The HTC Desire, at first glance, has a near identical design to the already popular Google Nexus One. The internal specifications are very similar too. There is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of memory and 256MB of RAM. It also comes with the same 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, which if you’ve seen the Nexus One, you’ll agree is no bad thing.

As with the Nexus One, there’s a proximity sensor, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Then there’s the 5-megapixel camera on the back (with an LED flash) that includes the capability to capture 800 x 480 video. Both handsets run the Android 2.1 OS and both feature the same handy shortcuts on the front of the phone – home, menu, back and search.

What’s the difference between the two phones? The Google Nexus One has better active voice cancellation which means that the “voice to text” functionality of the Desire won’t work either. So don’t set up any lonely Saturday night chat dates with your new HTC Desire. Are you thinking that perhaps the Desire is not as desirable as the Nexus One. Of course it is!

The mechanical trackball on the front of the Nexus One as well as the touch sensitive buttons on the screen have disappeared and been replaced with hard shortcut keys and a button that offers better optical navigation. This change has been appeared across the industry, with the BlackBerry jumping on the same bandwagon. Trackballs are prone to breakage and nobody who’s tied to an 18 or 24 month contract wants to be stuck with a broken trackball.

The HTC handset offers the HTC Sense UI, which is also found on the HTC Hero. Obviously, since it’s not an HTC product, you’re not going to find this in Google’s Nexus One. The Sense UI is improved and faster and has incorporated other contact features that make the Nexus One look much more boring than the Desire. A “helicopter view” is new to Sense and works much the way Expose works on a Mac. If you pinch the homescreen it will display all the pages that are running on the homescreen. All you need to do then is tap the screen to grab the one you want or pinch back out as the Desire supports multi-touch.

So, which one should you get – the HTC Desire, the Google Nexus One or the iPhone? It really comes down to personal preference, as there’s not much between them at all. However, if you’re really unsure, then the fact that the HTC Desire was released later than the Google Nexus One, and is cheaper than the iPhone, would maybe give it the advantage.

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