Review: HTC Hero – Software [UPDATED]

[UPDATE] Updated “Java” section below based on reader feedback.

Part 2 of this review will cover the operating system on the HTC Hero, Android, as well as the applications that came pre-installed on the review unit of the Hero, which for all intents and purposes is identical to the one on sale in Malaysia.  Part 1 of the review, covering the hardware, can be found here, if you’re interested.

When booting up the phone for the first time, the phone will ask the user to set up various online accounts such as a Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and other email accounts.  The settings for the most popular email accounts on the web are supported and the user need not enter details such as server names, etc, while for the other less well known ones, the user will need to enter some technical details – thankfully this is a one time process (unless you hard reset your phone or upgrade the phone’s firmware!).  Needless to say, this requires an internet connection, either via your wireless broadband service using your SIM card, or WiFi.  Once the initial setup is done, the user is offered some tutorials to learn how to use the phone – not comprehensive tutorials as these would take too long, but basic ones to get started.  Access to the user guide is required to learn more.

Sense UI and homescreens

Once the setup is complete, you will be taken to the “home screen”.  This is where the Sense UI kicks in.  The default Android homescreens are hidden from the user.  The standard Android implementation only has 3 homescreens, the Sense UI, 7.  That’s a lot of homescreens for the user to customise to his/her liking!  Just swipe the finger to the left or right to change homescreens.  The homescreen the user is on is denoted by a white horizontal line in the curved line area just above the “application drawer”, “phone” and “add to home screen” soft buttons on the screen.

That is the standard wallpaper and icons; I did not customise them at all, although the user is free to customise the content on the homescreen as well as the other 6 homescreens, and then save the customisation as a “theme”.  The user is then free to choose between the different themes that he/she has created – perhaps one for work and one for pleasure, for example.  To get back to the main home screen quickly from any other screen, the user simply has to press the hardware “home” button.

To customise a homescreen, the user presses the “+” soft button in the picture above, or tap and hold an existing item on the screen, then drag it onto the trash icon to get rid of an existing widget or drag it around the screen to re-position it.  Widgets are those “live” applications that live on the homescreens, that will go and fetch content from the internet whenever the device has an internet connection, to display live data such as Twitter feeds, weather information, email, and other messages such as SMS, etc.  Widgets can take up an entire homescreen, or it can be a smaller widget taking only a smaller part of the screen so you can fit a few widgets onto one homescreen.  HTC has done a good job of including a variety of widget types for each widget for the user to choose from.  See the choices for the weather widget below.  The Hero has an additional category called “HTC widget”, which is not present in the other Android devices.

As you can see in the screen captures above, the widgets for the last two types are smaller in size compared to the full screen one.  Once the user is done customising a particular “scene set”, pressing the “menu” hardware button will bring up the following screens to save the scene collection:

As an example, this is the main homescreen on the pre-loaded HTC “Work” scene:

Customising the wallpaper for the lock screen (the screen that shows when you bring the phone out of standby mode) or the home screens is easy.  The user can choose from pictures in the albums on the phone, or from a pre-set wallpaper gallery.

Entering text using the virtual/soft keyboard

As the Hero does not have a physical QWERTY keyboard, all text entry is done via a soft keyboard or virtual keyboard which will pop up automatically when the user taps on a text entry field.  And here’s the answer to one of the most asked questions – does it support Chinese input?  The answer is yes, it does.  The user can toggle the keyboard settings between the “western” keyboard and another to input Chinese text – I shall use the screenshot below to explain it since I cannot write Chinese!  I’m using the messaging application to compose a new SMS message, and show the “keyboard” when toggling between the Pinyin and strokes mode:

Entering text is easy using the virtual keyboard – it has both haptic feedback (ie. vibration each time you press a key) and sound feedback (beeping each time you tap a key).  The key being tapped will also “float” so you can see which key you pressed, since the keys are so small and close together that when your finger taps a key, you are not sure whether the right key is tapped or not!  As you can see in the screen capture above, the keys are spaced slightly apart to make the typing experience better and more accurate.  The keyboard can be re-calibrated in case the touch sensitivity is off.

