Introducing the HTC Hero Smartphone. The Android phone you have been waiting for.
Running on Google’s Android operating system the Hero is one to fall in love with. The design of the phone is daring to say the least. Most recent phones have all been about shedding the hard lines and angles to make slick shapeless blobs. The HTC Smartphone, Hero, is very angular, similar to those you might see in sci-fi. The phone feels more rugged and durable than most phones on the market today. The angles make it feel more comfortable and natural to hold and grasp in your hand.
Display & Browser
As with other Android phones the display is multitouch with a really good 480×320 screen. The brightness is similar to other phones of this type but feels warmer than most. If you are a little worried about on-screen keyboards, don’t be. The keyboard is particularly good on this phone. There are three keyboard layouts in both portrait and landscape modes. The standard full QWERTY keyboard, a phone keypad and a cut down version of QWERTY – which has two letters per key. The full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode is a dream to type fast with. The browser makes full use of the multitouch feature with pinch to zoom out and spread to zoom in. Flash support is also incorporated into the core WebKit browser.
Widgets
The HTC Hero Smartphone is loaded with a slew of new applications and widgets. Most of which are HTC unique, meaning you won’t be seeing them on non HTC phones. The standard clock and weather widgets are present but there are interesting widgets like the Twitter widget. This enables you to read recent tweets or update your status without having to open the Twitter app.
The Hero comes with multiple desktop themes, each with different backgrounds, widgets and shortcuts. You can customise these and save your configurations as well. Switching between these themes, or scenes as they are called, takes only a couple of seconds and lets you completely rearrange your entire desktop almost instantly. Use one scene for home and one for work, this lets you organise better.
Social Networking
When you turn on the HTC Smartphone for the first time it asks for your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr logins. Unlike a lot of other phone this one does not dump all 500 of your Facebook friends into your contacts list; it keeps the list in the background for when you need it. The Facebook connection here is deeper and more useful than the likes of the Palm Pre. While scrolling down your phone contacts if you have linked someone to a Facebook profile you can view their most recent status. In the contact tab you can view all the usual information such as phone numbers, email addresses, photos, birthday and all recent txt messages and conversions. Also displayed are email history, recent Facebook updates and Flickr photo albums.
Phone, Music, Video and Mail
The phone dialler is simple and not confusing and the dial buttons are very sleek. When you start dialing a number the Hero starts pulling up contacts which match the number. The call quality is better than average, not too loud but good.
HTC Smartphone has a real live 3.5mm headphone jack, you can use your own earphone and are not limited to ones especially made for the phone. The MP3 player is pretty standard, MP3′s and album art functions as per the norm. As well as MP3 support the HTC Hero boasts support for MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media Video 9.
The HTC Hero is the best Android phone yet. The phone’s design, interface and features such as totally integrated profiles make it the best to date. This is a real alternative to the iPhone and Palm Pre.
