HTC Desire S

Improving on an already successful formula can be a tricky business; the words that spring to mind are, "If it ain't broke, don'’t fix it". This was the risk that the Taiwanese company HTC ran when it decided to "refresh" its popular Desire smartphone. As it turns out, the newly revamped phone, the HTC Desire S, which goes on sale later this year (one of a wide range of PAYG phones available from Expansys), is unquestionably better than its predecessor – not in spectacular ways, but thanks to a series of small but important improvements, both to the phone itself, and to its software.

Among the improvements is the use of Android's latest 2.4 Gingerbread software, on top of which is a refreshed version of HTC's Sense user interface. This means an enhanced range of "live" icons on the home screen which display information such as the time and the weather. Apps, meanwhile, can be filtered to show the ones you use most often, or to show those that you’ve downloaded from Android Market. Photos and HD video can be shown on your TV via a wireless DNLA connection – much better than passing the phone around.

Otherwise, technologically, the phone is much as it was when its predecessor was launched last year: five megapixel camera with LED flash, 1 GHz processor, 3.7-inch touchscreen with 800x480-pixel resolution, But sometimes it's the simple things that can really make a big difference, and that's the case with the Desire S. What HTC have done is to house the phone in a beautifully crafted shell that’s created from a single piece of aluminium; this does not, of course, in any way improve the phone's performance, but it does make this smartphone a real pleasure to hold and to handle; it feels light, but substantial, a thing of quality.

That, then, is the story of the HTC Desire S: for all its tweaks and upgrades and "refreshes", what's most noticeable about the new version is that it is quite simply cooler.

For Details of PAYG phones from Expansys , go to http://www.expansys.com/mobile-phones/.