The soft keyboard supports word prediction as well as a spell checker – if you want to add a word into the dictionary, simply tap the new word and it will be added automatically, so the next time you type the word the phone will not autocorrect it.  The user can also opt for handwriting recognition – I wouldn’t recommend it since it is slow, and only recognises one character at a time, at least when I tested it.  I find that handwriting recognition still works best on Windows Mobile devices, which recognises characters faster, and can recognise entire words rather than just one character at a time.

Here are a few screenshots of the keyboard settings:

Typing in portrait mode with word prediction and auto correct was easy, and will get easier as you add more custom words into the dictionary.  Because of the screen size of the Hero, typing on the soft keyboard is still not as fast nor accurate as my typing on the iPhone3GS which has a larger screen and therefore wider soft keyboard area.  However, typing in landscape mode will solve the typing accuracy and speed issue as in landscape mode, the soft keyboard is much wider – see the screenshot below.  When it comes to positioning the cursor, the Hero’s screen is a lot more accurate and easier to use, compared to the iPhone’s, which can be a major pain to accurately place the cursor for text editing!

Dialer

This is the phone application, triggered when the user presses the “phone” soft button or the “make call” hardware button.  It incorporates “smart dialling” technology – when the user presses the buttons on the keypad, telephone numbers containing the numbers pressed will be highlighted, as well as contact names corresponding to the number being pressed – see the screenshot below.

The user can also set his/her favourite contacts to call, ie. speed dialling.

People

People is what HTC calls their contacts application.  When creating a contact, the user can tag the contact as a SIM contact, an Exchange contact, Google contact, or “phone memory” contact.  Photos can be attached to contacts as well as the usual 1,203 other contact information present in almost all modern smartphones today.  But here’s the difference – you can link a Facebook account to a particular contact, as well as a Flickr account to a specific contact.  Information/data from the contacts Facebook/Flickr accounts will be “pulled” from the internet into the contact card when viewing the contact’s details, so the user has all relevant information for a contact in one easy location.

From the all contacts screen, the user can see at a glance the updates for all the contacts in his/her contacts directory.  They can see their favourite contacts, assign contacts to groups, manage groups, and see the overall call history – see the bottom of the first picture below.

When each contact’s information is displayed, at the bottom is a row of icons to toggle between contact information, SMS/MMS messages, email messages, updates and events (such as birthday reminders or Flickr/Facebook updates), albums from Flickr/Facebook, and call history – this is where the social networking aspects are integrated into a contact’s details for easy reference, and is a differentiating characteristic of the Hero compared to other smartphones where this information is often located in different applications.  Clicking the Facebook information will connect the user to the internet and retrieve the information.

Each contact can have their own unique ringtone, as well as being assigned to a group for easy reference.  Contact details can be sent as a vCard.

Messaging application

Both SMS and MMS messages are supported.  For MMS messages, the user can create rich content from within the messaging application, such as taking a picture, recording a video, recording an audio file or creating a slideshow from pictures available on the phone.  The messaging application supports threaded conversations.  An entire thread can be deleted, or selected conversations within a thread can be deleted.  Typically, tapping and holding on items brings up a context sensitive menu from which the user can perform more actions – similar to what a right mouse button click does in Windows.

Camera

Here are some sample pictures, taken indoors and outdoors.  I have included similarly composed photos taken by the iPhone3GS as a comparison in a package below (see “video” section below).  The pictures here have been resized from their 5 megapixel resolution.  For the “source” pictures, download the package below.

The HTC Hero comes with an autofocus 5 megapixel camera, but no flash for low light photography.  It allows for “tap anywhere on screen to focus” functionality which seems to be gaining in popularity nowadays – the phone will beep twice when it manages to “lock on”.  Autofocusing is not the fastest I’ve experienced on recent generation smartphones, and it does take some time to focus compared to other high end smartphones.  There is no dedicated camera button; instead, the user takes a picture by pressing down on the trackball button.  Settings are also not as varied as other smartphones, namely those from Samsung.  Also, there are no “scene modes” with presets for the most commonly composed pictures present on other smartphones.  One semi-unique feature is the ability for the lens to zoom in, something that may not be present in all of the latest smartphones on the market today.

