Review: HTC Hero, AndroidMan
Posted: October 6th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Mobile | Tags: android, blackberry, chrome, flash, htc, htc hero, iphone, Mobile | Comments Off
HTC always made great gadgets but the no-no point was always the Windows Mobile Platform even the new WM6 does look scary. So I decided to go the Android route with my next phone n’ got my hands on a beautiful White HTC Hero.
Back in some ancient days I was a die-hard Sony Ericsson fan ’till they blew it with Xperia’s late launch. The first look at the Hero got me flashbacks to my old Sony Ericsson P1.
Hard buttons, Trackball, and a beautiful Multitouch Screen
If you were a hardcore user of Blackberries you’re gonna’ love the Hero as it combines basic hard buttons that are there in Blackberries; Send, Cancel, Menu, Home, Back, Search and in addition to the Trackball there’s the Search button that pops search functionality into supporting applications and widgets. Brilliant!
That means you access your phone mode along with the dialer, history, and phone book by a press of a button(Send button). You cancel everything with the Cancel button(Disconnect button). Then comes the useful Return/Back button, this one is borrowed from Sony Ericsson designs combined with the Trackball. Remember the Jockdial and the Return button on the sides of “P” series?
Search button is amazing, on normal modes it fires Google search, on Application/Widget/Page mode fires document or files search. Neat! Menu button, is there too.
In the first days of using Hero’s interface you’d be confused as no options are there on the screen, all are hidden ’till you fire up the Menu button. It could feel odd if you start using the Hero after an iPhone but would make sense if you were coming from the berry world.
Screen is good, not as bright as iPhone but it’s really responsive and best of all is the vibrating feedback mechanism. Nothin’ new in that department. iPhone does it, Palm Pre does it, and the new N900 does it too. So it’s all old news. Horizontal view, G-sensors n’ all the goodies. Doesn’t come short in any of the interactive screen features. Pinch in n’ out, flip, drag, swipe, you name it. It’s got it. But, where it shines is at tiny spaces, the sensors are so accurate that even though on-screen keyboard keys are tiny it detects the right key every time.
Keyboard
It’s not a surprise to have an on-screen keyboard that aims at competing with iPhone’s and it does it right. On vertical mode keys might look small to you but when used they’re just as useful as iPhone’s big keys. Unlike iPhone every key has a lower character and a symbol, jus’ like a regular computer labeled keyboard. Holding a key gives you options to choose from -> less taps.
On Horizontal mode, keyboard expands and gets you good chunky keys that you can easily tap with your thumbs. They’ve done a great job on this one. Writing e-mails are fast once again. Words/Phrases prediction is great too, not only give you option(s) it saves what you type if not in dictionary n’ the best thing is that it tells you it’s saving it when it does.
Keys feedback is the plus on Hero’s keyboard. Upon every key tap the phone vibrates smoothly giving you the feel of having done something that needs to be acknowledged unlike iPhone that gives you a sound, Hero gives you a little shake.
Widgets & Screens
It seems more like a trial, a test perhaps. The Hero comes with Seven screens including Home. A closer look figures it’s actually a series of pages just like the iPhone. The only addition to that are Widgets.
I once called Hero a Palm Pre wannabe. And I still hold my statement. It does allow you to have multiple Screens, run applications in the background and sport a beautifull drawable Notification bar. And treats your e-mails/messages as cards in Widget mode. Wait a second, all this were introduced by Palm Pre? Right?
Storage & Performance
1GB external SD Card + 256MB internal memory. Not bad. Not gonna’ replace your iPod!
It could get sluggish at times, specially when switching screens or changing from Vertical to Horizontal mode. Updating to the latest ROM n’ Build solves that problem and in addition adds a new feature to Camera that enables you to select your Focus area by a tap on the screen.
Battery, Sound Quality, Speakerphone n’ Headphone
It didn’t feel any different than iPhone or Blackberry. Use data & make a good number of lengthy phone calls n’ the orange light goes on.
Sound quality is decent it doesn’t come short at all. Speakerphone is a little cheapo on the Hero n’ takes you back to walky-talky days. Lousy speakerphone.
3.5mm headphones performed really well even at high speeds on the highway. I was impressed when I was asked if I was at home or office while doin’ 160 on the highway in a loud car.
Camera, it’s 5MP
Pictures quality are very good for a camera phone. Video recording goes really well given you had decent lighting at your scene. Sharing photos n’ videos couldn’t be hard when you can choose from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr n’ Youtube. All there.
Manual focus is one of my favorite features in Hero’s camera. You tap on the area where you want to focus n’ click all done. Lovely!
Android n’ Chrome with Adobe Flash 10
All the stuff mentioned above are nothing but the form. The functionality uniqueness lies in two important ingredients for Hero’s success; Andrioid’s Google Connectivity and Google’s Chrome supporting Adobe Flash 10.
Google Contacts n’ Calendars are great. They sync very well over the air. This isn’t a surprise, think about it, we all expected Google Docs n’ Spreadsheets to be included as well. It’s a Good Start.
Chrome does magic. Opens any website for you. Even those that have JS problems on Local websites. I recharged Salik with it. Played Google Videos on it. Vimeo, any flash based Video. Saw ads n’ abused some clicks on Arabian Business. It supports tabs, jus’ like iPhone(let’s say they took a page out of iPhone’s book).
Facebook’s integration is nice n’ easy but could be very confusing in the beginning. Specially if you download Facebook for Android. One useless peice of application. The web version does a better job as it is the same version that serves iPhone.
If you couldn’t like anything about the Hero this is the function that will get you back to it. E-Mail client on Hero is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Specially if you setup your account to connect via IMAP. It’s fast, crispy and the UI can’t be any better. Google is all about search so you’re darn right it gets Search right. Connecting to your Server folders are nothing but some taps. Attachments? No problem. Any other standard feature that you’d need. All there. But with style and an intuitive interaction. My favorite part of the day is when I have to read a lengthy e-mail while on the Go. I like it Horizontal. And if the e-mail was HTML then treat it like a browser window. All Good.
That’s just the Standard e-mail client that HTC ships with Hero. How about the very native GMail Client? Nothing but app-poetry.
Application Market
Not impressive. That quite said. But then, you have a fully capable web browser that could access desktop Flash websites, what could be possibly missing? Yea, a lot. Considering Android’s age and user base it is fair to say it’s early to have high expectations from the Marketplace. Expected to grow fast. Fingers crossed.
Hero ships with an elegant Twitter client(Peep) that has a beautiful Widget too. Then you downlowd Twidroid you finally have all your contro back on Twitter.
Youtube, Image folder, Music n’ Multimedia Player. All today’s standards, loading images from Facebook, Flickr, n’ your local files. The Music player is Fine specially if you use HTC’s widget. Not an iPod though!
In Brief
It’s a phone full of features, could be complicated for those who don’t play around with gadgets. Confusing enough to setup for feature phone users. It’s not a phone to show off with n’ be unique. Nope! If you’ve come from a place where you loved applications, go back, it’s still not time for applications on Android.
The Hero is not that phone to make statements with. Just a Smartphone that happens to be amazing under the skin. Looks odd. Very odd to some. If you’re not gonna’ play with it n’ exploit it to explore Android just don’t get one and stick to your iPhones n’ Blackberries.
