First Impressions: HTC Legend

As a user (and fan) of the HTC Hero, I could not wait to see what the successor had in store. I likened the Hero very much to Nokia’s E71 in that it was the best in its class, and had a very short list of things to improve upon. The E71 very quickly got an upgrade in the form of the E72 which did remedy some issues but at the same time introduced new gripes. Although I’ve only used the HTC Legend for about a week, I feel the same about the Legend as a successor to the Hero, as I did about the E72 as a successor to the E71. 

Don’t get me wrong, the Legend is an excellent device. Of course the most obvious upgrade is the latest iteration of Android which brings with it items like Google Navigation, but the most welcome addition comes in the form of an LED flash to go along with a 5 MP camera. In fact, that is probably the most important improvement HTC made since the Hero had no flash, and the camera on the Hero was laughable. The new camera on the Legend delivers clean images even in low light. In fact, I used the camera in one of the toughest environments a camera phone can be in: a concert. Even then the Legend managed to deliver decent images. 

The Legend’s uni-body aluminum design is an obvious differentiator and makes the device stand out amongst a sea of Android devices while still keeping the signature chin. The device feels great in the hand with just enough weight to make it feel solid, but not too heavy to where it becomes noticeable when carrying it in your pocket. Even the atypically large HTC logo on the back is stylish. The trackball has been replaced by an optical trackpad which not only looks great, but it also navigates beautifully. It outshines it’s spherical counterpart in all aspects. Of course, like any HTC device, beauty isn’t only skin deep. Sense has been updated to run butter smooth on Android 2.1. The speed increase can be partially attributed to the slightly faster processor, but there really isn’t much added to Sense. There are plenty of new widgets such as ‘Friend Stream’ which consolidates your Twitter and Facebook updates into one feed; but outside of the widgets, there really isn’t much offered over Sense on the Hero. The dashboard view which displays all seven screen at once to enable quick switching seems more like a novelty than it is useful. I found it quicker to simply swipe my finger across like always. Again, seems more like eye candy.

With so many small tweaks that address issues present in the Hero, what issues could have possibly introduced? The first one is a relatively minor gripe. While HTC has excelled in the overall design, it seems they skimped a little on the hardware buttons. The four hardware buttons that sit right below and flush with the screen feel very plasticy and a little loose. It seems like capacitive buttons like those included on the Nexus One would be a more natural fit. On top of that, HTC has decided to eliminate the dedicated ‘Send’ and ‘End’ buttons which were of great use on the Hero. These buttons would not be missed too much if the buttons that were left on the Legend would wake the phone, but the only way to take the phone out of standby is by hitting the power button located on the top right of the device. Like I said, it’s a small gripe, but reaching and tapping the power button requires a bit of far reaching that just seems unnecessary.

However, that small gripe is nothing compared to the connectivity issues. The Legend seemed to have trouble picking up a connection after loosing it. For example, I would go into a building that had no coverage which obviously made the phone lose its network connection. The issue was when I left the building, the network connection would just not work. The icon would show up as being connected to EDGE, but any apps trying to access the network would fail to retrieve any data. Wi-Fi connectivity seemed to experience a similar issue. For some reason, the Wi-Fi connection would randomly drop without ever leaving the vinicity of the Wi-Fi network. I would have to turn the Wi-Fi radio off and then turn it back on in order to reconnect to the network. 

No matter how great the design, internal or external, a smartphone becomes nothing more than an overpriced RAZR the moment it can’t connect to some type of network. The issues can be easily addressed by an update. Another possibility is that I somehow got a faulty unit. I’ll be performing a hard reset to see if that helps before writing up a full review, but so far, the Legend seems to be more of an E72 than I would like.