One of the most significant announcements of the past week was the unveiling of the HTC Hero, the company’s latest Android smartphone. It shares many of the same hardware specs of other HTC Android phones such as the HTC Magic or T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G. But most importantly is the new interface, HTC Sense, that moves away from the usual Android look in order to create a uniform look regardless of the operating system used. Likely this means HTC will use Sense on Windows Mobile phones in the future.
Sense has a distinct focus on personalization. You can choose the widgets placed on the Hero’s homescreen and the widgets themselves can also be customized. Organization tends to be focused around your contacts whether they be in your phonebook or on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The one inconvenience caused by the customized operating system is the lack of over-the-air updates. Unfortunately HTC Hero owners will have to manually update Android and I’m not sure if that means Sense will require fixes everytime a new version of Android comes out.
The 3.2-inch touchscreen HTC Hero has an onscreen keyboard, GPS and the usual other wireless features available on HTC Android phones. It’ll ship in Europe in July, Asia later in the summer, and North America sometime after that.
Read
