After going over to the HTC Launch Event a few months back, today I bought home a HTC Hero and lets open it up and give some deep insights about this device.
This device is HTC’s first multitouch device. Together with Google Android’s Operating system and HTC’s Sense User Interface, which is somehow similar to SPB Mobile Shell / TouchFLO, to some sense.
The StarHub guy come in and knocks on my door and , hello!
After unwrapping it, I felt that it used a lot of packaging materials.
This is the overview of the whole HTC Hero unboxing.
Photo of the papers involved in the box.
The phone inside the wrapping.
As well as this sticker on the screen that tries to tell me not to use the touchscreen at all!
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The phone uses the MiniUSB port, which means most chargers will be able to work on the phone, including Motorola’s. It comes with a 3.5mm audio headjack, so you can plug in your favourite tunes and it has light sensing technologies and run Android 1.5.
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Lets move into HTC’s Sense User Interface, something that HTC has redesigned Android for.
Firstly, Android allows you to put everything into one place.
Secondly, HTC Sense will request you to integrate all your social networking tools into one place – inside your phone.
After all the email is set up, you will greeted with this email screen when swipping through the 7 homescreens on the phone.
This is my main homescreen, when I am in Chua Chu Kang.
Twitter integration allows messages to be ‘pushed’ to you where-ever you go.
As for the virtual keyboard, it seems to be using the ezInput 2.1 keyboard taken from the HTC Touch series, which is incidently running on Windows Mobile.
Weather is in 3D images, and when it rains it will produce really nice graphic effects on the screen. Weather provided by Yahoo Weather and/or Accuweather.
The emails functions is quite simple, and it list your emails just like the iPhone, nothing much about it actually. But I do have to say that emails take slight seconds to load, which is not too noticeble when opening small emails.
Going into the browser, Visual Bookmarks allow you to see all your bookmarks on the phone, visually.
There is also Visual Windows, which is something similar to Tabs, on the phone.
Android Marketplace, where you can have access to over 5000 applications and counting.
The good thing is, most of the applications is free! Yeah, totally free!
The settings screen in the android platform, nothing much. But its pretty detailed anyway!
The Google Maps application.
The phone dialer includes a smart dial feature, which you can easily write the initials on someone’s name and bing, you can find em.
The album application, which you can ‘pinch’ and do multitouch on the hero itself.
The neat and nice calender application which will show you all the dates.
The music application will come in handy, as it features some kind of cover flow animation.
Notifications can be ‘pulled’ from the top.
Basically, that is all about the HTC Hero, I have covered most aspects of it, however, if you have any more questions, you can twitter me @jeremy89632.
Cheers.
