HTC Hero
As the smartphone war gathers pace every handset manufacturer worth their salt has been keen to convey their own unique selling points to customers. Specifications are beginning to level out with 5MP cameras being mostly standard and Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth all now staple requirements. Manufacturers have to look elsewhere to grab our attention.
On Wednesday July 22nd, HTC finally released its latest Android based device through the Orange network and with feverish anticipation I was there at open of business ready to collect my newest piece of tech.
The box of the Hero is small and neatly styled, and although there aren’t many included extras, HTC have provided all the necessary essentials. Slide open the box and you are presented with the Hero in its own little cradle. Llift this out and you get an adaptor supplied with a UK 3 pin plug that takes a USB connection to charge the Hero, whilst a set of headphones with in-line remote provide the sounds. A spare pair of headphone buds and clip is also included and a quick-start guide finishes off the accessories list.
On first inspection the Hero feels incredibly well put together with a smooth Teflon coated rear sitting comfortably in the hand, whilst the angled base makes embracing this handset in your palm a pleasure. One thing I was immediately happy about was that HTC had stuck with the set of seven buttons on the unit to provide good functionality without always relying on the 3.2” multi-touch screen.
The Home button is always there to take you back to the home screen, situated next to a convenient Menu button which opens up extra functions or settings in pretty much any of the phone’s programs or environments. A back button always takes you to your previously viewed screen whilst a handy search button takes you to a Google search screen quickly. Also included are Call and End buttons as well as a side mounted volume control.
At the base of the handset lies the incredibly tactile roller ball. This is used to glide through your menus, help with web browsing and generally offer up an alternative to constantly prodding the screen. The ball also lights up with a soft glow when there are messages, tweets or other notifications waiting.
A mini USB connection on the base of the unit provides charging or synching with your PC, and although it appears to be a proprietary form it is in fact a standard mini-USB making connectivity using existing cabling nice and easy. Thankfully, HTC has also included a 3.5mm connection meaning you don’t have to a) use any silly adaptors or b) stick with the attractive but somewhat basic included headphones.
While starting the handset takes a moment to load. Once on the HTC is ready to take in all the details of your time, location, email settings and other extras such as Twitter.
You are then presented with the main user interface, which is the first to make use of HTC’s ‘Sense UI’ experience. This makes for a much more pleasurable Android experience than the previous G1 and Magic handsets, and an included set of HTC’s own widgets makes customising your home screens an absolute dream. Personalisation seems to be the main aim of this handset. You can adjust pretty much every aspect of your Hero according to your whims which makes you feel a lot more involved.
If you aren’t content with customising the seven primary pages , you have the ability to swap between six other ‘Scenes’ you will have on your home screens to suit your mood.
This leads to the possibility of having a massive total of 49 different pages filled with the widgets, programs or shortcuts of your choice. Flicking between these many pages displays the only real sign of slow-down I have experienced on this handset. Contrary to some pre-release reviews, I do not think that the occasional judder has impacted on the usability whatsoever.
The processor, whilst not quite as fast as the iPhone’s, is more than capable of meeting most users’ demands. Unless you are multi-tasking to extreme levels you shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s possible that a firmware upgrade will remedy this down the line.
Going further into the phone’s feature set presents you with menu after menu of changes and adjustments that can be made to the way your phone runs. Some may find this a little daunting at first but although the possibilities are somewhat endless, the interface is actually very easy to get to grips with; particularly if like me you couldn’t keep your hands of it for at least the first 12 hours!
Being an Android handset it benefits from many staple features included on previous models. As a rival to the Apple App Store, Nokia’s OviStore and the upcoming Blackberry Marketplace, the Android Market is actually home to a huge number of applications, tools and games.
The choice seems huge and whilst not as large as Apple’s alternative, it is home to many thousands of applications to keep you content, many of which are free. Due to the open-source nature of Android there are a few dubious ones, and it definitely pays to read the comments posted by other users before downloading any of the applications or games. Amongst them you can hunt out some real gems and here are the first few that have caught my attention and earned real-estate on my home screens:
Facebook – This is a prerequisite for most people, and although not included as a widget out of the box , the freely available app gives you an easy to navigate and familiar facebook experience, with quick loading over either 3G or Wi-Fi.
BeebPlayer – This app gives you full use of BBC iPlayer, and although the quality is not mind blowing, it is more than good enough for the occasional on the go episode of Mock The Week or Top Gear.
