A lot of writers seem to be calling the new HTC desire HD the HTC Evo 4G for the rest of the world. Out of interest I thought I’d knock up a quick comparison to see what’s different:

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Size

The Desire HD is thinner and lighter, but taller and wider so pretty much a draw.

Networks

Difficult to compare as the EVO supports the US CDMA standards and the HD uses GSM for the rest of the world. The EVO does have that all important 4G, but the desire does bring HSDPA+ support.

OS

Not being in the US I’m not sure if the EVO has had a 2.2 Android update yet, but the original phone was sold with 2.1. The HD comes with 2.2 and has the new version of HTC sense which brings some new features as well as remote access to some functions from HTCSense.Com.

Display

The displays are very similar, although the HD does have an SLCD. Not having seen either phone (I have the HD on order) I’m not sure how much of a difference that “S” really makes.

Camera

The main cameras look the same and both phones sport dual LED flash. Of course they could be totally different cameras so there may be significant differences in performance, then again there might not. The 4G scores a win in having the extra front facing camera. The HD has some extra software functions.

Internal Memory

The HD wins here having a 1.5Gb ROM and 768Mb RAM to the 4G’s 1GB ROM and 512Mb RAM.

External Memory

Both phones support SD cards, but the 4G appears to come with an 8GB one, no mention of any supplied with the Desire HD.

WLAN

The Desire HD adds Wireless-n support. Which is nice!

Battery

This is interesting. The 4G has a much better battery, however the HD’s new chipset and screen is supposed to improve battery consumption a lot. Only time will tell if that’s true or not. Either way I can’t understand why HTC didn’t put a better battery in anway.

Chipset

The Desire HD has a newer 45nm version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. This allegedly brings faster performance, a far better GPU and better battery life. The GPU improvement isn’t in doubt, but the rest of the performance/battery life claims need some benchmarking to prove one way or the other.

Sound

The HD adds dolby surround sound, how much difference this makes in practice remains to be seen. I haven’t seen anywhere that suggests the HD has stereo speakers so it will only really be of relevance when listening via earphones.

DLNA

Although the HTC site doesn’t appear to mention this for the 4G. As far as I can tell both phones have DLNA support.

If anyone has any corrections or comments feel free to add them, I wrote this in a hurry, so apologies if I made any mistakes or missed anything out!

That’s not to say that the carriers (O2 for the Galaxy and Orange/T-Mobile for the Hero) won’t get them earlier. If they do both arrive on the same day it’ll be an interesting one. I’m still torn between the (generally) better hardware and vanilla android (with updates) of the Galaxy and that beautiful Sense UI/ horrible chin combination of the Hero.

Either way they both look too late for my birthday now , I may crack and buy myself an iPhone (assuming O2 have any in stock).

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace LaughingJohn.Test.Helpers
{
    internal static class EnvironmentHelper
    {
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Winapi)]
        [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
        public static extern bool IsWow64Process([In] IntPtr hProcess, [Out] out bool lpSystemInfo);

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns true if the assembly is running on a 64 bit operating system
        /// </summary>
        public static bool RunningOn64BitMachine
        {
            get
            {
                if (IntPtr.Size == 8 || (IntPtr.Size == 4 && RunningAs32BitOn64BitMachine))
                {
                    return true;
                }

                return false;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns true if the assembly is running as a 32 bit process in a
        /// </summary>
        public static bool RunningAs32BitOn64BitMachine
        {
            get
            {
                bool returnValue;

                IsWow64Process(Process.GetCurrentProcess().Handle, out returnValue);

                return returnValue;
            }
        }
    }
}

Additionally be aware that the .Net function  Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles) will return the following:

32 bit windows = “C:\Program Files”
64 bit winsdows running as 32 bit application = “C:\Program Files(X86)”
64 bit winsdows running as 64 bit application = “C:\Program Files”

I may even just give up and get a Nokia because I’m getting really bored of trying to work out which one I want. I’ve actually been very happy with my old N95 8GB even though it really can’t compare to the modern smart phones in many areas it’s got better hardware than most and makes a damn good phone call.

Anyway, as always part of the decision is based on cost and to that end I did a table of the cost of an iPhone in the UK to try and get a comparison over a fixed time period (monthly and over a fixed 18 month period). To do that I put together a spreadsheet which I figured may be helpful to someone out there. The tariffs are available here: http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/paymonth.html

For me the sweet spot is the 16GB on the £34 18 month contract as that seems to give the best value over the life of the contract.

Cost of an iPhone on O2 in the UK