Overview:
Would I buy the HTC Legend over an iPhone? Ummmm…quite possibly. Both the latest HTC Legend and Desire came out a couple of weeks ago, although with not as much fan fair as you might expect from devices which are touted to be iPhone killers (well not where I was looking). Both HTC models are very similar in principle but the Desire has a larger screen and more processing power and memory than the Legend. As I was looking to replace my sluggish iPhone 3G with something new I decided to test as many features as I could on the HTC Legend and see if it was better on day to day tasks for me, including email, web surfing, pod-casts, tunes, and … oh yeah making phone calls.
Review:
Style
From the outside the phone has a very sleek yet slightly plastic feel. However on holding the phone it gives you more confidence. The slightly raised lip at the bottom resembles a Brucie chin and is one of the main distinguishing features of the phone. There is no quick toggle to put the phone on vibrate as in the iPhone. This is done by pressing the minus volume control key continuously. The screen is only activated by pressing the power button, which is slightly annoying, but you get use to it. The screen size is smaller than the iPhone which on some sites is a pain but I again you can adjust to it.
Other notable features include the interface buttons and a nifty optical trackball. Initially I was continually trying to use the trackball as the home key much like the iPhone but after a while you get use to using the other keys. The optical track ball is actually a very good interface if you remember to use it, as the other option is to use the touch screen to navigate around screen options. One of the main drawbacks of the phone in my opinion are the 4 buttons at the bottom of the phone i.e. the Home, Menu, Back and Search Keys. I feel that the designers missed a trick in incorporating this into the touch screen interface. All of this adds to the subtle complexity of the interface, whereas on the iPhone you can do everything on screen and have only 1 physical button to go Home or close apps. I don’t think anyone will get a simpler interface then this for a while.
Under The Bonnet
The Legend runs on the Android 2.1 Éclair platform with HTC sense. It has a 600Mhz Qualcomm CPU, 384MB Ram, 512ROM, MicroSD 2.0 support up to 32GB. It sports a 3.2inch AMOLED touch screen with pinch to zoom, 5MP camera with flash and Geo tagging, 3.5mm stereo jack and micro USB interface. Additionally it has a digital compass and Bluetooth.
Performance is very good on the applications I used, so I cannot really fault it even when multi tasking. Obviously as you load more apps onto the device you will start to notice some degrading in performance as with all thinks (or is it, that your less patient). The camera is good but not great. In daylight the pictures are pretty clear however in areas where there is les light the flash does not always compensate. As I don’t use my phone camera a lot this is nota big issue for me.
Interface
In terms of the GUI interface the design is inviting in nature. HTC call this HTC Sense and is built on their 3 principles of Make it Mine, Stay Close, & Discover the Unexpected. This basically means you can personalise your home screen, add widgets to it and organise it, add Scenes – these are some preset home screen layouts (with their own chosen widgets), and add social networking apps directly to it. The Legend allows you to have 7 panels (home screens) to add programs/widget etc to gain quick access. The menus are restrictive in nature so as not to overburden the user. You can probably figure out most of the options without a manual. The notification bar at the top is used to alert the user of events as they occur. The cool think is that you can drag the notification bar down and view the event in detail from their without having to go and find the correct app. Uninstall apps is pretty much like uninstall on a PC (there is an uninstall tool), unlike on the iPhone when you press and hold the app for a few seconds and get the option to delete. General phone settings are very much like a standard phone as you might come to expect. When you first turn the phone on, you have to run through a setup wizard which resembles the setup wizard on a Blackberry.
Performance
I was testing the device using the 3 network. The Legend seemed to be sluggish with regards to surfing certain sites compared to the iPhone 3G, however I put that down to the fact that the Legend was preparing to run flash files. There are noticeable differences with regards to ‘pinch and zoom’ and tap to ‘zoom and select’. Widescreen resize is also quite slow and noticeable. I tested both on 3G and WIFI and the results were the same. The best part though was the fact that the Legend allowed Flash file playback. This is where it scored higher than the iPhone. As Apple has successfully been able to build a world without Flash, I was under the impression Flash was dead. However the HTC Legend brings this part of the web back to life. A big point to note here is although the phone had a Flash player not all files worked. E.g. certain clips on the BBC news site would not load while others played quite easily.
Email had no problems at all, either with POP or IMAP and with hotmail or Gmail or an ISP account. It just worked.
