.
The rest of the messaging apps provided by Google function just as they do on other Android devices.
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HTC Desire / Desire 601 (CDMA)
