HTC Hero review
Posted by
The Boy Genius on Jul 24, 2009 2:22 pm
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When I fondled the HTC Hero for the first time a month or two ago, Iwas instantly floored. I mean, Android looked this bad ass? It wasactually functional? The T-Mobile G1 was a non-starter for me, the HTCMagic (HTC variant) was a cool mess around device I had (a custom whiteone with U.S. HSDPA might I add) but it wasn’t until I saw the Herowhere I actually thought, “Wow. This could actually be a device I’dwant to use.” Multi-touch capacitive screen, Flash support in thebrowser, full Microsoft Exchange support? Oh man…
But it’s not all roses, ponies, and rainbows. Since my time with thedevice pre-announcement was limited, I was quickly shown the best thatthe Hero had to offer. In terms of the inner workings however, not somuch. All that changed since the Teflon Don found its way to BGR HQ andI’ve had plenty of time to size it up from top to bottom. So what’s theverdict? Hit the jump for the full review.
Hardware
HTC went from this little nothing company to literally amanufacturing champion practically overnight. Their hardware is topnotch and with each product cycle, it constantly improves and isrefined. The HTC Hero’s exterior is nothing short of amazing. The metalbezel around the entire screen with the white Teflon-coated plasticshell both reek of elegance and sophistication. The four mainnavigational buttons on the front (send, home, menu, end) are all madeof aluminum just like the bezel so they blend in perfectly in terms oflooks and feel. Additionally, the handset in general is verycomfortable to hold and fits nicely in your hand. The trackball isplaced nicely in the now rigidly-sculpted signature Android “chin” butthere’s two buttons that we can’t (we can, there’s no damn room)understand why they are placed where they are: the search button andthe back key. Here’s the issue… since the phone has this chin thingthat everyone either hates to love or loves to hate, you have to holdthe handset higher up in your palm in order for it to be useful as atouchscreen-based handset. What happens then, is you’re forced tostretch your thumb all the way down below the screen itself — below therow of four navigational buttons, in order to hit the back key which isused incredibly frequently since there is no touchscreen equivalent.
It’s not so bad if you’re not really getting jiggy with the handset,but if you’re entrenched in some serious Google Voice action, or inyour inbox, it’s an annoying pain to switch positions with the phone inyour hand just to move down and hit the back button. Our choice? Movethe Menu button to the left side of the trackball and put the backbutton where the menu button was on the strip of four. Have a nice day.
Software
Thank the lord for HTC as far as Android is concerned. For anyonethat does anything of importance with their lives (doesn’t live onGmail and actually requires corporate functionality — half kidding,kind of not), the standard Google builds are effectively useless to us.Luckily HTC has saved our cold, robotic hearts from Mountain View’sdefault experience. There’s literally too much to list, but HTCoverhauled everything as we’ll explore a little later, and thisincludes home screens, widgets, contact lists, messaging, email,information syncing, the camera interface, keyboard, web browser, musicplayer, GPS, calendar, photo albums, and much, much more. It makes thephone feel like an almost brand new OS and for something as new as itis, it’s pretty incredible. To be fair, this in itself is the beauty ofAndroid — it doesn’t hold OEMs back, it encourages them to smack itaround and mold it into something entirely their own.
Keyboard
Since there’s no physical keyboard on the HTC Hero, there’s abuilt-in virtual keyboard to handle all your data entry needs. How welldoes it work? It’s decent if not mildly frustrating at times. One ofthe reason the iPhone keyboard works so incredibly well is becausetheir correction system is second to none. HTC’s is decent, but it’sstill not in the same class as Apple’s integration. The keys aredecently sized and do provide a nice little enlarged key popup when youpress one (though they can be a little slow to show and if you’re anormal human, the enlarged key popup will be of little use as you’vealready moved on to the next key).
