I've had the Desire C since August this year, when I received it as an early upgrade from my network provider. Having previously had a Wildfire, I was quite happy to stick with the HTC brand (although before the smart phone era I'd owned a Nokia 3310 and the Motorola's V220 and razr K1).

I'm coming at this review from the point of view of your average user - I'm not interested in having the best/latest phone, I'm not massively into technology, and I don't necessarily understand all the techincal specs and info. I use my phone to call, text, access the internet, facebook and sometimes play silly little game.

Texting:
I find sending a text on this phone pretty easy, the keys aren't too close together for the most part although often when I want to insert a '?' and I'm typing quickly, I end up missing the one that changes to the symbols and numbers so I end up typing 'mk' instead. Apart from that sending a text is simple - messages are shown up in speech bubbles, yours in white and received ones in green. Each person/phone number is stored as a seperate thread so you can read back through your entire contact with them for the life of that phone.

Calling:
If you sync your facebook account with the phone then when one of your friends calls you the phone will show up their profile photo and latest status. I can hear people clearly through the speakers which is obviously a big bonus!

Typing in a phone number is quick, with 'recent calls' being one click away on the phones main page. Delving deeper into the menu you have a phonebook which imports all your facebook contacts, whether or not they have their number listed on their account which I do find a bit irritating - I have about 250 facebook friends, I have never rung probably 200 of them and never will, they don't need to be in my mobile contacts list.

Facebook:
There are some improvements here from when I had it on my old HTC, especially when it comes to photo uploads as you can choose what album it uploads to, plus you can add captions and tag people. My phone will also buzz me whenever I get a notification although sometimes this reaction is a little delayed.

Internet:
I haven't downloaded any browsers, just used the one that came on the phone. I haven't had any problems here in terms of functionality or anything crashing like the other reviewer of this phone has mentioned, but sometimes it can be a tad slow to load even when internet signal is strong.

Camera:
Unlike the wildfire this phone does not have an inbuilt flash/light function and as such is absolutely useless in low light (although the light on the wildfire was poor anyway) - even indoors during the day or with the lights on the images still tend to come out dark even if you've picked the low light option.

Essentially the camera is pretty shoddy in anything but good light - that said as a professional photographer I'm going to be picky! I do still use the camera for record shots when I'm not carrying a proper one with me as it still comes in handy for all sorts of things. Resolution wise it's 5mp which is more than enough for a phone camera - for all you pixel peepers out there, more does not equal better!

Gallery:
You can arrange your images into different folders, select multiple images to email etc (better than some other phones I've seen that will only select one image a time to email). Using the share option you can choose to upload or send images to various destinations, including instagram which is a simple process and one I have made use of numerous times.

Music:
This phone comes with beats audio which is supposed to be a superior music experience - can't say it sounded anything special when listening through the speaker, but I did try the headphones and must admit it sounded pretty nice. That said I very rarely listen to music on my phone, so it's not a feature I tend to make use of.

Looks:
This isn't the most stylish phone at first looks - infact it's appearance is pretty unremarkable, there's nothing good or bad to say about it really! The LCD screen takes up most of the front, with a small HTC scripting at the top and 3 touch screen buttons at the base. On the rear is an embossed 'HTC', a small speaker and the camera lens. Where the phone gets really interesting is when you take off the rear - it's see through and bright red inside, absolutely love it, however you don't tend to walk around with the back of the phone off so it's a bitg pointless really.

Connectivity:
The phone has what I assume to be a pretty standard USB socket - at least it's the same as my previous HTC and is also the same as my boyfriends Galaxy S2. Inside storage is on a micro SD card (not supplied) - I use a 4gb in mine, which I transferred over from my previous phone and this can of course be removed and put into a computer/printer when used with the right adaptor.

Soon after getting this phone I won a Sony Xperia ray which I decided to try out - the Sony has a better camera and is thinner so it sits in the hand easier, but I've got so used to the HTC brand I found myself going back to it as I just knew where everything was already, suppose that shows me up to be a bit of a technophobe!

Overall I'm fairly happy with this phone - it's by no means at the top of the scale when it comes to what's on the market at the moment, but its price reflects its ability (mine was free with my contract, but a quick look on amazon tells me you can now buy this phone for as little as £125). Yes it could be better but essentially it does what I need it to and in such a throw away society where technology becomes obsolete so soon, it seems silly to me to go for a top of the range high end product.