HTC Hero

HTC Hero review: Born to rise

Introduction

In the beginning there was G1: the frontline trooper, the mean machine, the expendable GI. Elsewhere, in the HTC discourse, it was hope and vision. Well, it seems the dreamer's Dream is coming true and someone there is really proud with what they've done. HTC Hero is perhaps the most advanced Android to date. And the OS is probably the closest the competition has ever come to the iPhone's touchscreen revelation. The bold lines of the HTC Hero are just a hint at its superior hardware and when it comes to homescreen kit and widgets, it definitely has an edge even over the iPhone.

HTC and their Hero are finally bringing the fledgling new Andorid OS up to speed and up to par. Not that a Hero is badly needed to save the day for either HTC or the Android OS, but inspiration is always welcome. Having made their name in Windows Mobile, HTC probably most appreciate the creative break from the Microsoft mobile OS that's become a habit (and a curse) for them. It would be too much to call it a plan B, but after all business is propelled by competition - even if it's household.

HTC Hero press photos

Designwise, the HTC Hero brings even more style to the Android family. Breaking with the full QWERTY heritage but keeping the trademark angled chin, the Hero continues the tradition of slim full-touch phones much along the lines of HTC Magic that we also recently reviewed.

But today's story is a Hero's tale, and you can bet we've got one here to inspect. Let's kick it off with a rundown of the key specs and the main letdowns that we've found so far.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps
• Heavily customized (in both graphics and performance) Android OS v1.5 (Sense UI)
• 3.2" capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution
• Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528 MHz CPU, 288 MB RAM
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with video recording
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver
• Trackball navigation
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute
• Digital compass for automatic navigation of maps
• Multi-touch zooming in gallery and web browser
• Standard miniUSB port for charging and data
• Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
• microSD card slot with support for up to 8GB cards (2GB one included)
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Direct access to the official Android repository
• Web browser comes with full Flash support
• Smart dialing
• Tethering support right out-of-the-box

Main disadvantages

• No video-call camera
• No FM radio
• No camera flash, dedicated shutter key or lens cover
• Camera features are a bit outdated
• CIF@15fps video recording (352 x 288 pixels) is below par
• No TV-out port
• No voice dialing
• Flash video playback is laggy
• Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
• No DivX or XviD video support or a third-party application to play that
• Poor MP4 playback performance - barely watchable in video resolution above QVGA
• No Bluetooth file transfers (not without rooting)
• No proper file manager (not without rooting)

The HTC Hero is hitting the shelves in two main colors - white and brown. The white is said to have the supposed advantage of some sort of super duper Teflon coating. No, it won't cook more healthy food for you but should keep away dirt and fingerprints alike.

The brown variety purportedly doesn't have this kind of coating, but we can't really comment on that having not seen both paintjobs. No matter what color you choose however, the frame around the display is finished in very classy brushed aluminum.

HTC Hero live studio shots

But if it so happens that black's what turns you on, the HTC Hero borne on the T-Mobile waves, a.k.a. T-Mobile G2 Touch, has only recently been announced and it's got that delightfully exclusive black armor.

Well, black, white or brown, we sure plan to have the Android reveal its true color. We got the white-clad Hero to test and, as you can guess, we're more than eager to jot down all the little bits and pieces that make it stand out of the Android crowd.

Heroes are made and unmade in the blink of an eye but telling their story right sure takes longer. So, there we go - follow us to the hero's chamber…

Few surprises in the box

Much like the HTC Magic, the retail package of the HTC Hero is quite neatly shaped. As to contents, the essentials are well taken care of, with a few bonuses on top.

There's the mandatory charger and a miniUSB cable. There's no sign of the stylish white leather carrying pouch that shipped with the Magic (the Hero is a hard one to cut a suit for), but the 2GB microSD card is here alright.

Some nice stuff in the box, but no leather pouch this time

You also get quite a tasteful wired stereo handsfree - a one-piece kit - but if you want to listen to music on third-party headphones, the standard 3.5mm audio jack of the Hero says you're welcome. We guess you'd probably go for a third-party set anyways, as we're not quite content with the output of the Hero's own headphones.

The headset looks great and comes with music-enahnced remote but is not that good on the actual listening part

HTC Hero 360-degree spin

The HTC Hero shares the rectangular design of the HTC Touch Diamond2 and has even borrowed the quite pleasant brushed aluminum front. It has an Android touch too keeping the angular chin of the T-Mobile G1. In a nutshell, we're pretty sold on the HTC Hero design, no doubt about that.

At 112 x 56.2 x 14.4 mm, the HTC Hero is not the most compact or the thinnest smartphone around, but it's sure to impress. The build quality is also near perfect.

The weight of 135 g is perhaps a notch above the class average but grants an extra solid feel in hand. For a sizeable touchscreen, the HTC Hero handles very comfortably, no issues for singlehanded thumbing around the interface. The trackball is comfortably raised too thanks to the chin.