Making phone calls and text messages was also very intuitive. The phone has a very good search feature with regards to identifying a contact by typing the contacts name or number into the same search field and the phone figures out which one you are typing using the standard keypad keyboard and highlights the contact (you can change to QWERTY layout as required). This is a bit weird at the start but you quickly get use to it. Speech quality is also very good.
With regards to Podcasts, and the lack of iTunes I was forced to use a Google app from the Android market called Google Listen. There are freeware tools out there like iTunes Agent which sync with iTunes but I could not get them to work. Google Listen does a good job at managing podcasts either by downloading them or streaming them directly. This is done all on the handset and not on your PC. As such if you have a download limit on your data package it might not be the best option or just use your home WIFI. Music is played back through the many media players available for the Android platform. I tried the default Music player that came with the phone which did the job for me.
Speaking about the Android Market place, although not as mature as the Apple App store it continues to grow. I was able to download almost all the apps I currently have on my iPhone and find alternates where required. In addition a lot of the iPhone developers look to be developing for Android so I would expect to get these apps sooner or later or find a cloned app. I expect an increased volume of apps for the Android market place as more network providers start to ship Android handsets in the coming months. Many Apps are free which is good as the Legend does not ship with many standard base apps. I even had to download the notepad app.
Tethering was effortless on this device. You will need to install the HTC Sync software on your laptop or PC to get the Android drivers but after that you can simply choose the type of connection required from sliding down the status/notification bar from the top of the screen (options available are Charge only, HTC Sync, Disk Drive, Internet Sharing) and then away you go. The options from this menu again brings back another limit of the iPhone – Drive Sharing. In affect you can use your phone as a thumb drive with a USB cable connection – no WIFI connection required, brilliant.
I was fortunate enough to contact the HTC help desk as my review model did not come with the HTC sync software. It was not released for the Legend then and their website just kept sending me around in circles – a bit useless. Their response time however was great, as I got an answer back the same day from their European held desk with a link to download to software.
When charging the phone from my laptop via the USB cable the phone did get very hot and in some instances it took a very long time (up to 6 hours on laptop) to charge. Also like the iPhone you will still have to charge this device every day without fail so expect to buy multiple chargers / cables. On the plus side it uses a standard 5 pin micro USB 2.0 interface (Apple take note), which you might already have from cameras or other mobile phones.
The Legend is designed with social networking in mind, as such it comes with Facebook, Twitter, Friend Stream, and Google Talk apps. You can of course download others of the Android Market Place.
Syncing and backing up data on the phone is easy with the software. Just connect the phone to your PC install the necessary HTC Sync application and sync away. For all users who have not backed up their contacts list to an application like Microsoft Outlook/Express (or an online tool) I urge them to do so. More and more new smart phones will save your contact info on the phones memory and so the SIM memory will become obsolete. As such its always a good idea to have a external source to backup to, or retrieve when required. HTC Sync will only sync your contacts information and calendar events. This is quite limiting when compared to the iPhone which also syncs notes amongst other things. HTC sync will also allow you to backup your SMS and MMS messages.
From a security perspective the Unlock Pattern feature in the phone is pretty cool. Instead of remembering a number combination, just draw a pattern on a 3 by 3 grid. This looks to be a standard feature on all Android phones.
Google maps is also included in the phone as you might expect. Unfortunately the interface to zoom in and out and move around the maps with finger gestures is not the same as the iPhone, as such it was very disappointing. One good feature however was something called HTC Footprints. This allowed a user to log a specific location with a picture and its exact GPS coordinates and then use the phone to navigate back to that location. Similar to having a Favourites site link but for geographic locations.
I could go on forever about every single app and feature but I’ll stop here.
Gaj-it Verdict:
Design: 8/10
Usability: 7/10
Features: 8/10
Value: 8/10
We Say:
The HTC Legend has been described as a “poor mans iPhone“ by many other reviewers of the device, and to a large extent I would have to agree. Some parts of the phone work very well and others require you to have a little know how to get things done. The interface is not as simple as the iPhone’s and this is very noticeable. In terms of ease of use, the iPhone still wins hands down, however due to the limitations of the iPhone the HTC Legend offer a lot of functionality which is hard to resist. The HTC Legend is in many respects what was required from Apple first time round, and would be a great first smart phone purchase or replacement for many users.
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