HTC Merge
Mid Level???
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Not sure why Phone Scoop says this phone is "Mid Level". After quite a bit of testing with this device, as well as personal use I am fairly impressed with it.
HTC pretty much took the Desire, slowed down the Operating Frequency of the CPU, but increased the BUS Speed on it by a rather large amount, gave it a VERY nice physical QWERTY, and tweaked a few things with the Sense UI. Although it only has an 800MHz CPU...it is still CRAZY fast due to the increase of the BUS Speed. Sound quality is great! A bit better than the Desire, though not by much. It also feels good in the hand as is typical with most HTC phones.
It is a GREAT phone...but not a perfect one however. The battery life is still par at best. I don't like that they built the phone with less composite materials (my favorite thing about the Desire).
So overall things I like about it.
-FAST Hardware, Specifically CPU and RAM are both reading really fast.
-Sense UI is still fantastic! Love the newer versions.
-Although it is a formality with HTC's awesome predictive text and auto-calibration, the Physical keyboard on this phone is OUTSTANDING!!!
-Sound quality is excellent!!!
And things that need improvement.
-Battery Life...HTC's broken record lol
-More plastic, less composite. Not really sure why HTC went away from Composite materials in this particular phone.
So personally I would categorize this phone as an "Elite Level Android" much like the Desire.
Overall rating - 4.6 / 5.0
Total Scam of a Phone
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I upgraded to the HTC Merge from an HTC Desire because I was told its almost the same, except it has a physical keyboard, its a bit faster, and an ever so slightly larger screen. I paid $49.99 more to upgrade to the Merge and I was SO excited.
Low and behold, I was completely fooled.
The 1GHz Snapdragon processor in the Desire was downgraded in the Merge to an 800mhz Qualcomm, all under the guise that HTC tweaked the Sense UI to be more slick. WRONG. They just downgraded the processor, then stuck a previous, outdated version of Sense UI in it to make up for the cheaping out on the processor. The camera is hardly as nice as the Desires, and the Desire has a bright, vivid, colorful screen; whereas the Merge has a crappy standard LCD screen. Highly surprising that HTC would produce such quality in the Smartphone industry, then come out with this hunk of junk, concealing the fact that a majority of the phone is outdated. And you would think they would upgrade the Merge to the Gingerbread Android firmware since its a new phone model, but I was told several times by my carrier that its not happening. The battery life is supposed to be better than the Desire, but that's a COMPLETE fallacy, and the speaker quality is largely disappointing and weak. The final complaint I would say is the fact that this phone is HUGE compared to most smartphones on the market, its like having a heavy piece of floor tile in your pocket.
The only thing I have good to say about this phone is that its durable, as are most HTC phones, and I love the Android operating system.
Pros: Android OS, Physical QWERTY keyboard that's easy to type with, sturdy and durable phone (not cheaply made.)
Cons: Outdated Sense UI (go research it), downgraded processor, blurry camera, EXTREMELY bulky, horrible battery life, disappointingly bland LCD screen, Slow to connect to GPS, very quiet speaker.
I would not recommend this phone to anyone, I love HTC and the Desire is a great phone, but the Merge isn't.
