The HTC Hero is a very polished touchscreen smartphone, running Google’s Android operating system. HTC have raised their game for the Hero, with a new user interface making it a comfortable yet powerful platform for mobile communication. It’s a very powerful phone and the only reason it doesn’t get 5 stars is because it’s missing video calling and an FM radio.

The HTC Hero is the third “Google phone” running the Android operating system, and these Android phones just keep getting better! The Hero uses very similar hardware to the HTC Magic, but there are a number of distinct improvements. The device has been restyled, giving it a much more polished look and feel. It feels nice in the hand, with the trackball and buttons angled forward and easy for the thumb to use. The Hero is the same size as the Magic, but is slightly heavier and incorporates a higher capacity battery, giving longer standby and talk times. It also has an improved 5 megapixel camera.

T-Mobile have released the Hero as the T-Mobile Touch G2, but it is basically the same phone.

The user interface has also been improved for the Hero, and this is the first phone to feature HTC Sense, a concept based around personalisation, communication and a third ingredient that HTC mysteriously refer to as “discover the unexpected.” The personalisation manifests itself through customisable widgets that can be placed on the home screen. These give you easy access to the features that you use regularly, and you can change the size and design of the widgets to suit your taste. You can also create multiple profiles, so that your work, weekend and holiday profiles match the functionality that you need in each situation. Another new feature called Footprints lets you create virtual “postcards” related to a specific place, so that you can identify it by its GPS co-ordinates and then associate pictures, video and notes with that Footprint. There’s no rocket science here, but it does lead to a very pleasant user environment that is highly tailored to your personal needs and interests.

The second part of HTC Sense is all about communication, and this is of course what a modern mobile phone should have at its heart. As well as the basics of making calls and sending texts, the Hero is a good platform for emailing, and is also intended for the Facebook age, with easy access to social networking and photo sharing sites. The third aspect of HTC Sense is called “discover the unexpected” and, we think, is supposed to be about connections between data. Not quite sure about this one, to be honest – if anyone understands the concept, please post below!

The touch based user interface certainly works well, and confirms Android as a solid platform for modern mobile communications. Whether you are phoning, messaging, browsing the web or taking photos you’ll find the Hero a nice handset to use, and a pleasant overall experience. There’s been some talk about lag in the Hero UI. We’d like to dispel this, as we didn’t experience any lag that could be considered annoying, although to be fair it’s not as responsive as the iPhone or the Samsung Jet. The screen is a good size, at 3.2 inches, and has a high resolution of 480×320 pixels (the same as the iPhone), but it’s not as good as some other phones for outdoor use. Android also seems to be a robust operating system in our experience, outperforming Symbian in this respect, and on a par with Apple’s OS X system when it comes to choice of apps. The Android Market is shaping up very nicely in fact, and you’ll find a wealth of third party tools available for download.

The 5 megapixel camera is an improvement over the 3 megapixel one on the HTC Magic, and it can take high quality photos in good lighting conditions, with autofocus to ensure sharpness. But indoors it’s another matter, with no flash on the camera, and to be honest it’s below average when compared with similarly priced smartphones (but still as good as the iPhone!) And it’s a mystery why there’s no video calling option in any of the Android phones so far.

The Hero is outstanding when it comes to connectivity, as it has the lot – Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate, mini-USB 2.0, Wi-Fi and a 3.5mm audio jack (so you can plug in any standard fit headset, hooray!) It also supports fast 3G data transfer with HSDPA giving download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps. Quadband GSM lets you use the phone worldwide too.

Battery life, for a smartphone, is above average, maybe even good!

Overall, this is our favourite Android phone so far, although it’s not such a big step up from the HTC Magic. The benefits of the Hero, compared with other smartphones, are the user interface, Android Market apps, and the overall polished nature of the operating system. There are nice touches such as the GPS with Google maps and digital compass, and the 3.5mm headphone jack. Aspects of the phone that are not so hot are the lacklustre camera and the lack of video calling and FM radio – features that have been standard on smartphones for years. It’s disappointing that a brand new phone with an advanced new operating system should miss out basic and obvious features. But hey, that’s what the iPhone did and it didn’t stop it becoming a runaway success, so what do we know about it anyway?

We so wanted to give this phone 5 stars, but we just can’t justify it. But still, a very polished phone, and so close to being perfect!

Features of the HTC Hero include:

* 5 megapixel camera with autofocus
* Video recording
* Display: TFT, 320 x 480 pixels (3.2 inches) with auto-rotate
* GPS receiver with Google Maps and digital compass
* Music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA formats)
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email
* Ringtones: MP3 ringtones
* Internet: GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
* Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate, mini-USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm audio jack
* Memory: 288 MB RAM plus microSD memory card
* Vibration alert
* Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus HSDPA/WCDMA (900/2100 MHz)
* Size: 112 x 56 x 14 mm
* Weight: 135g
* Talktime: 420 – 470 minutes
* Battery standby: 440 – 750 hours

iPhone 3G S users are still experiencing delays activating their new smartphones, but Apple apparently wants to make it up to users.

Apple began notifying affected customers via e-mail on Sunday that they may experience additional delays for another two days due to “system issues” and “high activation volumes,” according to readers in various blogs who claim to have received the e-mail. The problems began immediately after the new iPhone’s launch Friday.

As a way of apology for the delays, the same e-mail said Apple plans to offer customers a $30 credit iTunes Store credit for “the inconvenience this delay has caused.”

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent Apple Store order. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay in your iPhone activation.

We are still resolving the issue that was encountered while activating your iPhone with AT&T. Unfortunately, due to system issues and continued high activation volumes, this could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.

On Monday, you’ll receive an email from Apple with an iTunes Store credit in the amount of $30. We hope you will enjoy this gift and accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.

Thank you for choosing Apple.

Sincerely,
Apple Online Store Team

Apple representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

During last July’s iPhone launch, while new customers tried to complete the required in-store activation process, overloaded AT&T activation servers made Apple Store lines slow to a crawl and servers eventually crashed altogether. Apple soon ditched the in-store activation and was simply “unbricking” phones, letting buyers activate them at home rather than hold up the line because of crashed servers.

In stark contrast to the frenzied first day sales of the original iPhone and last year’s iPhone 3G, Friday’s launch was marked by considerably smaller and quieter crowds for the smartphone’s debut.

One analyst expects Apple to sell 500,000 iPhones this weekend. That’s half as many phones as Apple sold when it launched the iPhone 3G, but Apple sold that phone in 21 countries on the first day. In comparison, the iPhone 3G S will be sold in only eight countries on its first day.

The iPhone 3G S launched today, and we’ve managed to pick up our new iPhone 3G S devices and play through a few games to see if we noticed any differences. The most obvious immediate difference is the quicker launch times of many apps. It may not be the most relevant to gaming itself, but is the easiest to demonstrate on video:

A more dramatic difference in this user posted video of Peggle:

2nd Generation iPod Touch owners have already benefited from a faster processor and have enjoyed comparably faster launch times for some time now. In our additional testing, the 2nd iPod Touch was much closer (but still behind) the iPhone 3G S in launch times.

In other more casual testing, most 2D games felt about the same on both iPhone devices — which would be expected. The most notable improvements were seen in 3D games such as Real Racing and Star Defense where the animations seemed significantly smoother. The findings, again, were most notable between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. The differences between the iPhone 3G S and 2nd iPod Touch were far less apparent. iLounge has posted a video comparing launch times and in-game play between the 2nd Gen iPod Touch and iPhone 3G S.

We did run across one strange hardware-specific bug in Snowboard TnT. On the iPhone 3G S, the graphics were clearly wrong (left, below). On the right are the usual graphics as seen on the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. All devices were running iPhone firmware 3.0 so it was a hardware specific issue with this game: