Design and Looks
The Handset measures at 112x56.2x14.35mm weighing 135g. The phone features a Teflon coated finish on the entire body giving it a premium look along with a rubbery touch making it a nice to grip.
The display comprises of a capacitive touch screen with 65K colour with HVGA resolution (320x 480 pixels). The screen measures at 3.2 inches in diagonal and has good sensitivity, colors, brightness and contrast.
Below the screen, on the front the phone sports a trackball or D-pad which exceptionally does its job. The four key along with the trackball are the Menu key, Home key, Back button and Search key. The right side of the phone comprises of the microSD slot and the left side keeps the volume rocker. The bottom of the phone holds the standard miniUSB port which is used for plugging the charger, headset or a data cable.
The voice clarity on the phone is good and the volume is also louder than the HTC Magic. The handset also features the Smart Dialing feature which is an advantage.
The phone can do all type of messages as SMS, MMS and Email. Instant messaging is handled by Gtalk Application on board. The onscreen full QWERTY keyboard on the HTC Hero works in both portrait and landscape mode.
On the multimedia front, the device gets a totally redesigned music player. The phone unfortunately does no feature a contextual search on the music player. The Hero has the 5 megapixel camera which has a maximum image resolution of 2560x1920 pixels. There is no flash on the phone which makes it impossible to have any good images taken during low light situations. The interface is simple and there is a camera/camcorder button on the phone. The trackball serves as a shutter key and tapping the viewfinder on screen reveals the digital zoom. There is also metering mode, sharpness, saturation and contrast of the photos and one can add a viewfinder gridline for assistance with framing.
On the connectivity front the phone offers 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 2mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. The handset features quad-band GSM tri-band HSDPA support as well as the USB 2.0. The Sense UI on the phone lets you turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on or off with onscreen widgets within no time. The wireless support is excellent and comes up pretty fast as it's invoked. The phone does sport a GPS onboard and the application is the Google Maps which can be used for navigation. The multi-touch doesn't work in Google Maps and to zoom in out two virtual buttons have to be used on the screen.
Overall the phone is the best HTC Android phone available in the market and with the Google app store its bound to get far better in the coming days. A good deal if anyone looking for a android phone , One of the best.
Features
- 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps
- Heavily Customized with SenseUI
- 3.2" capacitive touchscreen of HVGA Resolution
- 5 megapixel autofocus camera with video recording
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and GPS reciever
- Trackball navigation
- Stereo Bluetooth ( A2DP )
- 3.5MM audio jack
