At a press event in New York City today, running almost simultaneous with the official launch in London, HTC unveiled their newest smartphone running the popular, if underrepresented, Google Android OS (to check out all the recent Android phones click here). Like the recently announced T-Mobile myTouch 3G phone, also an HTC Android device, the HTC Hero is a tablet-style phone with no physical keyboard, Unlike the new T-Mobile phone, though, the HTC Hero will run a new, improved user interface, based of the company's new HTC Sense ideas, which will sit on top of the Google Android structure. Though the new user interface shares some cues with HTC's TouchFLO 3D layout on their high-end Windows Mobile devices (click here for recent reviews), at heart the new interface is decidedly rooted in Google's Android, and so many of the menus, gestures and applications will be instantly familiar to Android users. However, the improvements are more than just skin deep.
What's on the inside?
For hardware specs, the new HTC Hero (specs) is a high-end device, but doesn't pack the super-powered processors and extreme memory we're seeing on other flagship phones, like the Samsung Jet or Palm Pre. The HTC Hero uses a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with a familiar HVGA resolution, 320 by 480 pixels, the same as the other Android devices we've seen from HTC. The phone will get high-speed networking, but HTC has yet to announce official support for U.S. 3G network radio bands. We expect to see this device or some similar variation in the near future, probably in T-Mobile's lineup, though HTC has been otherwise carrier agnostic, so hopefully we'll have a variety of options available.
In addition to the improved interface, the HTC Hero will include some native support for popular social networking and messaging services. We got to play with the Twitter client during our hands-on run, and this app looked clean and cool, in step with the rest of HTC's dark and contrasty HTC Sense interface designs. The phone will also support advanced Facebook functionality, so we expect to be able to search and synchronize with our Facebook accounts on the phone.
To be or not to be a Google Experience phone
Besides the new user interface, the HTC Hero also gets some improved software support over the Google Android phones we've seen, which inevitably means the phone will give up its "Google Experience" branding. The HTC Hero will support Exchange ActiveSync services out of the box, which means we'll be able to check our Exchange e-mail accounts and synchronize our work calendars and contact info with the phone. The phone will also support Adobe's recently announced Flash 10 mobile app, which should dramatically improve the Web browsing experience.
We got our hands on a test unit, and though it was plastered with confidentiality warnings, it seemed to be fairly complete. Unfortunately, we weren't able to properly connect to the Internet, and so we weren't able to see Flash playback for ourselves.
We were curious about how the lack of Google Experience branding will affect over-the-air system updates. Thus far, T-Mobile has been successful, if sluggish, about making significant improvements to the Google Android interface over the air. Our own T-Mobile G1 successfully received the Android 1.5 Cupcake update, and we updated our review recently. With so many changes under the hood, we were concerned that HTC Hero owners wouldn't benefit from Google's own improvements to the Android OS, but HTC assures us this is not the case. Because of the way Android is built to handle these sorts of interface and functionality improvements, future updates should seamlessly integrate themselves with the HTC Sense UI. Of course, we'll believe it when we see it, as always, but we'd like to think that Android is as adaptable as they say, especially with a rumored Android 2.0 Donut update around the corner.
Gimme, gimme more.
The HTC Hero gets some nifty extra features, as well. The phone will see a significant improvement in battery life over HTC's first generation Android phones, thanks mostly to a battery packing a larger mAh capacity, but company reps also claim there have been some power management tweaks under the hood, as well.
The white version of the phone will get a soft touch paint job, a rarity among white phones, and to avoid stains HTC has mixed the paint with a Teflon coating. This could be a very cool idea in mobile devices, especially combined with the phones oil-resistant, or oleophobic, coating on the glass screen.
Unlike almost every other HTC phone released in recent memory, the HTC Hero will finally get a 3.5mm headphone jack. It's a simple addition, but HTC has relied on a miniUSB adapter in the past for using standard earbuds, so we're happy to have the option to use our own cans. The phone will also support microSDHC cards up to 32GB capacity, so music lovers will be able to load it up. For video playback, the phone will support mp4 files using the H.264 codecs, as well as WMV 9 video files. We'd love to see a high-res version of the HTC Hero, perhaps with a WVGA screen like the HTC Touch HD (or the recently rumored HTC Firestone) and some truly advanced video options, maybe with DivX support.
With its capacitive touchscreen, the HTC Hero will be able to support multi-touch gestures. So, you can use two fingers to zoom in and out on photographs and Web pages, just like you can on the Palm Pre and Apple iPhone 3GS.
So, was it good for you?
We got to play with the HTC Hero this morning, and we enjoyed the experience very much. The phone takes the basic Google Android idea and runs with them just a bit further. So, while the Android UI uses a 3-screen panel on the homescreen, the HTC Hero lets you assign up to 7 difference screens, and scrolls neatly from one to the other. Most of the basic apps are improved, from the Clocks and Weather apps to the homescreen widgets. There are now plenty of active widgets designed by HTC that can report stock information, recently received e-mail messages and more. But just like on earlier Google Android phones, some of our favorite UI designs are still in tact, like the window pane that drops down with notification warnings, or the long-press menus that pop up when you hold your finger down on an icon.
The HTC Hero will be released for Europe in July, while Asia will get it later this summer. Pricing and availability for the North American release has yet to be determined beyond late 2009, but we're sure the phone we saw this morning won't be coming to the U.S. in this exact form. Hopefully, the carriers will leave it mostly alone, and when asked, HTC said they have no intention on keeping their Google Android phones limited to one carrier, as they have so far. We were impressed with the snappy, advanced UI we saw on the HTC Hero, and it gives us a bit more hope about the future of Google Android devices, which had been a pretty quiet category over the last few months. We'll follow this story as it develops, especially as Google's anticipated Android 2.0 draws nearer, perhaps appearing by the end of the summer.
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