Gadget User Blog

It’s been a long time between posts here at Gadget User Blog. The year has been very busy and just gets busier. However, it’s time to pause and post one review that I’m sure you’ll be interested in. It’s my take on the new HTC Hero Android phone. It’s been one that I’ve been waiting to get my hands on for some time. Finally I have managed to get a hold of one so here are my first impressions.

The first impression is ‘Wow’. This is a seriously substantial device. It feels solid in your hand. The build feels good and the packaging isn’t over the top, rather it’s trying to keep a small footprint.

Once you’ve unboxed it and turned the device on you’re confronted with a wonderfully bright screen and a large digital clock to welcome you to the world of the Hero. The next thing you notice is the extended home screen. A swipe of the finger across the screen takes you from left to right and to other widgets. Now widgets are the next big thing in mobile devices. They are  shortcuts to application data but without the need for opening the applications. The device is preset with the weather widgets, email and SMS messaging widgets, and a host of others. Widgets are really a great idea and make using the device very simple.

HTC has provided  a new interface for the Hero. They call it Sense UI. It’s based on a simple concept that tries to gather information about your friends from a number of sources in the one place. It works extremely well. One thing I loved was that you can link with your Facebook account and it will download your contacts images. That way you can see photos of your contacts against their name – very neat. But that’s not all, it also links to their Flickr accounts too so you can view their albums.

This is smart content aggregation that revolves around your friends. Your friends’ Facebook and Flickr activity is drawn into their profile in the ‘People’ application. This is a very neat solution to keeping up with the volume of information available about our contacts from the various social media sites.

By the way, did I mention that this is a phone? Call quality is good and it has all your normal functions. But the phone is not the star in this unit. It’s all the other bits and pieces.

You have a 5 megapixel camera. The camera’s quality is pretty good. But remember, it’s a camera in a phone so don’t think you’re going to get the quality of a dedicated digital camera. The camera can also capture moving images through video – again quality isn’t fabulous but in an emergency it could be very handy.

I did read a very negative review about the Hero last week – can’t remember where – but it the review was bemoaning the speed and responsiveness of the user interface on this device. Well, I haven’t noticed any major problems in that regard. I’m not sure what the reviewer was talking about but from my perspective the Hero is terrific on this front. I have a sneaking suspicion the review was an iPhone fanatic who was perhaps a little worried by what Hero and Android were offering.

I’ve found it to be no more or less responsive and smooth in its transitions than the iPhone. Applications open in reasonable time and functions and connection to the internet are all good. I’ve only used the phone’s wi-fi connection for internet functions so I’m yet to test it over the mobile network (I need to extricate myself from the Blackberry service on my previous phone). There is no Blackberry Connect at this time although rumour has it that it’s on the way.

But, given that the internet browser is so excellent, I’m seriously considering not worrying about Blackberry and just using webmail instead. I’m not a high volume email user on a mobile device but if you are you’ll probably want to hang on to the Blackberry or wait until the BC rumour is confirmed with actual software!

Text entry is okay. The screen-based text entry system takes some getting used to so again, if you are wanting to use the phone for document editing I’d be cautious. But for texts and emails the text function should suffice – although I recommend using it in the landscape mode rather than in portrait.

So my first impression of this phone is positive on all fronts. If you have thought about getting a Hero from HTC I think you can be fairly sure the phone will meet you expectations.

Note: Specifications are subject to change without prior notice.

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