Check out the camera settings below.

Video

Here’s a short sample video taken with the Hero.  I did not do any post processing at all, the source file in .3gp format was simply uploaded to YouTube for processing.  I have included the source file within a package which you can download below from the rapidshare website.  Within this package, I have also included comparison pictures and videos taken by the iPhone3GS, untouched, in their original formats, for comparison.

Indoor video:

Outdoor video:

Comparison outdoor video from iPhone3GS:

Click here to download the source files (photos and videos) used in this review – I have included the source files from the HTC Hero as well as comparison ones from the iPhone3GS in their respective folders inside the RAR compressed file above.

The highest resolution available for video recording is 352×288 pixels, smaller than ones on recent smartphones, which typically can go up to 640×480 pixel resolution.  There isn’t a lot that the user can adjust in video recording settings.  Zooming is also available in video recording, although it can be set once before recording and not during recording itself.  Unfortunately the HTC Hero video recording application records audio using the SAMR codec which is not supported natively by VLC media player.

Mail application

The Mail application supports Microsoft Exchange Activesync accounts, POP and IMAP mail accounts.  However, the user can only sync with a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 device.  Only one MS Exchange account is allowed on the phone.  The user can set the synchronisation schedule for the MS Exchange account.

For POP/IMAP accounts, the settings for the most common internet webmail applications are pre-loaded on to the device, and the user does not have to enter settings such as incoming/outgoing server addresses/port numbers, etc.  For the less common ones, the user must have this information handy when setting up additional email accounts.

The mail application allows the user to display mail from all the accounts configured on the device by tapping the “arrow down” button at the top of the screen.  It also supports threaded conversations, marking mail for further action and showing only emails with attachments.  HTML email is supported.

Browser

The browser on the HTC Hero must be one of my favourite applications – it comes close to rivalling the Mobile Safari browser on the iPhone and in one area actually outperforms it.  The browser supports Flash but Adobe Flash content such as YouTube videos actually plays in a separate application called the HTC Flash Player.  The browser supports multi-touch, with the pinch in motion to zoom out, and pinch out motion to zoom in, identical to the motions used on the iPhone’s Mobile Safari browser.

The one area where it outperforms the Mobile Safari browser is in text reflow during zooming.  The browser will reformat the text so that it fits into the width of the screen without the user needing to scroll sideways back-and-forth to read.  Very cool feature!  See the screenshots below for an illustration – see how the user does not need to scroll sideways after a zooming action.

The browser has some nice options as can be seen below:

The user can open up to 4 browser windows.  Double tapping quickly on the screen will zoom in, double tapping again will zoom out.  The user can search for text within a page, copy text and mail the link to the page via SMS/MMS/email.  For really small text, the user can use the trackball to navigate to the link, and then pressing and holding the trackball button to see some context sensitive actions that can be performed.

Albums application

The albums application is used to view/edit (pictures only) pictures and videos stored on the phone.  It can be accessed from the camera application by tapping on the review soft button on the screen, or from the application drawer.  From the albums application, the user can play a slideshow, or choose a picture from the library/albums as a wallpaper.  He/she can send it via email/MMS, share via a Twitter application, or upload it to Facebook/Flickr.

Finally, the user can perform basic editing tasks such as rotating and cropping pictures using the Albums application.

The videos on the phone or memory card can also be shared or manipulated in pretty much the same way as the pictures.  The user can choose a video to be uploaded/sent/shared via YouTube/email/social networking applications.  Due to the nature of our poor wireless broadband upload speeds, I very much doubt many people will be using this feature to share their videos – it’s probably a lot smarter to copy the video out from the phone to a computer, and using the computer connected to a wired internet connection to upload the file!

