HTC Sensation Hands-On Review on Bell: Design, Camera and Battery

Physical design

The back is smooth, and the camera is protected rather than the first part to touch the table. The Sensation is slimmer than the Desire HD, with a slightly taller shell. The front has four touch buttons, and the screen edges are raised so a finger sweeping across does not catch on a sharp frame. The micro USB port sits at the bottom left, so a dock holds the phone sideways.

Sense 3.0 and the lock screen

The lock screen has shortcuts for phone, mail, camera and messages with badges for missed items. You drag a ring to unlock, or drag a shortcut into the ring to open that app. When unlocking, widgets spin around in a 3D panorama, and they lift off the screen as you flip between pages. There are six preloaded lock screens, including a photo album, Friend Stream, stocks and weather. Most wallpapers and sounds were carried over from the Desire phones.

Sound and video

• Sound was louder and less tinny than on the Desire models, with SRS enhancement and a headphone equalizer.
• The slimmer screen shape avoided black borders on widescreen video.
• Some AVI files that failed on other Android phones played fine.
• Video audio came from both front and back speakers.
• The qHD screen (540 x 960) looked noticeably crisp.

Performance and camera

Menus scrolled smoothly and apps opened quickly. The camera caught a moving subject without blur, which phones often struggle with.

Bloatware

The Bell phone came with many preloaded apps that could not be removed, including Dice, Mirror, Peep, Polaris Office, Sound Hound, Teeter, Uno and Zoompass. At the time of the review there was no known way to root the Bell Sensation to remove them.

Battery test

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stayed on, with two Exchange accounts and one Google account on push sync and several HTC services set to manual. Over 10 hours the battery fell to 50%. That included four hours of Bluetooth music, 10 to 20 emails and texts and about 35 minutes of screen time. The reviewer judged it equal to the Desire HD and Nexus S, enough for a work day but a nightly charge for heavy use.