A couple annoying things with the keyboard: Maybe it’s just habit,but the “12#” symbol entry button should be on the other side asthere’s no use for a damn settings key IN THE ACTUAL KEYBOARD. That’swhat the settings section is for. Another annoying trait is the factyou have to manually hide the keyboard when you’re done typing. Saywhat? Wait, how about this… you have to manually tap the text field tobring up the keyboard. Uh… why? This isn’t HTC’s fault, but the factAndroid doesn’t auto-launch the keyboard in 98% of everything we’vecome across is ridiculous. So, the keyboard is kind of clunky and slow,the auto-correction isn’t that great, you have to manually bring up thekeyboard when you want to use it, you have to manually hide it whenyou’re done typing, and there’s a settings key in place of where thesymbol key should be. Rock on, fellas.
Screen
The 3.2-inch 480×320 capacitive multi-touch display used on the Hero(we believe it’s the exact same panel as used on the Magic as well) isfantastic. The touch input is second to only Apple’s capacitive touchscreens and as far as the display itself goes, it’s wonderfully bright,vivid, clear, and crisp. One of the reasons I had an issue with theoriginal G1 was the lack of multi-touch. Android’s default browser (tome personally) is a joke. Navigation is more than clunky, it’s theopposite of intuitive, and I’d rather use my BlackBerry browser. Word,son. Thankfully multi-touch is incorporated into other areas of the OSbesides just the browser, and this extends the fluidity of HTC’simprovements but as you’ll soon see here, it’s a two-faced coin becauseas much as it adds, it subtracts.
Speaker / Music
The speaker is fine. It’s not great, it’s pretty loud as far as thetop end is concerned but what’s really nice is that since the shape ofthe Hero is a tad bit curved, when rested on a flat surface like adesk, the speaker placement doesn’t get muffled and makes it a prettyuseful speakerphone.
We really liked the music player on the Hero. It’s not afull-fledged MP3-playing companion like an iPod but it’s simple to use,you can scrub through music, flicking through tracks was enjoyable,playlists and organization followed HTC’s Sense slider theme and worksreally well here. Very nice.
HTC Sense
Man… HTC has done it again. While TouchFLO on the original TouchDiamond was a huge gamble for them, they’ve kept pushing forward andpractically made Windows Mobile almost lovablelikable. Well, HTC Sense is basically a Palm Pre killer and it’s just afreakin’ skin! Literally. The Pre is cool but borderline useless. WhatHTC’s Sense does is add a beautiful layer to Android that lets the userinteract with their phone in fun, entertaining, and most of all,productive ways. Their clock widgets are gorgeous, their Twitter widget(and Twitter client) are great, their messaging and weather widgetsdon’t disappoint. You can customize the crap out of your Hero and makeit exactly custom tailored to you and your tastes.
HTC’s beauty isn’t just skin deep, it extends beyond the surface andintegrates more heavily with the actual OS. A true testament toAndroid’s open and customizable nature. You can, in addition to linkingTwitter, link up your Facebook and Flickr accounts and let all of themco-exist naturally in a seamless playground of contacts, photos, andnotifications. Facebook profile pictures and birthdays can sync up withyour contacts, your Google contacts can live with your Exchangecontacts in harmony, and Flickr photo uploading is only a couple(probably 25) seconds away.
Typical HTC doesn’t do the bare minimum, though, and you’ll findpractically every damn .png or graphic on the Hero customized from theoriginal Android base build. From the custom HTC dialer to call logs,to the notification drawer to the mail application; they’ve broughtAndroid even further in the future than where Google probably thoughtit could go, and we’re only around a year in.
Battery:
The Hero ships with a thin 1350mAh battery and since the unit we gotour hands on doesn’t have any U.S. 3G bands, all we were able to testdaily was EDGE and Wi-Fi. Running around NYC using the phone, Exchangeemail, some light web browsing, and some Google Voice SMS checking andsending, we were able to get around a day of usage. Add in 3G and somereal heavy use and we don’t think you’ll be too pleased with thebattery staying power. Seeing as how the iPhone 3GS lasts around 2-3times longer on 3G than the Hero does EDGE, HTC might be better suitedresearching their own battery technology.
Phone calling: No. We have no idea why the text at the top is in Dutch…
Making phone calls was pleasant enough except for a coupleannoyances. When dialing a number, the Hero cross-checks this with yourcontact list. While nice in theory, it makes for a pretty slow dialingsession as the underpowered handset tries to visibly (literally, underthe dialpad) match up what you’re entering with your address entries.
