HTC Desire X review

While HTC’s Desire brand was originally attached to premium smartphones, these days Desire-branded handsets have a distinctly mid-range feel. The Desire X inhabits the crowded sub-£200 SIM-free market, so we were interested to see how it would stand out.

First impressions are, thankfully, good. The Desire X is a smart phone. It’s slim and light with a pleasing curved shape, and our review model was the classy white and silver version. We didn’t like bending and prying the rear cover off to fit the SIM card and microSD, but it’s not like you have to open your phone very often.

We were impressed with the Desire X’s screen. It’s a 4in model with an 800×480 resolution, and the screen’s high contrast makes the phone pleasant to use. HTC has modified Android heavily with its Sense interface, and the customisations tend to polarise opinion. Comparing the Desire X side-by-side with a phone running a stock version of Android 4.0, we felt Sense added to the experience. The replacement icons are big, colourful and detailed, and the main apps screen has buttons to show all your apps or filter them by most frequently used or just those you have installed yourself. The phone has around 950MB free to install apps, and if you add a microSD card you can use a dedicated app to move programs to the memory card and free up internal storage.

Adding a widget to the Desire X

It’s also easy to add Widgets, Apps or Shortcuts to various functions to one of your homescreens; a long press on a spare bit of a homescreen brings up a menu with a list of items you can add, along with thumbnails of your homescreens at the top so you can see where there’s room. A 1GHz dual-core processor is standard for a mid-range smartphone, and this is plenty to run Android 4.0 smoothly. The phone completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 2077ms, which is what we expect from this kind of processor, and while this isn’t a huge score we found the phone fine for normal web browsing.

Like many HTC phones, the Desire X has Beats audio branding. When you play a music track, a B icon appears in the notification bar to show Beats is active, and also gives you the option to turn it on or off. Beats seems to add a lot of treble and bass and some reverb, and can suit some music, but we could find the sound tiring to listen to. The included headphones are uncomfortable and have little bass, so would definitely benefit from an upgrade to a better pair, such as the £30 Soundmagic E10 set.

The Desire X has a 5-megapixel camera, and it takes reasonable photos. Images were sharp with accurate colours, but pictures were slightly over-exposed leading to blown-out highlights in the sky. The phone also copes reasonably well with low light, showing less noise than other mid-range and budget phones such as the Huawei G 330. The camera isn’t up there with that fitted to high-end phones such as the Samsung Galaxy SIII, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a budget handset.

One of our test shots from the Desire X

CONCLUSION

The Desire X was a great mid-range phone in its day, but sadly it’s no longer available to buy on a contract. You still pick one up for £180 from Handtec if you’re desperate to get your hands on this mid-range handset, but we think you’d be better off buying a newer, more modern smartphone to get the best value for your money.

The Motorola Moto G is still our budget handset of choice, as it’s both cheaper and much more pleasant to use.

At the time of writing, the Moto G is currently available for £170 SIM free from Expansys, £100 on pre-pay from O2, or free on a £12-per-month contract from Affordable Mobiles.

The Moto G’s nippy 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor is also almost twice as fast as the Desire X and it’s much more capable of playing 3D games from the Google Play Store as well. Its 4.5in display is superb for a handset of this price, too, and its bright colourful covers give it a lot more personality than the Desire X’s plain white rear panel. If you’re looking for the best budget smartphone money can buy, the Moto G is the phone for you.