HTC Hero review

The HTC Hero has been an object of lust for some time now for gadget enthusiasts. Even from the earliest days of leaked hardware shots and blurry demo videos of its UI, smartphone fans seemed to agree that the company had finally achieved what has been missing in the world of Android. Namely, a polished and attractive device -- polished enough to go head-to-head with the iPhone -- that kept its open source heart. So, here we are months later with an actual, bona fide Hero in our midst. Yes the reports were true, it is a beautiful device, both inside and out (though of course opinions differ on that chin).

Industrial design


In terms of overall design and layout, the Hero is very much a product of evolution. Like its forebears the G1 (or Dream) and MyTouch (or Magic / Ion), the general stats like screen size, technology, and resolution, button placement, unit size and weight, and basic aesthetic are pure HTC. Like those previous devices, the Hero contains a smattering of hardware buttons on the base (or chin as some call it) of the phone, including a home, menu, back, send, end, and dedicated search key. The device also sports a trackball in this area, which shouldn't surprise any Android aficionados.

Where the Hero breaks from convention, however, is in the overall look and feel of the phone. If the Dream and Magic felt plasticky and cheap (they did), the Hero is quite the opposite -- it's like a solid brick in your hand. The casing is made of a soft-touch material (Teflon on the white version to prevent dirt), and the shape of the device takes a much more severe, almost rectangular slant. The buttons along the bottom are small, evenly spaced ovals (save for the search and back key -- we'll get to that), the earpiece is covered in a stylish mesh, and the volume rocker on the side is a smooth, single button. The screen also uses a new oleophobic treatment (similar to the iPhone 3GS), and thankfully HTC has added a 3.5mm headphone jack to the top of the phone.

Overall the appearance is sleek and modern -- it's like the Magic was beamed to the year 3000 for a redesign. Besides the chin (which some people will nitpick, though we don't mind), the Hero is a home run when it comes to looks, though it's not without issues. One of our main gripes with the phone is the layout of the hard buttons. The four across the top don't bother us much, but the placement of the "back" key is a huge pain. It basically forces your hand into a cramp-inviting position -- it's an unnatural move for a key you've got to use a lot. If you're left handed, it'll seem fine (great even), but as a righty, we found it inconvenient and uncomfortable. It's actually perplexing as to why the back button lives where it does on the Hero -- the Magic's placement is much more accessible and a lot more comfortable to use for righties or lefties.

Internals

The guts of the Hero should seem familiar to most gadget buffs -- they're essentially identical to HTC's Magic (at least the Rogers version). What does that mean for you, end user? It means you're stuck with the same Qualcomm 528MHz CPU, the same 288MB of RAM, and a paltry 512MB ROM. The onboard radios include WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and a quad-band HSPA cell chip. The model we tested is the European release of the phone, and as such is only able to access EDGE networks here in America. Luckily for us we don't leave the house much, so most of the time we were on WiFi. So just to be clear, beyond the new screen coating, industrial design, and improved camera, this phone is the HTC Magic inside.

Camera


The Hero's 5 megapixel camera is pretty darn amazing, we must say. Coming off of most devices with their paltry 3-or-so megapixel entries, it's a real treat to have an onboard cam which can actually stand in for a proper shooter. While the image quality isn't up there with dedicated point-and-shoots, it's certainly leaps and bounds better than the nearest competitor, with near-macro focus length. We take a little bit of issue with HTC's UI design on the camera app -- using the sometimes-slippery trackball for both zooming and snapping shots seems kind of ill-advised to us, though we didn't have much trouble with it (a toggle to cancel zooming would be nice). As with most phone cameras, the colors weren't quite as vivid as we would have liked -- bright hues somehow came out murky with the Hero -- but we weren't expecting the world here. HTC seems to have tweaked shutter speeds and processing as well, as snapping photos was noticeably faster than on the earlier Android phones, though we still think the iPhone 3GS and Pre feel tighter (of course the Pre doesn't have to worry about that pesky focusing stuff).

Speaker


We're big speakerphone users, so the external audio of a device is actually important to us (besides, how else can we entertain friends with the "Ras Trent" video while out and about?). The speaker on the Hero is definitely up to the task, producing loud and clear audio while on calls or listening to music. Of course, no one is really going to jam this way very much, but at the very least you can make our your tracks pretty clearly. For calls, the speaker and microphone seemed pretty outstanding to us (we were testing mostly with T-Mobile, mind you).

Battery life


We were impressed with the Hero's staying power, though we'll reserve our final judgments till we have a device running US 3G to look at. On EDGE / WiFi, we saw impressive, full day use with a single charge. Standby didn't seem to pull much power, though it was obvious that many of the widget updates were just waiting till we woke the phone up, which made for maddening floods of syncing and updating (a real drain on speed). Overall, the Hero beats the pants off of our G1, and gives the Magic a run for its money. Battery life was favorable in comparison with the iPhone 3GS, and obviously puts the Pre in a world of hurt.

TouchFLO 3D, FM radio, YouTube and text input methods on the HTC Touch Diamond

I=Mathew Miller.

One new utility included with the HTC Touch Diamond, also seen in the new HTC Advantage X7510 is the ability to have the internal flash drive appear in drive mode with PCs and Macs. I was able to view the flash drive on my MacBook Pro just by connecting the device to my Mac in drive mode. Thus, you do not even need to have ActiveSync on your PC or Mac to access the 4GB flash drive with full USB 2.0 support for fast transfers.

