[HTC Desire S] enigmaamit:
Hi Prashanth.

Coming from the Galaxy Ace, this will blow your mind....especially if you've never used Sense before. The hardware is top notch...and you'll notice the worlds apart it it from Samsung, the moment you lay your hands on it. The camera is leagues ahead of your current phone too, and so is the screen. Same goes for the powertrain and internal memory as compared to the Ace.

That said, if you notice, i've repeatedly stressed on "compared to the Galaxy Ace" in my comments above. This is because there is no absolute, universal answer to your question, and there needs to be a reference point for comparison. If you compare it to other phones however, there are pluses and minuses depending on what you're comparing it to, and what amount of money you're willing to put into it.

Most of us here at the DS forum bought this phone when it was a premium device, and probably the first HTC phone with Gingerbread. So we paid a premium even though larger phones were available at a comparable price - add or subtract a couple of thousand rupees (the Incredible S, for example). So most of here believe that this is the ideal device - 3.7 inches being the perfect screen size to be one-hand-operable, and the form factor being one of the most ergonomic i've seen in any phone.

Battery life is top-notch as far as smartphones go, especially once you load up a custom ROM like Reaper or Endymion... but you won't be beating a Nokia feature phone if that's what you're after. Everybody at the smartphone scene agrees that a bigger battery is better, and of course we'd like a 4000mA battery! But there are technical, engineering and aesthetic components that constrain that choice for each device.

I would advise you to wait for the One series of new HTC phones, but after some very thorough reading up on the new lineup, i'm kinda disappointed in them. The two biggest gripes i have are : 1) No removable battery; and 2) No expandable memory (approx 11GB of user accessible memory is not adequate by a long shot IMHO. So even today, I stand by the Desire S as the best single device I have ever used, and I recently bought one more (for my wife) despite no constraints on the money I was willing to spend, or a dearth of choices...

But remember, modding on an HTC is very different from that on a Samsung. No more ODIN for you... get ready for a lot of new terminology and a different approach to customizing your phone. Also, the DS suffers from one ultimate hazard, and that is a high probability of an eMMC chip corruption (hardware bricking) if you pull out the battery while the phone is powered up. As long as you take that as gospel truth and avoid it, you'll be fine.

And even if you disregard everything that i've said above... just throw it all out the window.... this phone would still be worth buying simply because you won't find a better online community on any other device out there. You'll only realize this once you start hanging around here... That, in my opinion, is one of the strongest suites of this device, and I advise you to check out the community support on ANY device, whichever you may eventually decide to go for, before you buy it. You can buy a house my friend, but you can't buy family.

If you ask me if it was worth it...if I would do buy this phone again if given a chance to start over...my answer is Yes... It was, and i'd do it again in a heartbeat. :)