HTC Legend Review
The HTC Legend definitely takes after its progenitor – the HTC Hero – with its aluminium case and Bruce Campbell-esque chin. The Legend’s immediate appearance is striking. Its silver aluminium physique is striking amongst a sea of black and ash-grey smartphones (although you can also get the Legend in black) and its protruding ‘chin’ certainly deviates from what has become ‘standard’ design in the smartphone world. Overall we like the look of this phone, if for nothing more than the prospect of being offered aesthetic variety, rather than variations on a theme.
For any HTC Hero fans the first thing you’ll notice is that HTC has replaced the trusty trackball with a more-trusty optical trackpad. The trackpad is a nice addition, like the trackball it allows users to navigate through menus and browsers with minimal movement. It also removes a lot of the finger smears traditionally associated with touchscreens as you won’t be constantly wiping your filthy human fingers all over it. Still, we found we didn’t use the trackpad too often, as our clumsy digits are more accustomed to the greasy finger-smear touchscreen technique.
Navigation through the UI in general was a pleasant experience. The Sense UI is back, of course, with all its awesome glory. One area where we were surprised, however, is with the speed at which the HTC Legend handled our commands. We’re definitely used to the less powerful Android devices lagging a bit between screens, offering jerky slide mechanics and often taking a while to load apps. This was definitely not the case with the Legend, despite its 600MHz processor. This is a definite plus for a mid-range Android phone.
We would have liked a little more resolution than the 320x480 HVGA display, but on a 3.2 inch screen you really can’t expect too much. The colours are still vibrant, however, with defined lines and relatively true blacks.
Browsing is surprisingly easy on the Legend, even for a mid-range device. Pages tended to load quickly over 3G and, due to the pinch-to-zoom mechanic, reading web pages was easy. No Flash support out of the box as the phone runs on Android 2.1, but you can upgrade to 2.2 if you’re with a carrier that supports it. Just make sure you can actually get the Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) update if Flash support is particularly important to you before you sign any contracts.
The 5MP camera is good but standard, with LED flash and autofocus. Pictures during the day come out fine, but hardly amazingly. In dim light you might have a little trouble. The flash certainly helps here but you’ll still a bit of blurring in the later hours of the day.
All up we’re fans of the HTC Legend. It’s fast, compact and gives us something different to look at. Its browsing is quick and easy for its price range and sports that optical trackpad, a function that has a lot of fans out there. For a mid-range device we can definitely recommend you give the Legend a look over when you’re after a new and functional phone that won’t break the bank.