HTC (宏達電) is doing great things these days with smartphones. Two of the Taiwanese company’s latest models, the HTC Legend and the HTC HD Mini, boast highly attractive designs and full-fledged features for those who need to be constantly connected.
The HTC Legend, which has a retail price of NT$16,900, is a slim, sleek device with a multitouch screen that’s fun and easy to use. It’s powered by Android 2.1, the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system, which makes the device a worthy competitor to the iPhone.
With its silver brushed-metal casing and glass touchscreen, the Legend looks like both a sci-fi gadget and a luxury accessory. The device, which measures 112mm x 56mm x 11.5mm, feels smooth with a slight heft; it’s like holding a fine stone carving. It’s almost too nice — you wouldn’t want to shove the phone in a pocket full of loose change and your car keys.
JUST A TOUCH
The Legend’s elegant look and feel is matched by top-notch software. HTC designed a home screen interface (dubbed HTC Sense) that spices up practical functions with snazzy graphics. A clock displays the time and current weather conditions — if it’s cloudy and rainy outside, then animations of raindrops and cloud mist float around the screen.
But the real feature is fast, user-friendly access to things like e-mail, text messaging and the Internet. The home screen is actually a set of five different pages where you can add a widget for the apps you use the most, whether it’s a calendar or Twitter.
Just flick left or right to slide to a different page, or pinch inwards with two fingers to get a bird’s-eye view of all the pages (similar to Mac OS X’s Expose function).
The Legend’s screen, which measures 8.1cm in diameter and has a resolution of 320 x 480, is bright and crisp — the colors pop out and the text looks crystal sharp. With multitouch gestures, the Legend is snappy and responsive, thanks in part to the 600Mhz processor.
Typing on the Legend’s virtual keyboard is what you expect from a touchscreen phone — it feels naked at first if you haven’t used one before. HTC’s typing software simulates a physical keyboard by making the phone vibrate with every key press. Not quite the real thing, but it helps.
APP HAPPY
Setting up the phone is a breeze. I used a demo model on loan from HTC as my mobile phone for a week and within 10 minutes of taking it out of the box and inserting my SIM card, I was checking my e-mail and Facebook accounts, surfing the Web and receiving phone calls.
For those who use Google Web services, Android makes it easy to import contacts and calendar events, which display nicely on HTC’s calendar app. Gmail devotees will love Google’s mobile e-mail app, which is included on most Android phones and has all the functionality of the Web version. One minor annoyance, though, is the lack of the ability to cut and paste text. But this function works on most other programs in Android, including HTC’s own e-mail program and text messaging.
The Legend’s Web browser is good, but falls slightly short of the iPhone’s in terms of speed. It can, however, display Web sites that use Flash animation and video — something the iPhone doesn’t do.
While it may not match the size of Apple’s app store, Android Market is catching up and already offers some quality programs. I was wowed by the beta version of Google Sky Map, which uses the phone’s GPS and orientation sensors to show the real-time positions of the stars and planets. On the more practical side, the popular Train Schedules (火車時刻表) app lists the latest schedules for the Taiwan Railway Administration and the High Speed Rail.
For avid users of social networks, HTC has a nice program called Friendstream, which integrates your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plurk accounts into a single window. It saves the trouble of logging on to each Web site separately, and I especially liked how it can display your Flickr contacts’ photos in a gallery style format with just one tap.
THE BIG PICTURE
The Legend’s built-in 5-megapixel camera produces surprisingly good pictures. With ample lighting, the quality is on par with many point-and-shoot cameras, but not so great in darkly lit rooms, even with the flash. For storage, the phone comes bundled with a 2-gigabyte microSD card, but supports storage cards of up to 32 gigabytes.
There’s so much to like about this phone, which makes it easy to overlook some glaring shortcomings: the Legend lacks a way of synchronizing photos and music with your computer, except for manually dragging and dropping the files yourself. HTC includes a program that synchronizes your contacts and calendar with Microsoft Outlook — why not photos and MP3s?
For battery life, I managed a day and a half before having to recharge the phone. During this length of time, I made three or four brief phone calls, sent a half dozen text messages and spent three or four hours writing e-mails, surfing the Web and watching YouTube videos. The battery is removable.
THE BASICS: HTC HD MINI
I spent another week using the HTC HD Mini, a smaller and slimmer touchscreen smartphone that retails for NT$15,900.
The price is steep, considering that the phone runs on Windows Mobile 6.5, an outdated operating system that drags in performance when compared to Android. The HD Mini has full touchscreen functionality, but it’s neither as responsive nor as smooth as the Legend, which is similarly priced.
But the HD Mini does a fine job with the basics — e-mail, contacts, text messaging and photos — thanks to the HTC Sense interface, which is different from the version on the Legend but still user-friendly. Unfortunately, since there is no app like the Legend’s Friendstream, you have to access your Twitter and Facebook accounts through separate programs.
Web browsing on the HD Mini isn’t bad, but not nearly as good as Android or iPhone. The HD Mini comes bundled with Opera, which allows for pinch and zoom features, but the pages generally are slower to load and the ugly fonts make the text unpleasant to read for long periods of time.
EVEN SMALLER AND THINNER
The HD Mini will win some people over for its compact size. Measuring 108mm by 57.7mm by 11.7mm, it fits snugly in the palm of your hand and easily slips into a front jeans pocket. The device is also attractive in its own right, sporting a sleek but rugged design with its smooth, rubberized back. The 8.2cm screen, which has a resolution of 320 x 480, is very bright and crisp.
There are a few other nifty features that the Legend doesn’t have. The HD mini can act as a Wi-Fi router and share its 3G or GPRS connection with any nearby wireless device, such as a laptop computer. Say you and a friend are at a cafe with laptops but there’s no Wi-Fi; you can both connect to the Internet through your phone.
The HD Mini is also designed to be discreet in social settings. The volume of the ringer automatically lowers when you pick up the phone, and you can mute the phone by turning it face down (the Legend also has these features). In “pocket mode,” the phone automatically increases the ringer volume when placed inside a pocket or a bag to prevent missed calls.
The HD Mini and the Legend both offer good call quality and are closely matched in terms of features. Choosing between the two may boil down to looks, but the Legend is more intuitive and easier to use.
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