There’s no underestimating the appeal of the HTC Hero; since we shot our unboxing video and preliminary hands-on at the end of last week it’s been watched more than 300,000 times. The third Android device to reach the market, the Hero promises not only an updated camera and design, but HTC’s latest work in user-interface, HTC Sense. Can the Hero live up to the hype? Check out our full review to find ou
From the outside, the Hero blends elements of both the device that have gone before it; the smartphone is size-wise more in line with the Magic, but with some of the angular style of the original HTC Dream (aka the T-Mobile G1). It’s a thin handset, measuring 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm, and feels even thinner thanks to the sharp beveling of the edges. Our review unit is white, but depending on carrier there will be charcoal and black versions of the Hero, each with the subtle brushed-metal display surround. It’s a distinctive design, but not unduly dramatic, and while we’ve heard complaint about HTC’s persistence with the angled “chin” section this does make holding the phone and using the buttons and trackball more straightforward.
Up top there’s a welcome addition to an HTC Android device, in the shape of a 3.5mm headphones socket, while on the base there’s the company’s own ExtUSB port (which is compatible with standard mini-USB). On the left-hand side there are surprisingly large volume controls, while on the back there’s the 5-megapixel autofocus camera (which still lacks a flash of any sort). There’s no dedicated camera button, either.
Up front, there’s a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen running at 320 x 480 HVGA resolution, sitting above the usual six Android buttons: call, home, menu, call-end, search and back. The trackball from the Dream and Magic is also present, and it lights up when you receive an SMS or phone call. Above the display is the long, narrow speaker-grill, flanked on the left by an ambient light sensor and on the right by a two-color LED that flashes green to let you know a message has come in, and red when charging. The whole handset is covered in Teflon, which HTC say will better resist scratches, fading and staining; its matte finish is a tactile and aesthetically welcome departure from glossy devices.
Prise off the back cover – something which takes a little bravery to do, as it’s a tight fit – and there’s a microSD card slot that can be accessed without removing the battery, together with the SIM slot and 1,350mAh Li-Ion power pack. The whole thing weighs 135g.
On the inside, things are far more similar to HTC’s existing Android range. The Hero has the same 528MHz Qualcomm processor, paired with 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM, as its siblings, together with 900/2100MHz HSPA/WCDMA supporting up to 7.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink speeds (network depending). There’s also 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE; we’re yet to hear any announcement regarding a US-spec version of the Hero. Other connectivity includes WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR with A2DP support, and of course USB 2.0, plus there’s A-GPS, a digital compass and accelerometer.
Of course, what makes the Hero particularly special is the work HTC have done on its user-interface, under the auspices of their “HTC Sense” project. Sense is the culmination of three years of UI work, that has taken in multiple iterations of TouchFLO 3D on Windows Mobile across the years. Given that TouchFLO 3D could arguably be credited with keeping the aging Microsoft mobile platform as relevant as it has been for the past twelve months or so, that’s no small lineage. Sense aims to take the basic Android OS and make it not only more visually appealing but functionally more immediate, bringing commonly-used services and features to the fore and, in no small way, making the fledgling Google platform more engaging “out of the box”.
HTC’s first, and perhaps most obvious way of doing that is through widgets. Previous Android devices have had a few widget options – search, picture frame, music, etc – and those are still present, but HTC introduce fourteen of their own, along with five “toggle” controls for connectivity options. These range from bookmarks and calendar, through a new mail app and messages app, to contact shortcuts, a Twitter app and a new weather app. As for the toggle switches, they cover airplane mode, Bluetooth, GPS, cellular connectivity and WiFi, and present an easy way to lock-down the Hero or simply shut off a potential battery glutton.
To accommodate all this flexibility, HTC have increased the number of homescreen panes from the usual three to seven; you can switch between them with a horizontal swipe across the touchscreen in either direction, or using the trackball. Your position in those panes is discretely shown by the arc at the base of the homescreen, which also has a direct shortcut to the phone keypad, main menu and widget control panel. Pressing the home hardware button also takes you directly back to the center pane, so it’s always straightforward to navigate your way around. HTC’s widgets share space with the usual shortcuts, which can be to apps, folders or bookmarks, and many of them have two different sizes to choose from. The music widget, for instance, has a small, basic option which will fit on a pane with other shortcuts, or a larger version which shows more track detail, album art, and takes up a pane to itself.