What’s really nice is when talking on the phone itself, using theear speaker, the Hero is really comfortable to hold against your ear.It just feels natural and it’s one of the best phone phones we’ve useda pretty long time, even on AT&T’s network.
Performance
This is going to be tough. For everything I loved about the Hero,there was always something pulling me back that had to do withperformance. Let me explain… One more original reason why I didn’t likethe G1 was because it required more effort to do less. Why would I wantto spend 25 seconds just getting to a compose email screen when I couldpress “C” on my BlackBerry and receive a reply to my original email Ijust sent faster than I could get that original email out on an Androidphone? There are trade offs, sure, but speed isn’t a trade off. The HTCMagic is my favorite Android device because coupled with a sexy formfactor and Cupcake 1.5, it fixes a lot of the less-intuitive andtime-consuming issues that the original Google device launched with. Sowhere in the hell am I going? It’s that we took 10 leaps forward withthe Hero but took 12 back. With every brilliant addition HTC made, thedevice suffered a little bit in terms of performance. Imagine what thetypical home screen background on the Hero is actually running whenyou’re not even doing anything:
- One or possibly two clocks (which also grab your location so it will invoke GPS requests from time to time)
- One or possibly two weather widgets (which update in the backgroundas well as grab your location so that it will invoke GPS requests fromtime to time)
- A Twitter widget which pulls your Twitter timeline at intervals
- A Messaging widget which updates in the background displaying yourlatest SMS and MMS messages all in a funky and cool yet CPU intensiveanimated widget
- An email widget which just the Messaging widget displays your emails, also CPU intensive
- A calendar widget which pulls in your entries from the Calendar app
- A people widget which displays favorites and their associated photo thumbnail
- A bookmarks widget showing your top four website bookmarks
Now, even if half of these do nothing but display data, it’s stillmemory that’s being used up in addition to CPU, and then consider theones that actually update in the background. What makes Android so muchmore usable here, hurts it because of the hardware it runs on. Thisdoesn’t speak too highly of Android as an OS to us because Apple’siPhone 3G was about 50% faster with a 400MHz CPU compared to the Hero’s528MHz processor. The Palm Pre, a little faster than the iPhone 3G, ispretty speedy and doesn’t bog down like the Hero does. And the iPhone3GS? For. Get. It. Once you’ve tasted Big Momma’s fried chicken, you’renot going to eat at Popeye’s (don’t think about that line too muchbecause you won’t get anywhere) and that’s really the issue here withthe performance aspect of the Hero. All of HTC’s advancements getundermined with a should-be-fast-enough CPU and make the entire userexperience suffer. I don’t want to wait, I want to move quickly whenI’m doing something and this is one huge area where the HTC Herodisappoints to the point of almost not wanting to use it.
So what’s the wrap-up with everything that’s been said? It’s areally tough one. This for me personally was harder than just reviewinganother Android handset to cross the desk because I really, reallywanted this damn thing. Would I take it over the Palm Pre? One hundredpercent yes. The HTC Hero effectively crushed any hopes Palm had atkeeping any sort of momentum (at least in my view). Though what I’vefound, sadly, is I get more enjoyment out of using my HTC Magic or theT-Mobile myTouch 3G than I do with the Hero. Like I said, HTC’sachievements and innovations aren’t anything to dismiss, they are whatto me makes Android usable, but with the current hardware powering theHTC Hero, things become murky and frustrating.
I’d like a multi-touch web browser and full Exchange integration ina sexier thinner package with a Teflon-coated shell, but I’d rathersave myself 5 seconds here, and 7 seconds there than deal with bogdownsand sluggishness on something that should be as fast as lightning. HTCisn’t stupid and we’re sure they know that once they couple this setupwith a faster CPU and chipset (Tegra?) it’s going to be a sure-shotwinner that will be able to rival the best. As it is now, it sort offits in with Android’s whole theme — you can do what you want, but youmight have to take a couple more roads to get there.
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