HTC Legend review

After playing with the new handset for more than a week, I will write a short review on it now.

7 home screen
There are 7 home screen available for you to put widget, program, shortcut and folder on it. Widget is like a small program run directly on the screen which you can have your information shown at one glance. You can arrange the screen with widget or program that you use most often, so it cut down the navigation time. So far, the transition from 1 screen to another is very smooth. It shows no sign of lagging. The AMOLED screen is bright, have nice contrast.

HTC widget
HTC has designed customised widget like Friend Stream which allows you to have all friend's update centralised in one place. I find it of little use, since at one time you can only see three update. However, there are useful one like Weather, Sync All and Calendar.

Usability and Speed
I find the phone quite usable, with the necessary programs supporting the task that you want to do. The contact is auto synced with Google contact, so you always have a backup. You can link your friend's contact with facebook profile, so it auto pull the facebook detail and merge with it. You can write down the to-do in calendar, set reminder for it, all synchronised back to your Google web account. The messaging function is a bit slow to open.

The on screen keyboard, although looks narrow, is a good one. You don't have to worry about pressing the wrong key, the auto correct will work wonder to give you the word you want to use. Majority of the time, the operating system is stable and menu item is fast and responsive. I only encountered auto reboot once.

Unlock the phone
After time out period, the screen will switch off to save the energy. The next time you wish to see your screen, you have to press the power button on top and then slide to unlock the phone. Pressing of the top power button just to see the display is an annoying feature. Unlike iPhone where you can press the home button, the Legend power button is on top, which can only be press by index finger.

Application
It all started with iPhone. Android also has android marketplace for you to download new application to extend the phone functionality. The built in youtube app and facebook app allow you to access the website inside the application.

Internet
The internet browsing experience is not so ideal. Primarily because it is on a smaller screen. It has multi touch that allow you to zoom in the webpage easily. However, the multi touch function on browser is not the same as iPhone. After you release your finger from the zooming, the webpage will shift position from where you thought it will be. After a while, I realised this is due to the text reflow function. You can call it a feature where it try to re-arrange the text so that it appear within the viewing screen.

Camera
The 5 mega pixel camera takes good picture in day light. I don't have high hope on the phone camera, it is after all a phone. The quality cannot compare to Sony Ericsson.

Battery
If you are opting for a smart phone, battery is a big concern. With the big screen and web surfing/downloading activities, the battery run out fast. You need to charge it daily, if using the web during day time.

Conclusion
In my view, if you don't want an iPhone, HTC is a good choice. They have put in more touch into android to make it a more polished mobile OS to use. Forget about those touch screen phone from other manufacturer which run on their own OS. The rule of thumb, if you find either of the following thing happen when you try out the phone, don't buy it.
i) the phone lag or slow
ii) it missed your touch