TouchFLO 3D: My screenshots and the following video take you through the new TouchFLO 3D UI on the Home screen and as I think you may agree there is a ton of cool functionality right on the Home screen. I was also a bit surprised at how responsive everything was because the earlier version of the software I saw had a bit of lagging here and there, but none of this appears to be present in the current shipping ROM on the Touch Diamond. I really enjoy viewing the Weather module, especially when it is raining and the windshield wiper goes across the display to clear it of the rain drops. These kinds of animations make the user experience more fun, which I think is much more important today as people are looking for more from their mobile phones.

Opera Mobile 9.5: I already showed Opera Mobile 9.5 browser running on the HTC Advantage X7510 and the version on the HTC Touch Diamond is pretty much the same browser. A couple of differences is that you are now limited to 3 tabs of browsing windows, compared to 7 on the HTC Advantage, and you can dynamically zoom in by circling your finger around the directional pad to multiple levels not seen elsewhere. The cool thing is that text on a web page will reflow to fit the screen in most zoom levels. The browser experience is fantastic with Opera Mobile 9.5 and it is the default browser on the HTC Touch Diamond.

I also quickly showed Internet Explorer Mobile and how the only change is the ability to zoom out and view an entire page. The real innovation in Internet Explorer Mobile will be coming later in 2008 with the version 6 release.

FM radio: The inclusion of an FM radio receiver is rare for Windows Mobile and I only know of one or two HTC devices that have had this before. You do need to have the HTC stereo headset plugged into the device because it serves as the antenna and without it you will get an error message when you launch the application. After launching the application you will see you can quickly scan and save stations as presets, listen via the headset or integrated speaker, change presets, or listen in stereo or mono. The radio also supports RDS so you can see the station id, artist playing, and title of the song in a scrolling part of the FM radio application. I listen to a lot of radio since I don’t own many songs and was very pleased to see this functionality.

Video of Opera Mobile 9.5, YouTube application, and FM radio application


Phone application: With all of the wireless connectivity options and focus on data and applications, I sometimes forget the HTC Touch Diamond is also a mobile phone. The integrated dial pad has large keys so you can easily dial your contacts and like the non-touch screen devices the device will smart filter your contact list as you dial numbers and spell a contact’s name. The phone menu includes options for call history, speed dial, saving to notes, and video call options.

There is a forward facing camera, but unfortunately in the U.S. video calling is not yet supported so I cannot test out this functionality. I showed the options screen in my video because a reader asked about it and you may want to look for a review from another country where this is supported to see how it works.

One phone function that I think I will be using quite a bit is the way the phone automatically starts a note, associated with the call, when you slide out the stylus on the device.

One thing I didn’t show in the video is the cool feature where you can quickly mute an incoming call by setting the device face down on a table when a call comes in. I can see this being useful when in a meeting or other location where a call isn’t convenient at the time.

Text input methods: There are three included HTC text entry methods, including a phone keypad, compact QWERTY keyboard, and full QWERTY keyboard. The phone keypad has an on-screen traditional phone keypad with the ability to toggle between ABC and T9 modes and a symbol key that gives you access to 13 screens of symbols you can enter. There is also a 123 key to enter numbers and common punctuation. Tapping and holding on the key activates the light gray letter/punctuation above that key

The compact QWERTY keyboard is the SureType keyboard where most keys have two letters on each key. The ABC/T9 toggle switch is also present, along with the 13 screen symbol options and 123 key. Tapping and holding on the key activates the light gray letter/punctuation above that key, just like you see with the phone keypad.

A full QWERTY keyboard option is also present and it is actually large enough to easily hit the keys with your finger. Again, the ABC/T9 toggle and tap and hold functionality is present. Tapping the 123 key opens a number/punctuation keyboard and then gives you access to 9 more screens of symbols and characters to choose from.

In addition to these three finger-optimized HTC keyboard options, you can always use the Windows Mobile Block Recognizer, Keyboard, Letter Recognizer, and Transcriber options on the HTC Touch Diamond.

Video of the phone application and text input methods


Camera quality and functionality: One thing I was really looking forward to try on the HTC Touch Diamond was the 3.2 megapixel camera and after using it to take some photos and video, I have to say I am quite impressed. The device takes very good photos in good lighting and obviously since there is no flash the photos in low or no light conditions are poor. The display auto rotates when you look at photos and videos too.

The photo application works like the previous photo application where you can dynamically zoom into features on the photo by drawing a clockwise circle around the object. Going counter-clockwise zooms you out. The experience of flipping through photos is much like the iPhone and again is another fun feature. You can check out one photo below and three others I took with the Diamond in my image gallery.



Thoughts and 2nd impressions of the HTC Touch Diamond: The more I use the HTC Touch Diamond, the more I like it and I wasn’t quite sure about it since I really do like integrated QWERTY keyboards. This device really isn’t targeted to the power user, but has just about everything you need and so far is appealing to this power user. The extremely small size and FUN features though really make it a compelling device and if it had 3G support in the U.S. then I would be even more impressed. There will be a North American version coming later in 2008 so that will be taken care of eventually.

The device feels great in my hand and fits well in my shirt pocket since it is so light. It is amazing how much is packed into such a small form factor. The angled back is so subtle that you cannot really feel the ridges on the back, but yet it adds some styling to the device. The VGA display is absolutely fantastic and impresses me every time I interact with the device.

I have loaded up about 10 of my own 3rd party applications and after two days of heavy usage have yet to need to reset the device and I have charged it fully twice. I have to still do more extensive battery testing since the 950 mAh capacity seems small. I also plan to try other 3rd party applications that are important to me.

It has been tough to come up with any cons of the device so far, but I do plan to use it for a couple of weeks and write up more thoughts. The only cons I can think of that may concern people is the 3 tab limit in Opera Mobile 9.5 and the lack of a camera flash. That’s not much, but there really isn’t much not to like in the device.