HTC Legend Review

Over a relatively short period of time, HTC has preceded a path from a small OEM-manufacturer of mobile devices to one of the leading companies of the smartphone market and now boasts of  collaboration with such giants as Microsoft and Google.

One of the latest innovations introduced by HTC, is the Legend, which continues the traditions of mega-successful model Hero. How it’s going to surprise us?

HTC Legend Specification:

• Weight: 126 grams (4.44 ounces) with battery
• CPU: 600 MHz 7227
• Battery type: Rechargeable Lithium-ion polymer or Lithium-ion battery
• Capacity: 1300 mAh
• Talk time: GSM: Up to 490 mins
• Standby time: GSM: Up to 440 hours
• Camera: 5 megapixel, Auto focus and flash
• 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
• Standard micro-USB
• G-Sensor
• Digital compass
• Proximity sensor
• Ambient light sensor
• Facebook integration
• Friend Stream
• Photo sharing on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter
• Video sharing on YouTube
• HTC Peep for twittering
• Display: AMOLED capacitive touch screen with pinch-to-zoom capability
• Size: 3.2 inches
• Resolution: 320 X 480 HVGA
• Operating System: Android 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense
• ROM: 512 MB RAM: 384 MB
• microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) Supports up to 32 GB
• HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz
• GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• 3G: Up to 7.2 Mbps download speed / Up to 2 Mbps upload speed
• Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
• Tethering: Internet sharing through USB
• Bluetooth® 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
• FM Radio
• Internal GPS antenna
• Google Maps
• HTC Footprints

Design

A distinctive feature of the Legend is the metal aluminum case, made of solid aluminum, which makes it much alike with one of the most stylish notebooks in the world – Apple MacBook. This decision distinguishes the device from the “plastic” brethren. Legend gives the impression of integrity, reliability, and certainly of high quality.

When talking of the appearance of the device you cannot avoid  the comparisons with the HTC Hero. However, due to the use of aluminum HTC Legend weights more. This is a smartphone for active and vibrant people, who appreciate the beauty in themselves and in the surrounding world.

When you hold HTC Legend, it cools your hand. It is comfortable to use the device, as all the buttons are under your fingers.

Software

Nevertheless, today a spectacular design is not enough for the serious smartphone. Features of the device and its friendly user interface are also very important. Fortunately, in this regard Legend is at the top.

The new device is equipped with a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen technology to support multitouch. A trackball is used for  the navigation in the Hero, while Legend is equipped with an optical joystick. As for the buttons, their quality and placement are satisfactory.

All smartphones of HTC production based on Android operating system are equipped with proprietary user interface Sense. HTC has made some interesting changes in the user interface based on the Sense OS Android 2.1. The first – is the ability to simultaneously view all seven desktops and switching to any of them. The new version added a few widgets, in particular, FriendStream – combining news feed for the various social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Plurk.

A useful upgrade is a selection tool with the ability to send, follow-up, increase and copy. Keyboard Touch input in HTC Legend has not undergone any visible changes. While HTC Legend has added support for Adobe Flash, speed was not very good (Let’s hope that this will be fixed).

HTC Legend supports more audio formats formats (AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, MP3, WAV and WMA), than HTC Hero, also encouraged by the presence of FM radio.

Video review of HTC Legend Software:

Keyboard

Depending on what orientation the user holds the device, its screen itself changes the mode of its work from a portrait to landscape and vice versa. This concerns also on-screen keyboard, which is also sensitive to the orientation of device in space. On-screen keyboard of Legend is one of the best of those that we have ever met. The keys are large enough with good feedback, which makes typing of even longer texts easy and convenient.

Hardware

Despite the fact that the processor of HTC Legend (Qualcomm MSM7227 600MHz) operates at a frequency of 72 MHz more than the processor of HTC Hero, yet it would be interesting to compare them in action. It took 20 seconds for HTC Legend to download, while for HTC Hero this was almost 2 times more. The browser of HTC Legend can boast about fast rendering, smooth scrolling and zoom, as well as support for Adobe Flash 10.1. This allows you to view videos on popular services, such as  YouTube.

Battery power of HTC Legend is much the same as the battery of HTC Hero – with the active use of internet, mp3 player, and frequent phone calls, it can live no longer than one day (until you have developed a more comprehensive and compact battery that will be the fate of all contemporary smartphones). The quality of communication deserves very high praise, even in the noisy streets the sound at both ends of the line remains very distinct.

The new AMOLED screen has some drawbacks in a dark room. For comfortable reading brightness it must be placed at minimum, but AMOLED screen shows a noticeable brown color, although it may be a common problem of all AMOLED displays. The rest of the screen deserves only the positive characteristics.

One of the very significant shortcoming, which has been noted by many experts is not too confident signal reception of Wi-Fi network, which is because of metal body of Legend, which performs to a certain extent the role of the screen. No matter how HTC is trying to make a software platform Android more “friendly” to the user, its main drawback was and remains a very limited number of qualitative applications. Perhaps in the future the situation will change for the better, but for now the lack of applications for Android is very palpable.

Camera

HTC Legend is equipped with a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. Pictures taken during the day, look very good, but night shots abound in color noise and look a bit blurry, while flash can be very helpful when shooting objects located within a radius of 2 meters.

Conclusion

The smartphone HTC Legend is one of the most attractive offers in modeling range of HTC. Of course, Nexus One, as well as HTC Desire, are equipped with faster processors and larger screens, but many will like the unusual design and unparalleled attention to details that are present at Legend.