At this point in time Apple is still the most powerful player in the smartphone market and other manufactures are still trying to come up with the next big phone that will be an “iphone killer”.
HTC is about to launch it’s “Hero” in late 2009 in the US with the sprint network. We have yet to get our hands on one to test it out for ourselves but with the info available we can draw a few conclusions.
First and foremost the fact that this HTC is an android phone makes a big difference right away. I have owned some nice HTC devices all of which being windows based and although I was usually impressed with certain features I found them to be sluggish and buggy. The new HTC Hero however seems promising and a few details about how its interface works have already been revealed.
Much like other competitors such as the Palm Pre, HTC is going after the iphone in a similar manner and that means having an interface that allows multiple apps to continually run in the background and open. The new HTC Hero allows for up to seven home pages that can have different “widgets” running at the same time. This for some can be an advantage over the iphone and seems to be a trend among those looking to steal some market share from apple.
As far as the operation goes the phone uses a touch screen and a track ball in a very nice but somewhat awkward looking package. When we can get our hands on one we will be able to discuss further about the quality of the touch screen and other capabilities.
The Camera will be a 5.0 mega-pixel with video capabilities but a some what disappointing 512mb internal memory, however it is expandable with an SD card. The Hero looks to have a very slick OS but is definitely not geared towards the music or media user.
So will this phone cause people to run out and ditch their iphones for a Hero? Probably not, although the phone has some nice qualities I feel its going to be a Palm Pre sequel with a few people anxious to try it, but I doubt its going to get iphone users to convert in masses. If any phone is going to do this they really need to step their app store up and nail the interface for both newb and tech savy users alike. I’m keeping my iphone thats for sure..