Design and construction

We quite like the angular bottom of the HTC Hero and we dare say the tilted chin looks even better on a handset that's notably thinner than the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream. The Teflon coating said to cover the white variety of the Hero was quite intriguing too - we're usually quite a bored gang looking to get a thrill of something radically new.

In the case of HTC Hero, the Teflon thingy certainly sounded like stuff worthy of a full page alone. Well, in reality the extra special new finish isn't all that fascinating.

It sure looks like premium matt plastic: almost rubbery to the touch providing excellent grip, but in the end it's plastic and that's that.

Whew, now that we've got it sorted (so much for the page or so), we can safely move on to the display frame, which, if you ask us, is as sleek as it gets. We can't really help but praise the fine brushed aluminum surface. Hopefully, we're not making some sort of fetish out of it, are we?

The brushed aluminum surface is an extra nice touch

Anyways that said, the central piece on the front is the touchscreen display as usual. The 65K-color capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels) is pretty much standard Android issue. Measuring 3.2 inches in diagonal as pretty much all other Android devices by HTC, the display pretty much meets all our requirements for sensitivity, colors, brightness and contrast.

As far as sunlight legibility is concerned, the HTC Hero fares just like the HTC Magic. It's close to the iPhone unmatched screen but is still more reflective and that can get in the way at times. Overall, the HTC displays used for Android phones seem way better than those on WinMo handsets.

The display is quite nice, but we wish for more variety in size

Below the display you'll find several hardware controls, the trackball taking charge of course. It's not so usual to find a trackball or a D-pad on a touchscreen device, but HTC and Android seem to be quite fond of that and we gotta admit they have a point.

You see, trackball navigation is certainly one of our favorites. It might not be as usable as a D-pad for gaming but at its full-time job it's quick, intuitive and pleasing. The trackball implementation on the HTC Hero is very good, quite on par with BlackBerry devices. Of course, it would've been even better to have adjustable trackball speed like on them Berries, but we're pushing it too far already.

The rest of the controls below the display are exactly the same as those on the HTC Magic, they're just arranged in a different fashion. We could've used a little larger keys and a wee bit more of press feedback, but they are hardly a deal-breaker.

The controls here are the same as on the other Android smartphones

If you're interested in Android, you probably already know what each of these keys does, but here's the rundown anyway.

The Menu key is usually used to unlock the screen and launch various context-dependent options across the interface, while the main menu itself is handled exclusively via the touchscreen.

The Home key always takes you to the main homescreen, while a press-and-hold opens the multitasking manager.

The Back button is self-explanatory, and so are the Send and End keys. Perhaps the only interesting thing here is the End key, which actually turns off the screen and locks it - it's also used to power the handset on and off.

The Search knob is an interesting thingy as there's hardly a similar key on competing smartphone platforms. Other than starting a Google search form for making hassle-free Google searches on the go, it also offers a variety of context dependent searches. It will search your contacts in the phonebook, mail messages and contacts, artists in the music library, even POI's on a map.

Continuing our tour around the Hero, the right-hand side is pretty bare. That is if you don't count the microSD slot, which is there, but is hidden under the battery cover. You can still hot-swap cards if you need to, but you have to remove the cover every time.

The microSD card slot supports cards of up to 16 gigs and we found a 2GB card in our retail package (that of course can be market and carrier specific).

The thing we miss the most here on the right side is a dedicated camera key. Much like with the Magic and Touch Diamond 2, there's no shutter key here. Instead you use the Hero's trackball. As much as we like the trackball, it's hardly a handy shutter key as there's no way for it to accommodate half-press for autofocus. So, once you've framed and locked focus you can't skip the shot.

The right side of our Hero is bare, but a microSD slot hides under the armor

The left-hand part of the HTC Hero is also quite bare with the sole exception of the volume rocker. Much in contrast with the overly thin volume key on the Magic, the one here is big, and wobbly, and all plastic.

The volume key is on the left

As usual, on the bottom of the phone, you will see the standard miniUSB port used for plugging a charger, headset or a data cable.

On the top there's a nice surprise - the standard 3.5mm audio jack allows you to plug any standard set of headphones to enjoy your music.

The miniUSB port on the bottom and the 3.5mm audio jack on the top

The 5 megapixel camera is on the back - again there's no flash, LED or xenon, to boost low light performance. The camera doesn't have any lens cover either, so you better keep an eye on it or it will scratch in no time.

The camera hardly has any protection - not to mention a flash

Removing the plastic battery cover you can spot the 1350 mAh Li-Ion battery. The manufacturer claims up to 750 h of standby time and up to 7h of talk time - all in a 3G network. During the intensive testing of the phone for this review, we had to recharge daily, but that's hardly what you may consider "normal usage pattern".

The battery surely won't win any medals, but seems to last enough for a day full of torture

If you've paid attention so far, you'd already know that we're quite fond of the HTC Hero looks and we find its construction solid enough and generally quite suiting its high-end status. The Hero is hardly the slimmest phone around, yet its size is not a burden and the hand feel is great. The nudge at the bottom gives it a charm of its own, plus the handset shapes quite naturally and comfortably around your face while talking.

