HTC Hero

The HTC Hero is Sprint’s first Android phone, and is arguably the best Android device on the U.S. market today. It sports HTC’s custom Sense interface for home screen multitasking, a 5-megapixel camera, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Plus, this device offers pretty snappy performance, addressing the biggest complaint reviewers have had with the European version. These features—paired with its full Microsoft Exchange support—make the $179 Hero a top-notch smart phone.

Design

The Hero differs slightly from its European cousin in that its boxy Jay Leno-esque chin has been replaced by a rounded, silver-accented bottom. The device has a smoky gray color scheme surrounding the 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen display. The 480 x 320-pixel screen is gorgeous, and reacted with a high level of accuracy to our inputs. Measuring 4.5 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches, the Hero is similar in size to the myTouch 3G on T-Mobile (4.4 x 2.2 x 0.6), but it is heavier (4.6 ounces versus 4.1 ounces). The Hero’s main Home, Menu, Search and Send/End buttons are located below the screen, and all surround a centralized trackball.

The back of the Hero has a plastic gunmetal gray cover, which houses a silver-colored 5-MP camera; however, the camera lacks a flash. Volume controls are on the left side of the phone, while HTC’s proprietary charging port is on the bottom. The 3.5mm jack is placed appropriately on the top of the device, which helps prevent headphone cord tangles. We found it frustrating that there isn’t a dedicated camera button on the side of the device; instead, you have to manually choose the icon from the phone’s menu.

User Interface

The Hero runs Google’s open source Android operating system, which, in addition to allowing third-party software makers to create apps for the device, also lets manufacturers install their own custom user interfaces on top of it. There are three primary buttons on the home screen: one arrow that brings up the application menu, another for accessing the phone app, and a third + button that lets you add widgets to the home screen. If you access the main application menu, you’ll be presented with a list of preinstalled apps that include NFL Mobile Live, Quickoffice, Sprint Navigation, and Sprint TV.

From the home screen, you can pull down a notification shade by swiping your finger down from the top of the display, allowing you to view missed calls, messages, or other alerts. This feature is part of Android, and has not been tweaked by HTC.

HTC’s Sense theme sits on top of the Android user interface, and creates a rich desktop experience. From the home screen you can swipe your finger (or roll the trackball) right or left to explore a total of seven screens that you can customize with widgets. To add a widget, simply hold your finger down and choose either Android Widget or HTC Widget. Sense comes preloaded with tons of custom HTC widgets that you can add to your desktop. These include Bookmarks, Calendar, Clock, Footprints, Mail, Messages, Music, People (your Contacts), Photo Albums, Photo Frames, Search, Stocks, Twitter, and Weather.

Each of these widgets updates in real time, so if you have the Twitter widget (powered by Peep) on your desktop, for example, you can view your friend’s status updates as they roll in. These Sense enhancements aren’t available on HTC’s other handsets (such as the G1 or myTouch 3G on T-Mobile), but HTC expects to include Sense in future device launches.

The aforementioned seven-panel home screen can be tweaked to your preferences, and you can save specific themes you’ve created. Different themes, or Scenes, as HTC calls them, can be applied by pressing the Menu button from the home screen and choosing Scenes. HTC includes a few basic ones, including Play, Social, Travel, and Work, all of which possessing predefined widgets that are designed to match the corresponding theme name.

Sense also contains some smaller (but important) touches. Inside the Contacts application, for example, you can create groups of friends, favorites, or even link people with Facebook to view updates or upcoming events. T-Mobile’s Motorola Cliq, which features Motorola’s MotoBlur interface, offers a similar widget interface, but your friend’s status updates from social networks like Facebook are presented directly in your inbox, which may prove to be a more seamless and robust experience when the phone launches.

Keyboard

The Hero doesn’t offer a physical QWERTY keyboard, so you’ll be relying entirely on the touch screen. At first, we had to be very deliberate with each key press, but over time we learned to type accurately and quickly. We appreciated the haptic feedback, which let us know when each key was pressed by giving off a small buzz sensation. You can type in vertical or landscape modes, but when we turned the screen to swap between the two modes, it took between a few seconds for the keyboard to reorient itself.