Latest HTC cell phone
The Latest HTC Hero is an artistic marriage between the G1 and the Magic. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard has gone in favour of a full 3.2-inch touch screen, which is a joy to use. Some of its predecessors’ charms remain in place including the trackball and a sprinkling of hard buttons. Taking its thinspiration from the Magic and measuring in at 112 x 56.2 x 14.35mm its pocket friendly even with its somewhat strange chin.
Following in the path of the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Magic, the Hero is the luxurious gem in the Android crown. We’ve been burning on its follow since our hands-on video, and finally we got the chance to crack the box open, and have a good old fiddle.
Previous to the Hero, both the G1 and Magic have been content to hit on an Android button and be done with it. Start-up the Hero and you’d be fooled into thinking you’ve been duped as HTC has managed an amazing Picasso-esque paint job. The revamped Android UI (named HTC Sense) draws on the HTC TouchFLO seen on the HTC Diamond 2 and offers seven fully-customizable homescreens for you to load with HTC or Android widgets.
More bonafide improvements are the live widgets. HTC has been beavering away with the boffs at Twitter and Facebook to create real-time apps that sit pretty on your homescreen. One such app is Twitter and with one touch you’re era in touch. With access to your complete account including @replies, direct messages and favorites it’s much more of a desktop experience than a slow widget.
But, it’s the Hero’s pure ease-of-use that warrants its iPhone bothered standing. It’s just easy to do everything. An example would be within your contacts or People in HTC’s book. We loved this on the Palm Pre and HTC has now nabbed the functionality of grouping your emails, messages and phone calls into one handy gadgets. Not only this within your contact the desktop feels continues with the interaction with Facebook. Just synch up to Facebook to get immediate updates on your buddies’ status updates and peruse their pics without poking around trying to log-into the site.
With support from Google, browsing on Android phones has always been an enjoyment, and now it’s got even better. Not only is the Hero quick with its HSDPA internet it now also boasts multitouch iPhone. Not satisfied with a jab at Apple with multitouch, HTC has also packed in a function that resizes the text each time you zoom, so no more scrolling and squinting trying to explain the latest footy scores.
It’s not all good news for the Hero unfortunately, and it’s multimedia that proves to be a stumbling block. In spite of having upped the camera to 5-megapixels from the Magic’s 3.2-megapixels, pics still can’t compare with the likes of the Nokia N96 or Sony Ericsson Cyber shots. The lack of a flash doesn’t help matters here either. Video also remains a problem with poor quality footage recording at 352 x 288; it doesn’t come close to HD touting behemoths such as the Samsung i8910. Video playback at MPEG 4 or Windows Media Video 9 was also unstable with poor colour contrasts and a lack of feature.
There’s no denying that the HTC Hero is a corker of a phone and it’s the first to truly extend the Android OS’ legs. If you’re looking for an all-rounder it’s hard to beat. True, it can’t compete with the likes of the Samsung i8910 in terms of video, or Sony Ericsson Cyber shots when it comes to the camera, but the UI is one, if not the best, we’ve used.
The Latest HTC Hero is an artistic marriage between the G1 and the Magic. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard has gone in favour of a full 3.2-inch touch screen, which is a joy to use. Some of its predecessors’ charms remain in place including the trackball and a sprinkling of hard buttons. Taking its thinspiration from the Magic and measuring in at 112 x 56.2 x 14.35mm its pocket friendly even with its somewhat strange chin.
Following in the path of the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Magic, the Hero is the luxurious gem in the Android crown. We’ve been burning on its follow since our hands-on video, and finally we got the chance to crack the box open, and have a good old fiddle.
Previous to the Hero, both the G1 and Magic have been content to hit on an Android button and be done with it. Start-up the Hero and you’d be fooled into thinking you’ve been duped as HTC has managed an amazing Picasso-esque paint job. The revamped Android UI (named HTC Sense) draws on the HTC TouchFLO seen on the HTC Diamond 2 and offers seven fully-customizable homescreens for you to load with HTC or Android widgets.
More bonafide improvements are the live widgets. HTC has been beavering away with the boffs at Twitter and Facebook to create real-time apps that sit pretty on your homescreen. One such app is Twitter and with one touch you’re era in touch. With access to your complete account including @replies, direct messages and favorites it’s much more of a desktop experience than a slow widget.
But, it’s the Hero’s pure ease-of-use that warrants its iPhone bothered standing. It’s just easy to do everything. An example would be within your contacts or People in HTC’s book. We loved this on the Palm Pre and HTC has now nabbed the functionality of grouping your emails, messages and phone calls into one handy gadgets. Not only this within your contact the desktop feels continues with the interaction with Facebook. Just synch up to Facebook to get immediate updates on your buddies’ status updates and peruse their pics without poking around trying to log-into the site.
With support from Google, browsing on Android phones has always been an enjoyment, and now it’s got even better. Not only is the Hero quick with its HSDPA internet it now also boasts multitouch iPhone. Not satisfied with a jab at Apple with multitouch, HTC has also packed in a function that resizes the text each time you zoom, so no more scrolling and squinting trying to explain the latest footy scores.
It’s not all good news for the Hero unfortunately, and it’s multimedia that proves to be a stumbling block. In spite of having upped the camera to 5-megapixels from the Magic’s 3.2-megapixels, pics still can’t compare with the likes of the Nokia N96 or Sony Ericsson Cyber shots. The lack of a flash doesn’t help matters here either. Video also remains a problem with poor quality footage recording at 352 x 288; it doesn’t come close to HD touting behemoths such as the Samsung i8910. Video playback at MPEG 4 or Windows Media Video 9 was also unstable with poor colour contrasts and a lack of feature.
There’s no denying that the HTC Hero is a corker of a phone and it’s the first to truly extend the Android OS’ legs. If you’re looking for an all-rounder it’s hard to beat. True, it can’t compete with the likes of the Samsung i8910 in terms of video, or Sony Ericsson Cyber shots when it comes to the camera, but the UI is one, if not the best, we’ve used.
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