HTC Legend Review (hardware)

Supplied by Clove

Price: £370.13

Main features-

Android 2.1 operating system with HTC Sense interface
600MHz processor
3.2 inch AMOLED Display that offering very crisp and rich images
3G/HSDPA
Optical trackball
7 customisable home screen
HTC Friend Stream
GPS
Proximity and ambient light sensors

First impressions of the Legend were very good indeed and there is little doubt that this is a smartphone which will appeal to much of the consumer market. It is great to look at, easy to use and just about covers all of the bases adequately. In the second part of the review I am going to look at the various hardware functions and see how each performs with a look at the software in the third part. OK, let’s get started.

Camera

HTC has always struggled with cameras and up until recently they were barely more than a passing add-on to a smartphone which was designed to everything else better. The Legend, however, is different. Take a look at the following photos- the first two were taken in average light and the last one taken indoors. My son still hasn’t cleaned his football boots…

As you can see, the quality is impressive and way ahead of what I have seen from HTC in the past- focusing is quick and it takes no time to snap a quick picture when you are in a hurry. The optical trackpad is used to take a picture so you don’t have to worry about an onscreen button which can be fiddly.

Video capture is also very good, but the sound could be better. It picks up voices and noise that are close, but the further away they are the more strange they sound. All in all this is a good camera setup though and much better than I expected.

Media

As I said in part one, music quality is superb through the headphones. It is the ‘best’ I have heard from a phone to date and is ideal for those who treasure their music on the move. The speaker quality is not great though and lacks any depth. However, speaker use tends to be only used to show someone a video so it is not the end of the world.

Movie playback is also very good indeed and I had no problems watching long films- there were no sound sync issues and the frame rate was perfectly acceptable. Using YouTube brought back some poor quality videos so maybe some work needs to be done to define what the Legend is capable of before playing online media. I must say though that the speed of connection to YouTube over Wi-Fi was extremely quick and better than what I have seen elsewhere.

Call Quality

Call quality has also been improved and I would rate it is better than average now. To offer a comparison, I would put it somewhere between the iPhone and a BlackBerry with it being nearer the BlackBerry which is a good thing. The speaker phone again suffers from the tinny output, but is loud enough to work in a car with much background noise. All in all, I would give it the thumbs up on the voice side.

Battery

Another surprise. It is not stellar, but outperforms the Hero and iPhone quite easily. In the few days I have been using the Legend I have been able to get through whole days of extended use without recharging. Of course Wi-Fi, video streaming and constant Android Market downloads have an effect, but this is one of the better batteries I have seen on Android so far. With sparse use I am guessing that you could get through 2-3 days without a problem, but the Legend does not lend itself to sparse use.

Screen

The 320×480 pixel AMOLED display is simply wonderful indoors and produces an image quality which belies its size. Photos jump from the screen and video playback is even better. AMOLED lives up to its promise when implemented properly. And then you take it outside on a sunny day. The screen is quite reflective and you can see what you are doing, but the contract between indoor and outdoor use is stark. Finger tapping is accurate and a pleasure to undertake, but some work still needs to be done to make it a phone for all conditions.

Performance

The speed is blisteringly fast all of the time. I have had multiple apps running at once and it never missed a beat which is encouraging. The 600Mhz processor appears to be more than capable of powering Android 2.1 and I do wonder why some devices need 1Ghz if the Legend is an example of speed without excessive battery drain.

Data Entry

I guess data entry should fall into the software section of this review (part 3) as this is a touch screen device, but I am going to include it here anyway.  The onscreen keyboard is haptic which helps somewhat when typing, but it is also quite cramped width-wise. The phone itself is quite slim and this obviously has an effect, but landscape will pop up when needed. I would say that typing landscape is similar to the iPhone, but portrait is slightly less efficient.

The use of hardware buttons has an impact here as well- it feels odd to tap out an email and to then have to press the menu hardware button and then send on the screen. Too much jumping between hardware and software for my liking.
One surprising aspect was how quickly I got used to the touch keyboard and I quickly found myself typing quite smoothly. The auto-correction works efficiently without getting in the way and I am sure that if I gave myself enough time I could live with it, just.

In the next part I will look at the software inclusions and the all important Android 2.1 implementation. Safe to say that the Legend is ticking many of the boxes I want to see ticked in a smartphone so far and is much more fun to use than I expected.