Music application

This application plays back music stored on the memory card only.  The standard music player functions are supported – shuffle, repeat, playback controls, playlist creation, and album art.  The user can also select a song from the library (which is organised by genres, artistes, albums, etc) as the ringtone for the phone.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, when connected to a stereo Bluetooth (BT) headset, the music application can stream wireless stereo music to the headset as well.  In addition, when paired with a BT enabled computer, the music application can output its sound to the computer’s speakers.  The computer is able to control the music application using the basic player controls such as forwarding/rewinding, skipping, playing and pausing.

The music can continue playing in the background even when the phone is put into standby mode.  Basic music player controls will then be put onto the “lock screen” for quick access.

Google Apps

The Google applications bundled with the Hero include GMail (which supports realtime “push” email), Google Talk, Google Maps and YouTube applications.  Since these three applications are well known in terms of their functionality by now, I won’t go into them!  In the Google Talk app, there is an indicator showing the user what type of device his/her contacts are using to access Google Talk – a cool, if not very useful, feature.

Notification options can be set for GMail and Google Talk, and can be an audio or vibrating notification, or both.  When notifications come in, the LED indicator will blink indicating the presence of new activity.  The YouTube application simply accesses the YouTube website and is optimised for devices like the Hero.

In terms of synchronising data with the Google apps, the user can choose which services to synchronise – whether to synchronise only contacts data, calendar, or mail, or a combination of the three.

PDF Viewer

This is an HTC developed application to view PDF, ie. Adobe Acrobat files on the device.  It’s fast, and supports multi-touch, and has two reading modes – “continuous” and “text reflow”.  Reflow mode is most useful because when you zoom in/out, the text will reflow to fit on the screen’s width, so the user does not have to pan left/right to read a document.  An extremely nice implementation indeed.  Reflow mode is slower, and graphics may not all display correctly, but it is a small price to pay for not having to pan left/right!  Double tapping quickly on the screen zooms in/out.

At least a “proper” PDF reader is included; because on other Android devices, this functionality is sadly lacking.  Opening the HTC Hero PDF user manual located on the storage card was fast – the file was around 7.2Mb in size.  There is also a search function in the PDF reader – another nice touch.

Quickoffice Viewer

Another very useful application bundled with the device is the QuickOffice viewer which allows the user to view Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents.  It also supports the viewing of plain text (.TXT) files.  Files to be opened must be located on the storage card.  Unfortunately, since this is not an HTC developed application, it does not support multi-touch gestures.

Tethering

Tethering is using the phone as a wireless broadband modem for your notebook/netbook/PC.  The HTC Sync software, downloadable from the HTC Support website must first be installed for it to work, and then the phone must be configured for mobile network sharing.

Note that the phone can share its wireless broadband network connection via a USB cable connected to the computer only, and not via Bluetooth (BT) as the BT radio on the Hero only supports the BT headset and AVRCP (remote control) profiles.  I tested this feature for a while and it works as advertised; unfortunately the phone does get a little warm after extended usage and it is never recommended to use an expensive smartphone as a wireless broadband modem for your computer!

Java applications

Being a modern smartphone, the Hero also supports the download of Java applications (.jad/.jar) files from the internet for use.  Applications such as Opera Mini run on the Hero with no problems.  The user can also download the usual J2ME simple Java based games, for example.  Downloaded Java applications will either have their own icons in the application drawer, or the user will need to launch the Java application on the Hero to launch them if the icon is not present.

As pointed out by one of the commenters below, Android does not currently support J2ME natively.  What HTC has done for the Hero is to include a J2ME emulator, simply called “Java” which resides in the application drawer.  I tested this out by downloading some J2ME applications from www.getjar.com, and they were “compiled” and “optimised” by the pre-loaded HTC Java application just fine.  To launch these downloaded J2ME applications/games, simply launch the HTC Java application from the application drawer, select the J2ME application and launch.  Not all J2ME applications work though – for example, Nimbuzz, a multi-protocol instant messaging application, didn’t work because I couldn’t get past the sign in screen – there was simply no way to tap the “sign in” button on the screen after I entered my credentials.  Nevertheless, HTC should be applauded for including a J2ME emulator with the Hero.

