Elastic Media Freelance Web Design Leeds

I needed a new phone. My long serving SPV C550 had degraded to such a point that it had really started to annoy me, so I was on the lookout for a replacement.

Initially, I was dead set on HTC’s Touch HD. Side by side the specs looked comparable to the iPhone, which I was also considering …and it ran Windows Mobile.

Now, Windows Mobile isn’t a great OS by any stretch of the imagination, in fact its pretty much awful, but that’s what worked with my outlook/exchange setup, and I was looking for the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately in their wisdom, Orange decided not to offer me the HD on upgrade. I’m unsure why it wasn’t made an option, but I gave up trying for it and my attention wandered back over into Apple territory.

The iPhone is obviously a great phone, but the 3GS had just been launched on O2, prices were raised across the board(!), and the 24 month contract that was on offer started to seem like an awfully long time. Then the HTC Hero was launched.

The HTC Hero runs on Android. Initially developed by Google (and continued by the Open Handset Alliance), Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices.

When I first heard of Android, I was intrigued by the novelty of it, but < designer > a bit let down by how it looked < / designer >. Android like most Google offerings, did lots of interesting and entertaining things, but visually it was pretty basic. Dull even. Like aesthetics were a bit of an afterthought.

Then along comes the Hero. HTC have a track record with taking ugly mobile operating systems, and making them shiny and useable and nice. The Touch HD is a prime example. The HD’s ‘Touch Flo’ system runs over the top of ugly, ugly Windows Mobile. Most of the time you’d never know your were using a Windows phone. The word on the street was that HTC had given the same treatment to Android with their ‘Sense UI’ system, so I checked out a couple of demo videos for the Hero, and took the plunge. I bought one.

So here are my thoughts…

Firstly the packaging (I’m a designer after all!). The box the Hero arrived in was very nice, very white and of the slidey-out-from-the-bottom opening type. A definite nod to Apple packaging. It reminded me of the kind of box you might find surrounding an expensive perfume, or an exotic Japanese whisky? It’s a little thing, but that kind of presentation adds to the experience of owning a gadget.

The phone itself is a nice piece of kit. It’s weighty in the hand without being heavy. It feels quality.

Much has been made online about the phone’s ‘chin’ – an area angled forward at the bottom of the phone – but it isn’t that prominent in real life, and allows a more natural access to the Hero’s hardware buttons. It makes sense. The touchscreen is also pin sharp and viewable in all but the strongest direct sunlight.

HTC have again done a really nice job with their Sense UI system. It’s a smooth flowing, well rounded experience full of clever touches.

The contact list for example checks your Facebook profile and asks if you’d like to merge your friends’ profile info (updates, profile photo’s) into the phone’s address book. This automatically updates in the background, so if someone changes their profile photo on Facebook, it updates on your phone. You can also update your own Facebook status directly from the contact list. It’s a nice little touch.

There’s also a pretty nifty Twitter client, which allows you to Geotag your tweets (using the Hero’s built in GPS).

One of the areas of concern for me before I got the phone was the Android Marketplace. Marketplace is to Android, what the App Store is to the iPhone. I had worries that their wouldn’t be much to choose from, and that the experience of installing apps might be a chore. It certainly isn’t a chore. A single click to select the app and one more to install it, all done again in the background. Couldn’t be easier. As for the choice on offer, while there’s a lot of crap on Marketplace, there are some genuinely useful applications. I’m currently running a nice VNC client, and a pretty swish BBC iPlayer gadget, both of which were free.

Downsides? If I’ve been hammering several applications, the smooth flowing Sense UI can stutter – a little – but I’ve not found it big a problem or irritation (like say I did with Windows Mobile!), and a soft reset clears the issue. The applications themselves are unaffected.

Oh, and the touchscreen is a grease magnet. It’s meant to have a Teflon coating. It might be that I have particularly greasy fingers though.

Overall, if you’re looking for a venture into the world of Android, I’d recommend the HTC Hero.