HTC Desire C review: Welcome aboard

Introduction

Are you a seasoned Android user looking for ICS on a budget or a learner ready for that big step into smartphones? Is it the journey or the destination? HTC will be pleased to welcome you on board either way. And they're making sure you start on the right foot.

Meet the Desire C. The little one at the feet of giants. The adopted child of the blue-bloods in the One family. The HTC Desire C is about half the size of a One X and has only a fraction of its processing power but the C in the name doesn't only signify compact, it also stands for comfort and capability.

The Taiwanese have a solid record in the entry-level smartphone segment. To be fair, their pricing is not the most competitive but the build, fit and finish of their smartphones are hard to beat. Beauty anyway is in the eye of the beholder, so here are the solid facts about the Desire C.

Key features

• Light and compact
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 3.5" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480)
• 600MHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 MSM7225A chipset, Cortex A5 CPU, 512MB RAM, Adreno 200 GPU
• Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with HTC Sense 4 UI
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with hotspot functionality
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity
• 5 MP camera, geotagging, face detection
• VGA video @ 24fps
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• microSD slot (up to 32GB)
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Accelerometer, proximity sensor
• Polaris Office doc viewer / editor
• 25GB of free Dropbox
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Smart dialing
• DivX/XviD video support
• HTCSense.com integration
• Adobe Flash support
• Surprisingly good audio output

Main disadvantages

• Feeble CPU
• Modest retail package
• Fixed-focus camera
• No front-facing camera

That's a long list of features showing HTC have done their homework. Entry-level phones are usually ranked by the best bang-for-the-buck and the Desire C appears equipped well above the average. The biggest doubt is cast by the single-core 600MHz Cortex A5 processor but running Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box is a nice way to make amends. This market is all about give and take.

The Desire C is super compact and lightweight for an amazingly comfortable feel in hand. It's still very well put together and oozes the usual HTC quality. Follow us after the break for more on the design and construction.