User interface: brilliant, though few finishing touches short

HTC must have a team of developers locked up somewhere underground and only given meals when they get things right. If that has even distant connection to the reality, they must've been treated to a feast upon completion of the Hero user interface project.

It used to be just TouchFLO, but enter Sense UI. Simply put, Sense UI is a cross between TouchFLO and the stock Android interface, but at the same time, it's neither of those. Some changes are purely ornamental, while others profoundly affect the way you work with you mobile phone.

The lock screen • some of the homescreen sections

The arrow button at the bottom of the screen that used to pull the main menu up is now replaced with three virtual keys and an arched scrollbar. The left key launches the main menu (this time around, you simply tap - you can't drag the Main Menu out, though you can drag it back in). The middle key is a shortcut to the Phone app and the right key brings up the "Add to Home" menu. And there's plenty to add to the homescreen but more on that later.

The scrollbar at the bottom is just an indication of which homescreen is on - it can't be used for actual scrolling. HTC have extended the homescreen to seven partitions instead of the usual three. Even if it sounds too much, with all those widgets (which are quite useful too) it may not even be enough.

Welcome to the scene

One of the most important novelties is the addition of scenes, which are essentially six custom desktop setups (Work, Travel, Social, etc). Each scene changes the wallpaper and the widgets on the homescreen - for instance, the Work scene has a stocks widget, while the Social offers a Twitter widget.

You can't modify the scenes but if you rearrange the current homescreen you are prompted to save changes as a new scene. The Clean slate scene in turn lets you start from scratch - it's just the default Android setup with a Clock and a few shortcuts underneath. Switching between scenes takes a couple of seconds but sure allows wide customization - the business and personal mode that other phones offer seems quite a limited solution compared to scenes.

Predefined scenes • saving a new scene

Scenes are far from perfect though: the Travel scene has the HTC Footprints widget but nothing on GPS or maps. Unfortunately, you cannot edit the default scenes. Your only option is to save a new modified Travel scene under a different name along with the original.

HTC scene on the left and Travel scene on the right

Changes to the UI that Sense brings go deeper than just the homescreen. For example, the main menu has the typical icon grid layout, but you can switch it to a list similar to what you see in TouchFLO. With it, you can use kinetic scrolling or an alphabet scroll, which makes locating apps faster.

The grid layout • the list layout • alphabet scroll

Homescreen widgets change the ruls of the game

When adding a widget to the homescreen you are faced with two options - Android widgets (the stock widgets) and HTC widgets. HTC are obviously quite proud of what they've achieved and with good reason. A neat HTC solution is the Settings widgets - simple switches that turn things like Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth on and off.

Plenty of HTC widgets • the Settings widgets are simple one-tap switches

When you select a widget you are prompted to choose between several versions - most widgets have at least two styles. The different versions typically offer at least two sizes of the widget, different look (There are twelve different clocks. That's right, twelve!) and some even offer different functionality.

Some different styles of the Clock widget

Take the Twitter widget for instance - one version also shows updates for the people you follow, while the other version only lets you tweet from the homescreen. There's nothing stopping you from using both.

The two versions of the Twitter widget are functionally different

The HTC widgets offer a better level of interaction than the stock widgets - there's a Favorites widget that keeps a list of your favorite contacts you can scroll through, no need to get to the contacts list.

The People widget and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth setting widgets

The Photo album widget is a "stack" of photos that shows all the photos in some folder and you can flick them to view the next photo in line. This is quite fun but the experience is somewhat ruined by optimization - during the animation of the photo going up and the next one settling in, the widget uses low resolution previews of the photos and it takes a couple of seconds for the next image to fully load. Larger photos suffer the most from this.

Photo widget is smoothly animated, not smoothly drawn

The Messages and Mail widgets work much the same way, but instead of photos, you flick messages. And you don't get the pixilation issue.

The Mail widget • Messages widget

The way widgets are moved around on the homescreen has changed too. A green rectangle marks the area the widget will occupy while the rest of the background is faded. If the current section of the homescreen is full, a message urges you to move the widget to another section.

Dragging a widget onto the homescreen

The UI is generally fast but at times it would become frustratingly slow. Like when you access a microSD card with a lot of image folders. It's not that it takes a while to open the folder, but the couple of seconds lag before the Hero would continue registering taps that is so disappointing - a "Loading…" sign is better than a frozen screen with no indication of what's going on.

Some of the Sense solutions are not as positive - on the homescreen the trackball is only good for scrolling desktops, you no longer can select anything with it. Tapping a shortcut is of course faster than selecting it with the trackball but this change is a little limiting.

Two more things - most apps won't run without a microSD card inserted and screen vibration feedback works on the virtual QWERTY keyboard but not elsewhere throughout the homescreen.

And just wait to see what they've done with the phonebook.