HTC Legend review – A journey from “Hero” to “Legend”
Thumbs Up:
Aluminum unibody design; 5-megapixel camera with LED flash; GPS receiver with digital compass for automatic navigation; FM radio with RDS; Web browser with flash support; AMOLED capacitive touch-screen with proximity sensor, accelerometer, pinch-to-zoom and multi-touch.
Thumbs Down:
No voice dialing; no video call camera; no dedicated camera key; missing lens shield.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone Design: Candy Bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other Features: Google Android 2.1 (Éclair), 3.5mm headset jack, 5-megapixel camera, GPS receiver, FM Radio with RDS
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
HTC Legend is powered with 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor, 512MB ROM and 384MB RAM. It also has micro-SD expansion slot that accepts up to 32GB. The operating system is Google Android 2.1 (Éclair). Supported wireless interfaces are Bluetooth 2.1 and IEEE 802.11b/g. The Legend has GPS receiver with digital compass for automatic navigation.
3.2 inches capacitive touch screen AMOLED display has 320×480 pixels (HVGA) resolution that supports 16-million colors. 5-megapixel camera features auto-focus, LED flash, wide-screen photo capture, geo-tagging, and video-recording.
Available widgets are Weather, Twitter, Stocks, Settings, Search, Photo Frame, Photo Album, People, News, Music, Messages, Mail, Friend Stream, Footprints, Clock, Calendar, and Bookmarks.
There are two connectors – 5-pin USB 2.0 micro-USB and 3.5mm stereo headset jack. Accessories supplied inside the package are 2GB micro-SD card, USB cable, user manual, software disc, and 3.5mm headset jack.
Razzle Dazzle:
HTC Legend is 4.41 inches tall, 2.22 inches wide, and 0.45 inch thick and weighs 4.44 ounces with battery. It feels extra solid while taking in hand. The Legend has industrial design and seems to be a work of art due to precision engineering. Its body is made up of a single piece of aluminum. HTC Hero had special Teflon coating that captures dirt and fingerprints, but the Legend’s aluminum avoids the smudges and fingerprints.
Inside Dope:
HTC Hero is one of the famous smartphone in the United States and Europe. It was released in July 2009 with 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 288MB RAM, Google Android OS and Sense UI. It could not win the market due to its drawbacks such as sluggish performance, lacks support for Web browser and absence of media sync software. Now, the company has launched the success of Hero – HTC Legend. It features 600MHz processor, 384MB RAM, 5-megapixel camera, AMOLED display, Web browser with Flash support, and especially Google Android 2.1. The price and carrier details are not available till the time writing review. HTC Legend has aluminum uniform body like a high-end gaming laptop. We hope that HTC Legend will fix all of the previous issues with its upcoming release in the United States.
HTC Legend has 3.2 inches capacitive touch-screen AMOLED display of HVGA (320×480 pixels) resolution that supports 16-million colors. It is better than 64K colors TFT screen of HTC Hero. In contrast, HTC Hero has brighter screen while the Legend has darker blacks due to AMOLED display. The Legend features inbuilt proximity sensor, accelerometer, pinch-to-zoom, and multi-touch. You may have to struggle while using its AMOLED screen in direct sunlight. However, the images look crispy and the display appears good from all viewing angles.
There is black glossy bevel around the display of HTC Legend. You will find Home, Menu, Back (arrow), and Search (magnifying glass) buttons located below the display. We are disappointed that these buttons are made up of same plastic like in the Hero and looks cheap, but they are good while usage. The optical trackball sits beneath these buttons in the center. The trackball is unobtrusive, flat and convenient to use.
3.5mm headset jack and power/lock key sits on the top, while micro-USB port is located on the bottom. The cameral lens with flash is on the back at a black rubberized plastic strip on top. On the left, this strip is punctured with little holes for loudspeaker. We will recommend you to take care of camera lens as there is no lens shield. As usual, the micro-SD card slot and SIM card are located beneath the battery. The bottom plastic strip is actually a battery cover. You can slide it down to remove and then open plastic flap. We do not like that you may have to remove the battery to access card slot.
There is a virtual onscreen full QWERTY keyboard for messaging and emails. The accelerometer rotates the keyboard also while tilting HTC Legend. However, the portrait keyboard looks small and crowded as compared to landscape one. We like that you can press and hold on a text box to access copy, cut, and paste functions. What’s more – you can copy and paste even in between applications like chats, notes, emails, etc.
