HTC Desire early review: Cheap Nexus One

Update: Our full HTC Desire review is now live.

The Google Nexus One rocked our tiny minds with its 94mm (3.7-inch) screen AMOLED screen and zippy Snapdragon processor. We just wish it came cheaper, also supported Flash and had the groovy-looking HTC Sense UI -- what? It does?!

All our Christmases came at once with today's launch of the HTC Desire, formerly leaked as the HTC Bravo. It's HTC's own version of the phone it made for Google, the Nexus One, but with HTC's secret sauce all over it.

HTC has had to ditch the Nexus One's voice-cancellation feature to keep the price down, and you can't type using voice control, but there are some tasty treats to make it up to us. HTC's new optical trackpad, also seen on the HTC Legend, is a slick-looking replacement for the trackball we've come to expect on phones running Google's Android operating system. It has a processor running at 1GHz.

There's also all the goodness of the HTC Sense user interface that we loved on the HTC Hero, which skins Android with a plethora of sexy home-screen widgets, including a new one that brings together a live stream of your tweets and social-networking updates in one place.

The Desire also ditches the fiddly touch-sensitive buttons that we didn't fancy on the Nexus One and replaced them with low-profile physical buttons that offer more satisfying feedback.

Like the Nexus One, the Desire has a 5-megapixel camera with an LED photo light, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and so much power under the hood that you can push your apps to the limit without feeling the burn. It also sports the same version of Android, 2.1, as the Nexus One.

The Desire looks slightly different to its Google-branded sibling, with a subtly altered bottom half and no metal racing stripe around the back of the case. Although the plastic body doesn't inspire us like the Legend's aluminium case, its stunningly big screen will inspire plenty of envy.

Expect to start feeling desire in spring of this year. The price hasn't been confirmed, but HTC tells us that we can expect to pay less for the Desire than we would for the Nexus One.

Update: Orange has announced it will be selling the Desire in April, from free on selected contracts. T-Mobile will have it in March. Here's a video:

HTC has added the Sense UI to the Nexus One so there are heaps of live widgets for the home screen to choose from.

The Desire is similar to the Nexus One, but the bottom is shaped slightly flatter.

The Desire has a 5-megapixel camera on the back also has an LED photo light.