The HTC Hero takes it design cue from the HTC Dream sans the keyboard and a little more protruded bottom. It still has the trackball and slightly more hardware keys added compared with the HTC Dream/Google G1. The HTC Hero has a very nice brushed aluminum finish which is a serious step up considering that most of their handsets just uses a plain plastic finish. Like its predecessors, the HTC Hero sports a 3.2 inch touchscreen but while its brothers sport a resistive screen, the Hero has a capacitive touchscreen that supports multi-touch. HTC also added something to the screen (I forgot what it was) that makes it fingerprint resistant. Another new thing about the HTC Hero in terms of hardware design is the addition of a 3.5mm headset jack.
Features and Performance
What separates the HTC Hero from the previous Android devices is the HTC Sense which is like the TouchFlo 3D for Android. I only had a short time playing with an Android device before and I have to say, the Android OS is not the most visually appealing OS in the market so HTC did a good job by adding the HTC Sense. It gives the HTC Hero a more customized User Interface and VERY visually appealing.
Internal hardware didn't change much when compared with the Dream and Magic. The HTC Hero still runs on a Qualcomm 528MHz processor but has an improved RAM of 288MB. Maybe it's because of the RAM or HTC's new UI but swiping transitions on the HTC Sense is really fast and can give the iPhone 3G a run for its money. Sadly, when you get down to some of the most basic apps, the load time when you press the messaging app still seems slow compared with the iPhone.
Because of the added multi-touch capability, the browser on the HTC Hero compared with the HTC Magic changed. You will no longer need the on-screen scroll wheel when zooming in and out of pages, you can just do the pinch and zoom thingy ala iPhone. The multi-touch interface is a welcome change although HTC may need to tweak it a bit since again, compared with the iPhone, the zooming in and out of pages/pictures is a bit slow. It's not LG Prada II slow but there's still a noticeable slowness especially if you're already an iPhone user.
The music player has undergone a revamp and is VERY much appealing compared with the previous devices. The camera has also undergone a major improvement. The HTC Hero now has a 5 megapixel camera compared with the 3.1 megapixel of its brothers. The camera has autofocus though I don't think it has smile shutter, face detection, etc. There might be some truth to the rumors that the HTC Touch Daimond2 and the HTC Hero shares the same hardware on the inside since the photos on the HTC Hero is comparable with the Touch Diamond2.
Conclusion
Looks like we have another winner from HTC. If HTC keeps on improving on their products I might be tempted to buy their devices again. The HTC Hero is definitely a good upgrade to the HTC Dream or Magic if you're an Android fan. The HTC Sense is a very good improvement which makes the user interface on Android a lot more simpler and more "pretty" to look at. Of course, if HTC decides to release the HTC Sense on their previous Android devices, then Dream and Magic users may not be tempted to switch but there's the added multi-touch and a 5 megapixel camera so there's probably no holding back Android users who want to upgrade.
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