HTC Legend will be launched with Google Android OS 2.1 and new version of Sense UI. In contrast, HTC Hero is scheduled to get version 2.1 in April. In HTC Legend, HTC Sense UI allows selecting six custom home-screen setups including Social, Travel, and Work etc. At all screens, you will see three virtual buttons on the bottom: – arrow, call/phone, and plus. You can tap arrow button to drag in and out the main menu, while the plus sign will bring the “Add to Home” menu. Each screen will show different wallpapers and widgets on the home-screen. You cannot modify the scenes, but you can re-arrange them and save as new scene.
We like that HTC Legend has twelve clock formats and revamped widgets. Twitter widget will show updates and lets you to tweet directly from home-screen. Favorites widget keeps favorite contacts list, while Photo Album widget shows all photon stored on the phone. You will also get benefits of Messages, Mail, stock and Weather widgets.
HTC Legend can store the contacts limited to available memory and SIM card can hold additional 250 contacts. Each entry can save multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and so forth. You can organize the contacts into caller groups and pair them with ring-tone, and photo for caller ID. On opening a contact details, you will get separate tabs for basic info, SMS, Email Tab to see recent emails, Facebook to know updates, and Albums to show their pictures on Facebook and Flickr. There is also a search function to find contacts.
You will get an onscreen virtual alphanumeric keypad on opening the dial application. It also has shortcuts for call logs and contacts lists. HTC Legend also features smart dialing and turn-to-mute by inbuilt accelerometer. Like HTC Magic and the Hero, the Legend will vibrate as soon as your call is connected. We are disappointed that there is no voice dialing in HTC Legend, like its predecessor – the Hero.
Messaging features include text and multimedia messages, instant messengers, Mail app to support POP3/IMAP4/SMTP, Exchange compatible client, and Gmail. As soon as you add some multimedia content to a text message, it will be converted into MMS. Advanced highlights of HTC Legend are quad-band world roaming, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 connectivity, GPS/A-GPS, and Web browser with flash support.
The Web browser features address bar, pinch-to-zoom, +/- zoom buttons, and double tap support for text reflow and zooming. You will also get the benefits of multi-tab browsing, forward/backward buttons, bookmarks, and refresh. For GPS, there is Google Maps with Street View mode.
HTC Legend also comes with QuickOffice app to access documents of Microsoft Office including 2007 version. You will also get PDF viewer and a document viewer integrated with Gmail to send the files directly without opening the email application. Its calendar has four views – agenda, monthly, weekly and daily. You will also get reminder that acts as alarm. The other organizer features are alarm clock, calculator, Desk clock on home-screen, World clock, Stocks app for getting quotes from Yahoo! Finance, voice recorder, Facebook and Peep applications.
5-megapixel camera features LED flash; face, blink and smile detection; and video recording. can capture images up to 2592×1936 pixels. It can record VGA videos at 30fps. The overall picture and recorded viHTC Legenddeo quality was good while testing.
There is an Album app that allows sharing multiple images from albums at Picasa, Peep, Messages, HTC Mail, Gmail, Flickr and Facebook. This application supports pinch-to-zoom up to 100% and multi-touch.
The music player of HTC Legend features album art, play-list, and FM radio with RDS.
Inbuilt video player supports MP4 and 3GP videos, but does not support XviD/DivX. You can download the additional video player for XviD/DivX from Android Market, We played some videos on the smartphone and it played them back perfect with good pixels.
You can download the more options like applications and games from Android Market. We appreciate the Google to expand its market regularly as per industry standards.
We made few calls through test version of HTC Legend with Sprint service. The overall call quality was excellent. We and our callers received loud and clear sounds without any static or voice distortion.
1300mAH lithium ion battery has a life of 490 minutes talk time and 440 hours standby time in GSM. In WCDMA, the battery life is 440 minutes talk time and 560 hours standby time. Due to faster processor, HTC Legend performs much better than the Hero.
Nitty Gritty:
Needless to say – HTC Legend will be a great smartphone and much better than the Hero. However, it has AMOLED display and only 600MHz processor. In contrast, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Google Nexus One, and HTC Desire offer 1GHz Snapdragon processor for faster performance.
If you need a latest HTC handset with Google Android 2.1 better than the Hero, then go for – HTC Legend.
