With the HTC Bravo popping up over the internet countless times over the past few months, we were chomping at the bit get our hands on HTC’s next big Android release. Officially unveiled at Mobile World Congress as the HTC Desire, our prayers were answered as we made a b-line for the HTC stand to get a hands-on play test with the phone formerly known as the Bravo.

We had the privilege of a practice run for our Desire encounter a few weeks ago when we had some time with the Google Nexus One. The Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, sports similar design cues and near enough as makes no difference dimensions so, from the outside we weren’t expecting to be blown away. Despite this, our first impressions on picking up the Desire is how much more, err, desirable it is over the Google branded phone. The Desire looks and feels more mature than the rougher-round-the-edges Nexus One. Comprised of a matte plastic finish and brushed metal casing that surrounds the display, the darker colours used are more fitting for the device (in my opinion at least) and the smooth curved edges make for a smartphone that sits comfortably in your hand. The re-placement of the shortcut keys to the main frame gives the touchscreen an uninterrupted dominance whilst the switch to physical keys and an optical trackpad (over touch sensitive keys and a trackball on the Nexus) will be purely down to preference.

The touchscreen on the Desire is a 3.7 inch AMOLED display that, first and foremost, looks stunning. The use of AMOLED technology really shines through and, despite my best efforts at capturing on camera, really needs to be seen in the flesh. The bright vivid icons leap of the screen and reading text in messages/ emails/ web pages etc. is a doddle. Obviously we were restricted to use in doors so no word on how the display fares out in direct sunlight, something AMOLED display are often criticised for, but here and now the Desire looks stunning from every angle. On to actually using the touchscreen and as expected the Desire employs a capacitive unit which unlike the Nexus One (at launch at least) supports multi-touch in the web browser, maps and photo gallery (as well as some apps to boot). Pinch to zoom is a great addition but one that, in every day use, you’ll probably end up using quite sparingly what with the double tap to fit to screen in the web browser. The important aspect is of course the general navigation and please don’t read this as an over statement; the touchscreen on the Desire is fantastic.

The home screen is your first encounter with the touchscreen; using it so swipe between one of the seven customisable home screens is ultra responsive and switches effortlessly. The smooth transition is thanks in part to the 1GHz processor on board but the touchscreen itself deserves the lion’s share of the praise. It’s a similar story when opening up the main menu; scrolling through icons is so slick it’s arguably a smoother and therefore more enjoyable experience than the iPhone. In short, the touchscreen on the Desire is easily the best Android has to offer, both in the looks department and usability and from my brief play test, better than the iPhone 3GS, the phone that’s widely regarded as the best touchscreen phone.

On to Android and the desire, like its stable mate, runs version 2.1 of the operating system. However, as this is an HTC device rather than a Google experience phone, we’re treated to Sense UI. This sits on top of Android so, rather than the 5 home screens of the Nexus One, we’re treated to 7. The first is a shortcut hub with all your favourite apps, local time and weather though these can all be customised with a long press on the home screen. From here the Sense user interface takes over. It’s pretty much a carbon copy of the experience found on the HTC Hero with the addition of a few tweaks, the best of the bunch being Friend Stream which brings in the latest Tweets and status updates from friends. From here you can search for friends and also post comments of your own without having to launch a dedicated Facebook or Twitter app. The powerful 1GHz processor keeps the Desire ticking along at an impressive speed and, despite the HTC rep stressing that this wasn’t the finished code, we experienced no instance of lag or slow down. Everything we asked the phone to do was actioned almost instantly and the addition of Sense UI has done nothing to hamper the Desire’s performance.

With a rather large queue building behind us, our time with the Desire was drawing to a close but we just found time to fire up the web browser and have a poke around at life online with the Desire. The web browser loaded pages nice and quickly and the aforementioned pinch-to-zoom is a nice addition though for text heavy pages you’ll be better off double tapping so that the text fits the screen. The other welcome addition in this latest incarnation of Android is that the Desire was able to load Flash content meaning we were able to watch an embedded video, in the browser, without having to open any sort of separate video player. For most people, you won’t realise what a big miss Flash is until you stumble across a site that uses it so the fact that the Desire is Flash ready out of the box is a big coup for HTC.

Before we arrived at MWC, the Bravo was easily top of our list of phones we simply had to check out. And, apart from getting used to the name (I must admit I wasn’t sold on Desire but it’s definitely grown on me), we were instantly won over. The Desire is, hands down, the most exciting Android launch since the G1 first surfaced way back when. A much more polished device than the Nexus One, HTC’s Quietly Brilliant ethos means you’re bound to still be finding new and exciting little features long after you’ve first picked up the Desire. Slated for an early April launch, the HTC Desire has become the one to watch for 2010. Click here to register for updates and head on over to the official site to check out press photos of the Desire. Be sure to keep an eye on the blog as we hope to track down a Desire in the coming weeks to give it a full on review.

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Hands on with the HTC Desire at MWC!