When the HTC Hero made its video debut weeks before official announcement, it looked like we’d see this thing hit the shelves in a full array of colors, from Neon Yellow to Turqoise. By the time it became official, however, most of these variations had disappeared. By the time the press event wrapped up, we saw only two variations: one black, one white.
It looks like at least two more are in the works, however.
The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone.
Here it is in living color: the HTC Hero/Sense UI walk-through. This is a real phone running the actual software and we delve into some of the most important features including social media integration and the browser experience.
The most interesting thing is that all of the contact/Facebook/Twitter interaction is automatic. You import your login info and it just shows up without fuss or muss. There is none of the Palm Pre’s linked-list creation. This is a small improvement but makes a world of difference in most cases. The Facebook info updates once every two hours so when profile pictures or contact info is updated online, the phone updates itself automatically.
So we just got word that HTC will be the first manufacturer to bring Adobe Flash to the Android platform with the release of its new Hero / Sense device. If you needed more proof that Android is here to stay and will not sit on the sidelines in the mobile operating systems game, this is it. If you think about it, the iPhone is now the only platform with substantial weight on the market that doesn’t boast support for Flash.
With the new Flash Player 10 just around the corner and HTC officially joining the Open Screen Project, Android, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Palm WebOS will be among the first platforms to support full web browsing and access to virtually all Flash-based Web content.
Live from the HTC press event.
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The era of Android customization has begun with HTC’s Sense UI, a customized overlay for Android that adds HTC’s stunning graphical interface to the sturdy Android OS. The UI will run on the new Hero, a 3.2-inch touchscreen phone running at 528MHz with MicroSD slot.
More specs on the phone:
With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content, while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including AGPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.
The new Android UI will have something called “Perspectives,” a new method for connecting email, contacts, and social media automatically. This version will also be the first to support Flash natively.
So here’s my assessment:
Sorry, Palm: this is the new hotness. The HTC Hero with Sense does everything WebOS can do but it uses Android, a platform that is already popular with the geekerati and has a great install base. There wasn’t much to see in these versions – a short hands-on appears below – but you’re looking at what promises to make Android the real killed feature-phone OS: customizability with an eye on processor intensive “data linking.”
The parts we saw of the OS promise contact linking, which will allow you to add social media aspects to contacts. Instead of a name and address you can add Flickr streams, Twitter info, and other goodies. The changeable UI based on activities – the weekend vs. weekday screens – promises fewer distractions during key points in your life (i.e. when going out with the kids you can hide your email). Most importantly, however, this is Android. It has a full app store.
Oh, and it has Flash.
As I’ve said, Android is the next WinMo. It’s the more powerful smartphone OS for business and casual users and because it is open it can be customized to your liking in seconds. OEMs will lap it up because it’s free. More in a bit.
Whether it was an intentional leak or someone just missed the “Private” button, we’re not sure – but for just a few hours today, a promo video for the as-of-yet unannounced HTC Hero found its way online.
As anyone who has spent some time with any recent HTC-made Windows Mobile phone ought to know, HTC has a serious knack for taking mobile OSes and customizing them – and there’s no better OS for that than Android. After cranking out the Dream and the Magic with only limited modifications, all signs indicate that HTC is going all out with the tweaks on the upcoming HTC Hero.
Over the past few weeks, a build of the HTC Hero ROM has been floating around, albeit closely guarded, amongst the developer community. A hacker going by the name of Haykuro would port it to the G1, then demonstrate the new features on video. Eventually the build leaked without without Haykuro’s permission, and it spread like wildfire. It’s a buggy beta build and lacks some of the features we’ve already seen (like the Rosie UI home screen), but it’s relatively functional and gives us a sneak peek at some of the cool things to come from the future HTC Android devices.
Forget about cupcake and the Palm Pre, this is were it is at. This video supposedly shows off the next version of Android although we really don’t know if it came from Google, HTC, or a some random hacker. What we do know is that we’re stoked if this is the next version of Android. Check out the video after the break.
Wow. Lets just say that if this story is true, it might not be a good idea to store a spare HTC Touch Pro battery in a back jeans pocket. Allegedly this man did just that, and the the battery heated up a bit over specification. Enough so that it burned his jeans. Wow.
I walked into my house early this week to the smell of burning. I couldn’t find where it was coming from. Last night as I was gathering my laundry I noticed a burn through the back of my jeans. A HUGE hole. I had a spare Touch Pro battery in my back pocket. It had expanded and obviously started a fire in my jeans. They were in a clothes pile and buried, so I assume that there wasn’t enough oxygen to start a fire. I will post pictures later, but be very careful where you store extra batteries. I was very worried about my home.
Just like the iPhone, it took a while to reach Japanese shores, but now Android finally goes Nippon as well. The country’s largest telecommunications company, NTT, has picked up the rights to distribute the first mobile phone that uses the Android OS in Japan.
T-Mobile is betting big on Android this year. Cole Brodman, T-Mobile’s CTO,
We are looking to launch multiple Android-based devices in the second half of this year with three partners,
Three he says? HTC and Samsung have already been confirmed by the leaked Android roadmap, but who is the third?
Word on the street is HTC may be developing a netbook-type device for T-Mobile that’ll run the Android operating system. This is all per “an anonymous tipster” over at TmoToday.com, so take it all with a grain of salt.
Jeez, now that’s a leak: 1 little sheet of paper, 6 device launch dates, and 1 confirmation of a previously unannounced service.
Lookie, lookie. It seems that HTC’s next Android handset couldn’t avoid the geek paparazzi. We hear that this phone is the rumored HTC Hero and might get a release sometime in Q3 of this year, which sounds ’bout right if working handsets are already in the wild.
Oh, inventory systems. You’re the source of countless pre-release confirmations, open to anyone with a polo bearing the proper logo.
T-mobile hasn’t (officially) confirmed the HTC Magic was heading to their shelves, but it’s been pretty much undeniable for the past few weeks. Now, according to this leaked shot, it’s already in the inventory system.
You gotta hand it to the marketing/PR peeps in the mobile gadget space for figuring out how to announce phones, yet hold back just enough to get some coverage out of the details disclosed months later.
By all major counts, I should hate this phone. I don’t generally like candybar QWERTY phones, and I don’t like Windows Mobile 6.1. But somehow, HTC has brought both of these things together in a way that I really like.
The hardware itself is rock solid; it’s well balanced and nicely weighted in the hand, and the 12mm profile looks deadly sharp.
Contrary to what Facebook friend counts may lead you to believe, most people really don’t have hundreds upon hundreds of friends. Sure, they may know some absurd number of people – but according to a study by HTC, about 55% of people really only care about communicating with five or fewer people.