Game Buzz, Tech Buzz & BBC News – These Widgets provide regularly updated content for those that, like me cannot bear to be without the latest news, be it global or in the tech and gaming industries.
Shop Savvy – This somewhat astounding application makes use of the phone’s camera to read barcodes. With a direct link to many online stores it is then able to ascertain exactly where the particular item can be bought cheapest online. Great for checking if that BluRay in HMV is actually a bargain or if you should maybe go to Amazon instead.
Google Sky Map – This app really makes use of the phone’s inbuilt compass to present a basic augmented reality of the night sky. Look for stars, constellations, planets and more. Certainly made my walk with the dogs last night a little more interesting!
After getting past the initial thrill of all this customising and app downloading let’s get down to the other basics of the phone.
There is an auto-focus 5MP camera with camcorder capabilities, but no included flash. Whilst it manages to achieve some perfectly adequate shots in well lit areas or outside, the video camera quality is a little disappointing at 352×288.
As far as speed is concerned the camera only just makes the grade. It is certainly slower to start up and take a quick snap than many phones on the market, and although the Auto-Focus is definitely welcome, it slows down the shooting process further. Sample outside pic follows:
White Balance controls help to a degree, but the pictures still suffer from light bleeding and although reasonable at first glance, zoom further in and the lack of quality is evident. Most people, however, don’t really buy a phone for masterful photography, rather the ability to capture something in a situation where they haven’t packed their main camera. If you are looking for a cracking snapper, you shouldn’t really be considering any of the currently available smartphones.
Keeping well organised is easy as contacts can be sorted in to lists of favourites which can then be displayed in a neat widget. Any contact that is a friend on your Facebook page can be very quickly linked, integrating their profile picture and birthday onto their contact card.
Making a call is simple enough; the interface is straight forward and very usable, displaying a list of your favourite contacts at the top of the screen. Call quality was consistently good, even in areas with apparently rather low signal. Wi-Fi always connects happily, and I haven’t had any issues with the GPS or Bluetooth.
Battery life for me is acceptable and certainly on par with other smartphones on the market. An over-night charge is likely to be needed if you are making the most of the phones functionality, but of course it depends entirely on what you are doing with the phone. Wi-Fi, GPS or Bluetooth are the obvious battery life suckers.
Music playback is well integrated in the form of a widget which makes it easy enough to use, and whilst not on par with the iPod interface or possibly Windows Media Player, it certainly is more than adequate.
Video is again pretty standard with the included software, although the lack of supported file formats is a bit of a let down, meaning most videos on your PC would likely have to be converted to an MPEG-4 or H.264. There are, however, other video players available on Android Market which improve the codec capabilities.
Another neat extra is the notifications screen that is dragged down from the top of the screen and helps you to manage the phone’s social aspects such as email, messaging, tweets, download and other key information.
Honestly I could carry on listing capabilities of this handset and there are many obvious features that I have not delved into here. Realistically I could continue to play with the interface and make it my own for weeks to come.
I see this phone as a real current contender to the likes of the iPhone, N97, Samsung i8910 etc. and as a smartphone it delivers on pretty much every level necessary. No it doesn’t play every video file format under the sun out of the box, and it doesn’t have quite the plethora of quality applications that Apple has available, but it makes up for these downsides because it shines in so many other areas. The Hero feels well built, is a pleasure to use and of course, to customise.
| Price: Sim-free from £399 , Free on contract from £39/24months |
| More Info: HTC Orange |
| Size: 112 x 56.2 x 14.35mm, 135g with battery |
| Formats: Audio – MP3, AAC, WMA, AMR-NB, MIDI Video – MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, WMV Other – Jpeg, txt, various other docs. |
| Extras: Wi-Fi, GPS + Google Maps, Bluetooth, 5MP Camera, Full Web browsing, Android Market etc. |
| Battery Life: 1350mAh, up to 370 mins talk time, 440 hours standby |
| Memory: 512MB ROM, 288MB RAM, 2GB Micro-SD included |
I’m an iPhone owner and after seeing my work mates new HTC Hero I will likely be getting one myself when my O2 contract comes to an end. Unless a better Android phone comes out in the next 5 months that is. The HTC enhanced GUI is a great improvement over the standard Android look. It is a very good phone.
Surprising at me seem I have found that mundanes have no problems using Android phones. My father has found his G1 to be amongst the easiest to use off all the phones he has had. A man who has never been able to send a text message before can now sms, email and surf the web without issue.
As soon as I get an Android phone I’m going to try my hand at righting an App or two. I guess I could start now.