• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

is the desire dead

had mine since they came out , but seems its old hat now :(

I may be wrong when I say this, but the dev community seems to be the most popular behind the Desire than any other Android device. It's hardware may be getting a little behind with the times, but it's manged to handle eveything I've thrown at it. Have you rooted your phone? You open up far more potential which was previously "locked out" by having Sense.

It is "out of date" but by no means dead.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SUroot
Upvote 0
Got 5 days until I can upgrade. If I do it now it will be for a GNex... Or I could wait...

Will be keeping my Desire to use for gps for my bike. Will probably uninstal most of the apps and remove a2sd+ to help with speed and battery. It'll also come in handy as a backup, couldn't bare to go back to a dumbphone again.
 
Upvote 0
Had mine for a year, rooted and used various different ROMs over that time, but settled on GingerVillain and stuck with it for 90% of that time.

Bought a Nexus S from CPW in the sale, and gave the desire to my girlfriend, who can now enjoy a "smart" phone for the first time, and it lets me play about with the various ICS Roms coming out now for the nexus s.

If your not bothered about the latest phone (All far too big for my liking), and all you need is access to emails, a calendar and some useful apps then I dont see why the desire cant live on, it is in this house! Probably be used 'til it dies (its currently in an otterbox case with a screen protector so bullet-proof) And GV is stable as hell, and full of great extras to play about with.

Brilliant phone and solidly built.... but you know that already!
 
Upvote 0
I'm coming from a different direction to most. I was happy with my old phone (a rooted Orange San Francisco) but when a friend was selling their mint Desire due to an upgrade I couldn't pass it up. Been playing with the various Gingerbread ROMs available and will give the ICS ones a shot if they materialise. But the Desire is snappy, the memory isn't an issue and I see no reason to upgrade again.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SUroot
Upvote 0
had mine since they came out , but seems its old hat now :(

Maybe old hat, but have done 3 road trips in the US, solo, my guiding light? my Desire.. !! :D
Dude, tell me what I can buy that will lift me to the next level, ok its 3 years old, but still delivers all I require. Been dropped on concrete and has the shrapnel marks on the alloy case, the screen still as new. I know I will have to move on, but the quantum leap not close enough yet. ;)
 
Upvote 0
Stopped using contracts now and will buy phones outright now. Sold my desire a couple of weeks ago and now am using an Atrix 4G. Loved my desire but it struggled on a few games with slow down, which the new dual core phones are fine with. I didn't want to move on but rather I felt I should . . .


Best way. I bought the Desire off contract. You can find some excellent value SIM free contracts these days, and if you can afford to pay up-front for the phone rather than spreading it out in inflated contract prices then you can get a new phone whenever you want.
 
Upvote 0
Wow. Sounds like you've had a good time these last few years. Are you originally from the states? If not, did you just buy a sim over there with data allowance?
I am in UK, in the US get a local sim card AT&T for text messages back to UK.
WI-FI available in all motels, bars etc no problem getting local info, or picking up e-mail. Use Copilot for nav, standalone no data required. Booking.com for lookahead on motels, a really great app. What else do you need? !
 
Upvote 0
I'm not that heavily into games, have around 8 on my Desire and it runs them all fine. It does everything I want it to so can't really justify replacing it yet. I am running a custom rom, have over 80mb of internal memory free. I use my phone for geocaching, have Navigon select installed for sat nav, plus tons of other little progs and utilities on there. It runs them all very, very well.
 
Upvote 0
Tough question ... to which I see two sides.

1. On the one hand, it runs several completely stable builds of ICS, and more GB + Sense ROMS than you could ever need. It is almost 2 years old, and is very much supported, and still has a strong dev community behind it. Those, are feats several new phones haven't achieved. Hell, its got stable ICS - the likes of the SGS2 doesn't even have that yet (even by XDA). So in this sense, no its certainly not dead - in fact its very much alive.

2. On the other hand, it does have a 1Ghz processor, an average camera and irritatingly low memory. And this does bring restrictions - it struggles with HD video, cannot run many games and is at times, sluggish. This, as in the Desire's physical and now nominally outdated hardware - I predict, will be its downfall.

So I guess, the answer to the question "is the HTC Desire dead" depends very much on how you use and what you want from your phone. If you want to customise it to the extreme then I say it remains one of the best devices for this. If you want your phone to be a showcase of power, I guess it wouldn't be the best choice.

Personally though, I think its far from dead. Dying, but a long way off dead ;)
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones