HTC Hero brings customized Android UI and Flash integration to the mobile market
The new phone from HTC, the Hero, is not only bringing with a customized version but Android, but it’s doing something the iPhone just can’t seem to do: using Flash integration.
Sense is the name for the new Android user interface (UI) that HTC has added to its new phone entry named Hero. Why Sense? Well, while it isn’t spelled out, it seems like it may be kind of a “ha ha get it?” joke in that the widget-based phone is putting more widgets on the opening screen. They are also adding a new feature called “Scenes” that will allow you set up different profiles for different scenarios. Say you have apps you use at work, but have no interest in seeing them at night, you would simply change your Scene to the night time settings and no more work on your screen. Make… sense? Yeah, we’re guessing that was the thinking behind the UI name.
The big news is something that will make iPhone users envious in that HTC got Flash integration to work with the web browser. This means that Flash-based sites will finally work on a phone, so a whole new world of online video has just opened up to the mobile market. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple’s engineers are going to work on this furiously now for the fourth generation iPhone that is sure to launch next summer.
As seems to be the trend with all new phones as of late, social networking integration is becoming a must have feature for all new handsets. Facebook and Flickr have been built in to the unit and will connect with your contacts. This will allow you to see all of the latest information from both sites when you bring up any of your contacts in the address book to see their status updates and latest photos from their Flickr photo stream.
As for the hardware itself:
- 3.2-inch HVGA display with 320 x 480 pixel resolution
- GPS
- Digital compass
- Gravity-sensor
- 3.5mm stereo headset jack
- 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera
- Expandable MicroSD memory
- 900/2100MHz HSPA and Quad-band GSM
- 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
- 528 MHz processor
- 512 MB ROM/288 MB RAM
Overall it is sounding like a solid handset. Europe will see release in July, late summer for Asia and North America sometime in late 2009.
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