HTC Hero review

HTC’s Hero must be one of the most anticipated phones of the year, smart or otherwise.

Its arrival marks for many the coming of age of Google’s Android platform and HTC has managed to cut the cord with Google in terms of software tethering and introduce some interesting new ideas of its own.

The Hero is available SIM free for around £400 in white, or you can get it from Orange as the HTC Hero in graphite or from T-Mobile as the G2 Touch where it is black.

HTC has implemented a new user interface concept on the Hero called Sense UI. This revolves around of making you, the user, its central focus. In practice it means things like letting you see your most recent contacts with a person from one screen whether those contacts be by email, SMS or voice. It is simple and obvious, yet very useful.

There are some other superbly user friendly features too. Turn the phone on for the first time and its uses its built in GPS to work out where you are, and then deliver a weather report right to the home page. Very welcoming.

The two previous Android based handsets to hit the UK, T-Mobile’s G1 and the HTC Magic from Vodafone have shared a design characteristic with the Hero. A lip at the bottom end of the casing which points up in the air. HTC says this helps get the microphone closer to your mouth. For our money it’s not a deal-maker or deal-breaker. But you may decide you love or loathe it.

Either way, it doesn’t add to the size of the Hero. A bit tall for its width the overall measurements of 112x 56.2 x 14.35mm and weight of 135g are not out of kilter with the competition, and the 3.2-inch 320x480 pixel screen is perfectly adequate.

There’s a rubbery finish to the backplate which helps with grip and a smudge resistant coating to the screen – though ours still gathered finger-smears.

Beneath the screen are seven controls. They include a mini trackball and a menu button which calls up an array of different options depending on what app you are in. The search button is application dependent. So in Calendar it lets you search that, in People you can search for a contact, when you are in the Web browser you can do a Google search, etc.

Of course this is a 3G device with HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps download and 2Mbps upload meaning you can get the fastest speeds your operator can currently deliver to wherever you happen to be. The GPS caters for location based services like that weather report we mentioned earlier, and Wi-Fi is here for when you don’t want to use the network.

HTC has built a 3.5mm headset connector into the top end of the device. There are inline music controls on the headset, which is one piece, although we’d have liked a second connector past the controls. HTC’s headset is of average quality and the flat buds don’t suit our ears.

HTC’s retouching of Android via its Sense User Interface runs to including no less than seven home screens between which you flick with fingersweeps. They are pre-configured with shortcuts but you can customise them all. You just press and hold on a shortcut then you can drag it off the screen. On the main menu press an icon to put it on the home screen you were previously viewing.

Some widgets offer realtime updating. There is a dedicated Twitter feed as well as that weather report we mentioned earlier and a widget for incoming emails. The idea is that information is in the widget rather than the widget being a link to the information.

You can save a seven home screen set as a ‘scene’, ready for preloading whenever you want. So you can have a set for work, a set for leisure time, and so on. You’ll probably never exhaust the customisation options.

There is no front camera for video calls, but a 5-megapixel camera beats the 3-megapixel offering of the HTC Magic. Sadly there’s no flash and there aren’t many settings modes.

You can geotag images and upload to the likes of Facebook, Flickr and Picasa and send videos to YouTube. But photos are washed out and you won’t get much at all out of the camera in darker conditions. Still, HTC’s Footprints is on board. This lets you save a photo as a location reminder. Preset categories for leisure, dining, shopping and favourites are set up, and you can add your own.

The Web browser is a treat offering responsive pinch to zoom and flash video support. But it wasn’t willing to stream the BBC news channel to us. It did cope with the YouTube mobile site, but not the desktop version, and the phone has its own YouTube client which also worked.

Oh, and of course, there is an on-board software shop in the shape of the Android Market so you can download more apps as and when you need them.

The Hero can eat batteries like there’s no tomorrow. Which there won’t be if you don’t have access to mains power. The GPS, 3G and Wi-Fi are the main culprits, though if you are a music fan playback will also drain the battery. You should expect to charge daily. While there have been some reports of sluggish behaviour we found everything seemed to work smoothly, including the automatic screen rotation.

The Hero is definitely the best Android device to date. While it isn’t perfect, we could live with it. And it has ensured our appetite is whetted for the Android handsets of the future.