Other applications

Other applications include:

1. calendar application with the standard calendar functions such as a day or month view.  The calendar application can display calendar information from Google, Outlook, Exchange and the built in calendar application, or a combination of them.
2. voice recorder – audio recording application.  Recorded clips can be set as ringtones.
3. clock – alarm, world clock, stopwatch, timer.
4. WAP browser – light browsing tool (ie. text only, very little graphics, useful in those days of slower wireless  internet connections); not particularly useful nowadays especially if you are on a 3G connection.
5. weather application – shows weather information for selected cities.
6. stocks – stock market information from Yahoo Finance.  Unsure whether this supports the local bourse.  Again, not particularly useful.
7. calculator – with very basic scientific functions.
8. HTC Footprints – allows the user to snap a photo, geotag it, complete with address so that the user can revisit the particular place that he/she has tagged as interesting.  Footprints can be dining, leisure, or shopping, or tagged as others.  The user can view all stored footprints on a Google map.  Footprints can be added as contacts, or exported out into a .KMZ (Google Earth Saved Working Session) format.  Useful application for travellers.
9. Peep – this is the HTC developed Twitter application which supports the standard Twitter functions of timeline retrieval, @mentions, direct messages, searching, etc.  A summary of the timeline can be displayed as a widget on the homescreens.

What is not on the phone?

This section deserves a separate mention of its own due to the omission of one very important application from the HTC Hero on sale in Malaysia – the Android Market.  The Market is an application which allows the user to search for additional applications to be downloaded and installed on the Hero, extending its usefulness and value.  Applications can be from a variety of sources – Google, HTC, third party developers, etc.  They can be free or paid.

Because of the geographical nature of the Market, and due to HTC customising the core Android operating system to include the Sense UI, the Market cannot currently be pre-loaded onto the Hero.  HTC is in negotiations with Google to include the Market in a future firmware upgrade.  This situation has actually persisted since the launch of the HTC Magic, HTC’s first Android phone in Malaysia a few months ago, and is still not resolved.  But I’ve been assured that HTC is working very hard to get the Market application included very soon.  In case you are wondering, there is currently no easy way to get the Market application on to the device.  The only way is to “flash” the device using one of the custom firmware (or “ROM”) available from a website such as XDA Developers, but be warned that flashing your device is not for the faint hearted and non-tech savvy.  It requires a lot of courage and investment in time to properly and thoroughly read the instructions as this process is not officially supported by HTC.  And there is always the chance of turning the device into a worthless “brick” should something go wrong.  However, having said this, many owners of the HTC Magic have flashed custom ROMs onto their devices in order to get the Android Market.

As a temporary workaround, users have three choices (of which two are recommended by HTC Malaysia) to search for, download and install additional third party applications on to their devices.  They are the “equivalent” of the Android Market application.  There could be more of these unofficial third party unsupported marketplaces; I did not bother looking that hard for alternatives!  The user can also hunt down Android installer files on the internet, download them and copy them to the SD card and install them using an installer application, but this is a very tedious, painful and time consuming process!

1. slideme.org’s SAM (slideme Application Marketplace/slideme Application Manager) application.
2. mroidstore.
3. andappstore.

However, the number of applications in these three stores combined pales in comparison to what’s available in the Android Market.  As an example, check out the screenshot of the numbers of applications in each category for the “marketplace” applications above.  mroidstore is HTC developed, and has 6 categories currently, with a rough average of 10 applications in each category, giving a total of about 60 applications.

As comparison, the androlib website, which tracks the items available in the official Android Market, lists around 10,749 applications as of 130am, 17th September 2009.  That is a huge gulf in the number of applications available, wouldn’t you say?

Using the mroidstore application is also a bit of a pain – downloading an application requires one to be pre-registered at the SIS (sole distributor of HTC’s products in Malaysia) website as you can see in the screenshot below.  Since this is a review unit, I did not want to register to test this out.

This concludes part 2 of this review.  In part 3, I will summarise the main points of parts 1 and 2, and draw my conclusions and recommendations.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this part, and stay tuned for the final part of this review!

Tweet This Post