[Galaxy S I9000 General] trentend:
I'm a long time HTC user (tyan, diamond, blackstone, desire). I really like them, but there are recurring flaws that might upset a galaxy s user. One thing is that rarely do the video drivers work anything like as well as they should for the hardware. Another is that HTC customisation (sense in the current generation) add a development overhead to the phones that mean official carrier upgrades occur late (or never).

As a result of a combination of circumstances I ended up with both desire and sgs (and a Nokia E72, as it happens). I like them both, and I like them both for different reasons.

The desire is a nice easy phone to roll out to non-power users. Little user customisation is required to make the phone feel powerful and well thought out. Things just work. It's a nice smartphone for corporate environments using google apps (apart from the battery life) - arguably the first that really nails a solid, good performing, well integrated, android platform. It's a phone that you can give to pretty much anyone, and they can make it work. My wife loves it, and she's someone who a couple of years ago was still struggling to adjust to wanting any sort of mobile. It legitimately can claim to occupy the same sort of ground as the iphone. It's a very well put together consumer phone. Battery life is less than impressive, and under a day for even quite modest use.

The sgs feels so much livelier to use, and has a more vibrant and compelling screen. It feels quicker, because the graphics drivers and acceleration are much better than on the desire. I like the bigger better screen on the sgs, but prefer the build of the desire overall. The sgs is more fun, the desire more solid. The sgs needs more mucking around with to get it working the way you want it, but offers some nice advantages (like being able to unlock for free, seemingly better battery life despite a bigger brighter screen - although it's difficult for me to compare like with like as the usage patterns are different for each phone). The built in storage of the galaxy s over the desire I see as a massive plus. It allows permanent storage of a large amount permanently on the phone, plus the option to swap large amounts of media in and out on different microsd cards (of which I seem to have accumulated many over the years). This is more viable on the sgs - you don't have to turn off the device to swap the memory card, whereas on the desire you do have to, because you have to remove the battery to access the memory card slot.

I feel like I could use the sgs like a tablet, and I do. It's what I prefer to pick up to use as an entertainment device (viewing streamed media or for games). I like the more sparse user interface, because it lets me customise it more heavily. I dislike the absence of a flash for the camera, what a ridiculous design decision....but not critical for me. I don't take a lot of pictures.

It's a bit like the staid luxury car, versus the sports car. I like the sports car - the galaxy s. It's more fun. The thinner shinier body of the sgs is sexier, if possibly less practical than the rubberised stockier desire.

Ironically for phone calls (quality, ease of use, call and standby time) the Nokia E72 is the runaway winner. There is yet to be a touchscreen smartphone that is a great phone (in my view).

So what might I expect from the desire HD? I don't think it's likely to feel as sprightly as the sgs - its a 1ghz snapdragon, like the desire, except it has to handle a bigger screen. So the battery life could well be even more pants. Is an 8mp camera necessarily better than a 5mp camera? I don't think so. On a like for like optical quality, with the same size (and performance) sensor, a 5mp camera will show less noise than an 8mp camera and write to memory quicker. 5mp is enough for a 10"x8" print. If you regularly want to print your shots bigger than that I suggest you get yourself a better dedicated camera. I prefer a 5mp camera on a phone for this reason - I think it's the sweetspot resolution for integrated cameras on phones.

I'm pretty confident that the sgs is a better option for me in the roles that I use it in.