HTC
Desire HD

When it was announced, the Desire HD was considered to be a solid addition to HTC’s already strong product line-up. The Desire HD and its sister product, the Desire Z, were clearly designed to compete with Apple and Samsung at the high end of the market. Both products built on the highly successful HTC Desire, demand for which had far outpaced supply, primarily owing to shortages of AMOLED displays. HTC addressed this in the Desire HD which used LCD screens from alternative suppliers. The Desire HD's most notable feature was its 4.3-inch screen. Its overall dimensions were only marginally larger than its predecessor the Desire, which had a 3.7-inch display, as the screen on the Desire Z extended to the edges of the device. It also featured an eight-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording, 1.5GB of internal memory and a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor. Additionally, HTC added a new "fast boot" technology which enables the phone to be switched on and connected to a mobile network in about 10 seconds. However, arguably the most important element when this phone was launched was the software and services associated with it provided by an update to HTC’s Sense user interface. In addition to the widgets and applications such as the Friend Stream social network aggregation service that were already supported, HTC added Locations (its own maps service), a mobile-optimised e-reader and an e-book store powered by Kobo. The mapping capability saw HTC quietly striking deals with multiple map providers enabling it to offer a rich, on-board mapping experience, likely to compete with Nokia who was pushing hard with its Ovi Maps service at the time. HTC also implemented the HTC Hub, which gave users access to a wider library of HTC-specific widgets, wallpapers and ringtones. This marked the first tentative steps by HTC into offering a kind of social network for its customers to share recommendations of the best widgets and applications with other HTC owners.