Mobile World Congress Best Of Show: HTC Desire

Of all the hardware and software announcements made during this week's Mobile World Congress, I was most impressed by HTC's latest flagship Android device. The HTC Desire wins "Best Of Show" for 2010.

The Desire is a very well-named product. It represents the finest in hardware and software design from HTC, the company that put Android phones on the map. Nearly every journalist and blogger I've spoken to this week agrees that it was the best product announced at the show.

The Desire is what the Nexus One should have been. It loses the lame trackball and replaces it with a much classier-looking optical mouse. It also loses the weak capacitive control buttons and replaces them with real, hardware buttons that work well and feel good. And it comes with the latest version of Sense.

The new version of Sense packs in a lot of new features. From the press release:

When the Nexus One (also made by HTC) first launched, people howled that it didn't have HTC's Sense. Sense truly makes Android a much more usable platform. Instead, the Nexus One only offers the bare Android experience.

After playing with it for a few moments earlier this week, I can say that the new Sense feels more refined, faster, and offers more tools for users to customize how the phone behaves. I really like the Friend Stream application. It's what Motorola's MOTOBLUR should have been. One window to look at for all your friends social networking updates and posts. The revised email application also takes advantage of new tools to let users more easily tackle their inbox. HTC has made it easier to soft between folders and filter through messages.

The only negative is that the Desire doesn't support U.S. 3G bands. It is shipping to Asia and Europe first. Knowing HTC, it's highly possible that a U.S. variant will be announced with a U.S. carrier in the coming months.

The Desire is what Android users really want: All the specs of the Nexus One, but with Sense UI and slightly better hardware. HTC announced the best device at Mobile World Congress 2010, so it fully deserves Best Of Show.