As promised, here’s Part 3 of the HTC In Depth Review. This time around we’re going to have a look at what should be the basics of any smartphones, it’s calendaring and mobile office features. On top of that we’ll be looking at its GPS functions. If you’ve missed the other reviews here it is : Part 1 – Sense UI and basic telephone functions and Part 2 – Multimedia and web browsing capabilities.
Calendar
The HTC Desire calendar comes with four different views (daily,weekly,monthly and agenda). HTC has been gracious enough to even include 3 widgets to be placed on homescreen so you can easily have a glance at your schedule without having to open the Calendar application. Creating an event is as easy as clicking on the big plus button on the bottom right and then filling in the necessary details.
Apart from your basic such as location, description, times and dates; you’ll also be able to choose which calendar you would like to sync to, very useful for those with multiple Gmail accounts ie personal and office. You’ll also get to choose which calendar you would like to be displayed in your calendar app from list of multiple accounts you have.
There’s also an option to set reminders and send guests invite. Just type in the person’s name and it will look through your contacts for the closest match. Now there’s no more reason for missing that important meeting or event 
 View by month |
 Agenda view |
 View by week |
 View by day |
 Adding an event |
 Sync with Gmail |
Mobile Office
The HTC Desire comes with Quickoffice which is more than adequate for viewing Word,Excel and Powerpoint files, good news is it supports documents from Office 2007. One thing I don’t really like about the file listing is that everytime you finish viewing a document it refreshes itself, so if you have a memory card with lots of folders and files it could take a while. The good thing is it retains the original document formatting including graphics and images, for this review I used a 3MB document file with graphics and it loaded just fine.
 Files listing |
 Word Document |
 PDF Viewer |
Apart from that the HTC Desire also comes with a PDF Viewer. Though it’s lacking features, it does the job of viewing PDF files, wish there was an option to at least rotate the screen.
Google Maps
Yes yes, I know when it comes to navigation on the Desire all we have is Google Maps and that there’s no real turn by turn voice navigation, at least for the moment. Google Navigation which is currently available in the US and UK would be a dream come true for the Desire but for the time being we have to make do with Google Maps.
Google Maps basically allows you to search for a specific location, gets the direction from your current location to the desired destination and plots a route on the map. The bad thing about it ? Once you missed a turning, you have to figure your way back to the “blue” road 
For a more in depth review of navigating with Google Maps you can read my previous post here
 Directions |
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 Destination marked with a checkered tip |
Other applications
Voice recorder is also included in the HTC Desire and allows you to make audio notes where ever and whenever necessary. But to record phone conversation you need to install a third party application.
Voice recorder
Stocks application is also included for those who need to know the current market trends.
Facebook application is preloaded into the HTC Desire so you can stay in touch with friends. The features are however, limited. Replying to Inbox messages requires the launching of the Facebook mobile site.
Facebook app
HTC bundled in an application called Peep for those who tweet. I used it for a while but found the features rather limited especially when trying to view the conversation between tweets.
HTC Peep
Market is finally available with the HTC Desire unlike the HTC Hero, downloading software for the Desire couldn’t be any easier. There’s already existing categories which is displayed upon launching the Market application, just navigate and click on the category you’re interested in. Searching for an app is also just as easy, click on the magnifying glass on the top right, enter your search criteria and a list of closet results will be displayed.
Going to the downloads option allows you to view a history of downloaded and installed applications, the good thing is if there’s an update to your installed application an alert is displayed and it’s also shown here making it easier to ensure you always have the latest and greatest installed.
 Available categories |
 Market categories |
 Installed applications |
 Search results |
Next up Part 4 of the HTC Desire in depth review; The conclusion