Seven panes, then, can be occupied relatively quickly, but to get around that HTC have added Scenes support to the Hero. Accessed by hitting the Menu button from the homescreen, Scenes basically allows for multiple layouts which the company expects will be used to differentiate between workday and social use. As standard the Hero comes preset with the standard HTC, Social, Work, Play, Travel and “Clean Slate” (blank) layouts, which you can leave as-is or modify and save with your own names. Each can have a different number of widgets, different wallpapers and other personalization. Or, of course, you can ignore them altogether and focus on just one standard Scene; as with the slide-to-unlock, which can be replaced by the standard Android pattern lock, Sense is about giving you more options not taking them away.
Each widget generally acts as a gateway to its own app, too, so while they’re functional in their own right – you don’t have to leave the homescreen to browse through your Twitter message stream, for instance – you’re also one touch away from a more comprehensive experience. To stay with Twitter, the client – called Peep – shows the full message list and allows you to post a new tweet from the homescreen, but tapping into the app-proper brings up separate panes in which you can view your “@” replies, direct messages and favorites. It’s also linked into your location, so you can send geographic updates letting people know whereabouts you are, and there are options for update frequency (number of tweets to download, up to 250; frequency of updates, from daily through every 5mins and manual) and even a choice of photo host, picture quality and URL-shortening service.
Peep works well, spawning a little bird icon into the notification bar when there are fresh messages, just as you would get with a new email. New messages have an easy photo upload button, which offers the choice of an existing picture from the gallery or to take a new shot with the camera then and there, and you can also tap the location button to tweet your geographical position as a link to a map, custom text or plain latitude/longitude. Our one gripe is the seeming absence of any way to quickly paste in Twitter contact names, beyond physically typing them out; an “insert follower username” option would make this much easier. Still, a long-hold on any tweet will bring up a menu for reply, send direct message, retweet, add to favorites or show profile.
A much-welcomed addition to an Android device is Microsoft Exchange support, and HTC have provided a new Mail app on the Hero to cater for it. As you might
expect, it uses ActiveSync to wirelessly synchronize, and offer push-email from hosted Exchange accounts. The Mail app also supports POP, APOP and IMAP, and can have multiple simultaneous accounts established; download frequency can be set from 5 minutes through to daily, plus manual, and you can choose how many days of messages you want on your Hero and the maximum size of each message (there’s an option to download the rest in each curtailed email). Once set up, different accounts can be switched between via a drop-down menu at the top, while a sliding selection marker at the bottom of the screen takes you between three main views. The first lists all emails by date and individually; the second threads together email conversations; the third lists only emails with attachments.
The most obvious comparison to be made is with Android’s native GMail app, also present on the Hero. While the screen size devoted to messages in each app is different, both show at most seven email headers at any one time; GMail obviously conversation-threads as standard, and tags one message after another, while HTC Mail shows one email at a time with up/down buttons to flip between messages in a thread. It’s arguable as to which system works better; those comfortable skipping down long conversations via touchscreen swipes will most likely prefer the GMail app, while the HTC offering does make it easier to get to the start of the next message. Happily, since GMail offers IMAP support for their accounts, you can pick between the two clients depending on your UI preference; remember, though, that Mail won’t let you search the GMail server like the native app will.
Of course, the major difference is that Android’s GMail app has no homescreen widget, only a shortcut, whereas HTC Mail does. You can choose to devote a whole homescreen pane (there’s no cut-down mini-widget, though there is a simple shortcut button) to Mail, and from there flip through the stack of emails, bin them, write a new message or go directly to the inbox. There’s no HTML support in the widget, only plain text, but it’s certainly enough to see multiple lines of an email and choose whether it’s worth heading into the app proper to do anything about it.
The new SMS app works in a similar fashion, grouping messages by sender and presenting them in a conversation with icons – if present – from the contacts app. HTC provide a number of quick-text inserts (such as “Where are you?” and “I’m running late”) together with the ability to easily attach pictures, video, audio, location data, a vCard contact file, vCalendar appointment, or to create a new attachment. This latter option takes you to the camera, camcorder, audio-recorder or slideshow apps, allowing you to film a clip, etc, then attach it straight to an MMS. As for the accompanying widget, this uses a Rolodex-style presentation to flip through the most recent messages from a contact on the homescreen, together with a shortcut to write a new message.
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