In the past, the world was ruled by phones of two main Operating systems, Windows Mobile and Symbian. This was until the world was attacked by the Android. First seen with the G1, the Android seems to be fast emerging the winner of the war of the OSs. The Hero is from the Magic lineage and comes with an advanced version of the Android. But then the phone’s USP is not just the OS, it is the unique design of the phone along with a host of other features built into it. Though packed with more features, the Hero suffers from more or less the same problems faced by the Magic. But overall the Hero does manage to impress.

Design and UI:
What sets heroes different from the others? They are just different, aren’t they? And that’s what the HTC Hero is all about. The Hero comes built into a unique design and comes with features that could put the best phone to shame. The phone though is not perfect and comes with its own set of flaws. At 135 Gms the phone is quite a handful and comes in a choice of Brown, White (Teflon coating), Graphite, Black, and Pink with an angular chin – a welcome change. The wide 3.2 inch touch screen takes up most of the frontal space with the most useful hardware shortcuts placed beneath. The Call buttons are placed at the extremes with the menu and the home keys occupying the center space. An interesting feature of the end key is that it also doubles up as the power switch. The phone can also be locked by pressing the end key. The Menu key brings up the context dependant menus as well as the main menu interface. The Home key hardly needs any introduction and the back button is just as self explanatory. On the chin are placed some additional keys: the trackball for navigation and the search key. The search key is pretty useful since it brings up context dependant searches instead of just bringing up the familiar Google interface. The phones sides are pretty bare except for the volume toggle; no wonder there isn’t a dedicated camera or shutter key. But then they are hardly missed.

The engineers at HTC have finally managed to create the near perfect UI with the Sense UI. A cross between HTC’s TouchFLO and the Google stock interface, the Sense UI features among other things the Scene. A Scene is essentially a complete set of widgets for six different custom desktop setups. A travel scene might have a weather widget while a work scene might give you live stock quotes. Then there is the over hauled phone book which lets you have contextual information for each contact. The beauty of the UI though is in the widgets. The sheer number of widgets for everything from Twitter to Music player to Photo gallery can really be overwhelming. The downside though is the memory. Most applications will simply refuse to work without a microSD.

Multimedia:
The phone has been fitted with a 5 MP camera with auto focus and digital zoom. As long as the sun shines bright, the pictures reciprocate but then…you guessed it. No flash. Why would HTC want to do that? The excellent camera interface, controlled by the trackball is all useless in dim light. But the interface is nonetheless very interesting. The built in settings like white balance and sharpness make professional grade.

The camera can also record video at 15 fps just as easily as it handles the still pictures. The trackball and the large screen are actually very convenient to this effect.

The music player is a complete overhaul over the HTC Magic but this time around lack any built in presets or visualizations. The player though comes with excellent search features as can be expected from the Android.

Video player is excellent and the large screen only makes the experience more exciting.

Organizer and email:
The calendar and the clock, the trademarks of the Android, let you fix appointments, schedule your days and manage your time just as efficiently.
Whew. The features do not seem to be ending. For the email freaks, the phone comes with two email clients: the regular Gmail customized to HTC standards and the custom HTC mail client that debuted with the Magic. The full QWERTY virtual keypad makes messaging and email writing smooth and easy. Features include auto sync with corp. email, batch processes, contextual search and conversation style view mode.

Specifications:

Display: 3.2 inch TFT capacitive touch screen with support for 65K colors.
Dimensions: 112 x 56.2 x 14.4 mm.
Weight: 135 gms.
Camera: Main camera – 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, auto focus, video recording.
Secondary camera – No.
Audio: Music player with support for MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player.
Video: Video player with support for MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9.
Messaging: SMS, MMS, and Email including Gmail and Instant Messaging with gTalk.
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, mini USB, Wi-Fi.
Internet: EDGE, GPRS, 3G HSDPA, HSUPA, HSDSC, built in browser with flash support.
Games: Built-in and downloadable.
Memory: 512 MB internal with support for microSD.
Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1350 mAh with stand-by time up to 750 hours and talk time up to 7 hours.
Extras:
* Android OS v1.5 Cupcake.
* Accelerometer for auto rotation of the screen.
* Sense UI.
* Multi touch input.
* Search key.
* Scenes profile switcher.
* Smart dial.
* GPS with A-GPS support and Google Maps.
* Digital Compass.
* Widget support.
* Organizer.
* Quick Office for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF.