HTC Hero review

It can leap over cell phone towers in a single bound. It can make your friends green with envy. It can repel that nasty spaghetti stain. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! NO! It’s the HTC Hero!

The much awaited, greatly desired, much anticipated object of envy otherwise known as the HTC Hero has finally graced the eyes and hands of the worldwide gadget community. At first glance the device is absolutely well crafted. It doesn’t feel at all plastic-y or cheap in the hand.

Hardware/Design

This device feels great. It doesn’t feel foreign in the hand. Not the slightest. Most people can’t stand the chin. I think it’s cute and who doesn’t enjoy a reminder of Jay Leno very once in a while? Or the Crimson Chink, if you are of the younger demographic.  No one said that a phone had to be in a slate form factor, a la iPhone. It’s quite refreshing to see a HTC go somewhere different.

While the look of this device is spot on, there could be some improvements. First of all, include a hardware keyboard. I wouldn’t mind adding a little bulk for a fantastic keyboard. This does not mean that the on-screen keyboard is bad. Quite the contrary. It’s actually fantastic, but that will be covered a little bit later. Another gripe is about button placement. The search button and back button are awkwardly placed to the right of the trackball. HTC must think that a majority of world’s population is left handed. I don’t particularly find a problem. I use both hands, mainly my left, but when I do use my right hand, I curse the placement of those buttons. I am also a victim of fat thumbs. The row of buttons above the trackball are at times difficult to hit or I end up hitting more than one and you don’t get that satisfying click after a press. Small annoyances these are, but they are annoyances, nonetheless. That aside, the hardware is almost flawless.

The guts of the Hero are a totally different story. The internal specs are as listed:

528MHz Qualcomm processor
512MB ROM
288MB RAM

For a device of the Hero’s caliber and functionality, these specs are inadequate. Scrolling around produces a noticeable lag and stuttering. There is quite simply not enough horsepower to carry the phone. You feel like the UI is way too much for the phone to handle. It makes you wonder what happened during testing. And it’s not like this happens when you overload with widgets. I keep my home panels rather clean and yet i still experience lagging. Why HTC didn’t opt for a faster processor, Snapdragon for instance (or ditch Qualcomm completely and go with Nvidia’s Tegra chipset) and more RAM is baffling. To HTC’s defense, the Hero does have more RAM than the predecessor Android devices.

Software

In an attempt to revamp the way we use Android, HTC has introduced the Sense UI skin(HTC doesn’t like it being called a skin, but for this one time, they better let me do it). The HTC fanboys (of which I am one) and fangirls would recognize ideas on Sense UI from their TouchFlo 3D versions on Windows Mobile; notably the flip-down home screen clock and the weather applications. Coming from Windows Mobile (and possibly other platforms) this phone makes sense (hence the name?). Some ideas are borrowed from TouchFlo, of course, but for good reasons. TouchFlo is fantastic. If you have ever owned a Windows Mobile device with it, functionality is greatly improved. It would be a surprise if they didn’t borrow from their Windows Mobile skin. It is a social-centric user experience that incorporates Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into contact management. You can pull information on your contacts, such as birthday and picture, from their respective Facebook profiles and you can update your Facebook status straight from your own contact card. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Widgets

Where Android wins over other mobile operating systems is with the inclusion of widgets. Stock Android has a few widgets. While that is a lot more that what the iPhone and Windows Mobile can claim, there aren’t enough. Enter HTC. Included in Sense UI is HTC’s proprietary set of  home screen widgets. There are 12 different clocks HTC provides to the user. From cool and techy to just totally far-out, the clocks are there. This holds true for most other provided widgets. Larger versions and small versions of widgets are available for use. As I previously mentioned, with integration of Twitter, there is a proprietary HTC Twitter widget. Curiously, a Facebook widget is missing. Instead of having basic functionality readily available on the home screen, you must dive into the contacts manager and do it there. That is not to talk bad about contacts management. It is actually very good. All forms of contact with person is readily accessible. All emails, text messages, Facebook updates, Flickr updates, and call history is available in all of its glory right in their contact info. Again, this is all too familiar for those of us who have owned a recent HTC Windows Mobile device or the hacker community who have been familiar with this for some tie.

Keyboard

HTC have made themselves a fantastic keyboard with the Hero. It is intuitive and extremely easy to use. Mind you, this is coming from a person hell bent on having a physical keyboard and who has spent some intimate time with iPhones. Typing feels good if you are used to touch screen keyboards. You can totally screw up a word and 7 times out of 10, the keyboard will guess as to which word you meant to type. Other reviewers mentioned a lagging keyboard. I haven’t noticed a lag on my keyboard as of yet. To appeal to the hardware keyboard fanatics, haptic feedback is turned on by default. That’s when the phone vibrates when a press is registered. Depending on who you are, it can enhance the use or be a total distraction. I feel that it is the latter. You just can’t really make an on-screen keyboard feel like a physical one. But with a vast dictionary and fantastic predictive text, you can come close. Good job, HTC.

Multitouch

It was a great idea that HTC decided to enable mulitouch on the Hero but its use is extremely limited. It is enabled in the crappy web browser and in picture viewing. Google Maps does not have multitouch enabled. I’m speculating that it must be due to Apple and Google’s “relationship.” In brief, Apple has patents on some multitouch capabilities and Google wouldn’t want to strain its relationship with Apple. It’s a good idea to enable it, but I feel that there should be more instances when it can be used. I’ve also noticed that the multitouch gets confused at times. When trying to pinch for zooming, it registers a scroll or something crazy like that. Not an issue for now, though. The browser is garbage and I rarely use it.

Final thoughts

Coming into this I wanted to REALLY love the Hero. I just love it. After receiving it, I was giddier than a little schoolgirl. It combines great looks and an equally sublime user interface to improve the way Android works. HTC got so many things right on this phone. I quite pleasantly discovered how good the speaker quality was. But you can’t help but feel that the internal specs just hamper its shine. Small quirks like lagging or not being able to switch from portrait to landscape or vice-versa due to a slow down is borderline ridiculous. This phone could have been one of the greatest phones on the market. It is the best Android phone, hands down. It just needs to be faster. Maybe HTC will release a faster follow up called the HTC Hero S, a la iPhone 3G S. Hey, a gadget nerd can dream, can’t he?

Other reviews

Engadget
Gizmodo
SlashGear
BoyGeniusReport

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