|
HTC Hero
De la Portal semantic Pagini Favorite
 | |
| Generalitati | |
|---|---|
| Fabricant | Htc |
| Retele 2G | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| Retele 3G | HSDPA 900 / 2100 |
| Status | Disponibil |
| Dimensiuni | |
 Lungime |
112 |
| Greutate | 135 g |
| Ecran | |
 Tip ecran |
TFT capacitiv, sensibil la atingere |
| Nr. culori | 65k |
| Dimensiune ecran | 320 x 480 pixeli, 3.2 inci |
| Sunet | |
| Functii sunet | Polifonice, MP3, WAV |
| Memorie | |
 Mem. numere |
Practic numar nelimitat de inregistrari, cu imagini |
| Memorie interna | 288 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM |
| Date | |
| GPRS | Da |
| HSCSD | Da |
| EDGE | Da |
| 3G | HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2.0 Mbps |
| WLAN | Da |
| Bluetooth | Da |
| Infrarosu | Nu |
| USB | Da |
| Camera | |
 Foto |
5 MP |
| Functii camera | 2592 x 1944 pixeli |
| Functii | |
| Specificatii sistem | Sistem operare: Android OS, v1.5 |
| Browser | Da |
| Functii browser | HTML |
| GPS | Da |
| Functii GPS | Da, cu suport A-GPS |
| Baterie | |
 Tip baterie |
Acumulator standard, Li-Ion 1350 mAh |
| Stand-by 2G | 440 h |
| Stand-by 3G | 750 h |
| Convorbire 2G | 8 h |
| Convorbire 3G | 7 h |
| Surse bibliografice | |
The HTC Hero is the third Android device from the company and shares many of the features already found on the earlier HTC Magic. It is available in Asia and sells for S$898 before operator subsidies. Read on to find out how big a difference its custom user interface (UI), called HTC Sense, makes to the underlying Google Android operating system (OS).
Design
From a materials viewpoint, the Hero is one of our favorite HTC devices to date. The area around its LCD has a matte metallic finish, while the rest of it has a soft-touch feel. Our review unit is the white version which has been coated with a Teflon material supposed to repel fingerprints. This felt very good in the hands and did remain quite clean in our one week with it. The Hero measures 112 x 56.2 x 14.4mm and weighs 135g. It's not as slim as some other smartphones, but still very compact.
When photos of the Hero first emerged, we were skeptical about the tilted portion below the screen. Though HTC has employed this "chin" on its first two Android devices, the Dream and Magic, neither was as pronounced as the Hero's. While it may not be to everyone's liking, the tilt did not bother us. It wasn't uncomfortable in the pocket and we felt that it gave the smartphone character since most other devices are flat.
Six shortcuts adorn the front of the Hero under the screen. These are your standard Android buttons including the Call and Hang up keys, menu and back shortcuts. A trackball is also found there which lights up when you have notifications. This worked well, though we much preferred the larger version found on the Magic. Volume controls are found on the left side--this has been made to blend with the side profile, which makes the entire design uncluttered.
Like many other HTC phones, syncing and charging are done through a mini-USB connector. With quite a number of HTC phones, you need to purchase an optional adapter to connect a standard set of headphones, but not with the Hero. On its top edge is a standard 3.5mm audio jack, good news for those who use their handsets as music players and like plugging in their favorite pair of headphones.
The screen on the Hero is a 3.2-inch HVGA (320 x 480) capacitive LCD. This is the same as what's found on the Magic but has an added smudge-resistant feature. Now, this doesn't make it magically clean all the time. In fact, we found it as likely to get fingerprint stains as any other phone. What sets the Hero apart is how easy the smudges con be removed, similar to what you find on the iPhone 3GS.
Features
With technical specifications almost identical to the HTC Magic, talking about the Hero's connectivity features feels almost like repeating the Magic review. You get the same HSPA speeds (7.2Mbps uplink/2Mbps downlink), quad-band GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and built-in GPS for navigation. What really sets this iteration apart is the custom software called HTC Sense UI.
This UI is turned on by default and totally replaces the Google Android Home screen. Instead of just spanning three pages, you can scroll between seven, giving you lots of real estate for putting shortcuts. Instead of a single button at the bottom of the interface to bring up your list of applications, there are three, the largest of which sends you to the phone app for making calls. The entire interface looks very different from a vanilla Android and is fully customizable to the user's needs.
The Hero's Home screen is not quite like the vanilla Android one.
(Click for larger image)
To fill up the seven pages, HTC provided a ton of new widgets. The ability to add new widgets was available only from Android 1.5, and it looks like the Taiwan firm's R&D department went on overdrive with its HTC Widgets. For example, just for displaying the time, it offers 12 different widgets. These are in different styles and some of them even integrate weather information below the time. Other interesting examples include some for toggling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Social networking has also not been left out with a Twitter widget that displays your timeline and lets you update your status. This widget ties in with the Peep application, another HTC app which is a fully featured Twitter client. Though we found it a little slow, it was usable and we conveniently used it instead of installing our favorite third-party Twitter app, Twidroid, on Android.
Like TouchFlo on its Windows Mobile devices, HTC greatly modified the contacts feature through Sense UI. Apart from seeing information like phone number and address, all communication with each contact is displayed in one place. So, tapping on someone's name will not only let him call him, but show his text messages, emails and even Facebook, Twitter and Flickr updates on different tabs in the same page.
Even though most Android phones use capacitive touchscreens like the Apple iPhone, the OS doesn't provide support for multitouch. HTC has gone one step ahead by introducing pinch to zoom for the Webkit-based browser. This worked fine for all the pages that we tried but didn't extend to the rest of the applications like Google Maps.
While the Hero's browser has no advantage over the iPhone's Safari browser when it comes to speed and rendering of pages, one feature that stood out is the way it displays text. Chunks of text fit within the width of the screen so you never have to scroll left or right to read them. Even when you zoom in or out, the text reflows to fit the width exactly. Furthermore, Flash is supported so you can watch videos or play Flash games. We wouldn't recommend trying anything too graphically intensive though, as the set tends to slow down in those cases. This feature is nice to have, but on a device like this, it is not practical in many cases.
As with all Android phones, you get the requisite set of features available on Google's mobile operating system. This includes over-the-air Gmail, calendar and contacts syncing, a good YouTube app and access to the Android Market for downloading apps, to name a few.
Good image quality from the Hero's camera, just watch out for the slow shutter speed.
(Click for original image)
The 5-megapixel camera on the back of the Hero has an autofocus lens. It takes good pictures and we were generally pleased with the results. One thing you have to take note is that by default, the shutter speed is quite slow, especially in shady areas, so you have to keep very still or risk having a blurred image.
The Hero has 512MB of memory for storage which can be expanded using a microSDHC card. The media slot is found behind the battery cover, which may be inconvenient for those who swap cards frequently.
Tags: Smart Phone, E-mail, Apple iPhone, Web Browser, Google Android
