Though the HTC hero was loaded with the brilliant Sense UI it did face some lags during functioning which was one of the major glitches because of which it was almost written off by most critics in comparision to the iPhone.

The upgrades have already been launched in Denmark, Sweden and Norway and have received some really good reviews, with most of the users being content with the speed upgrades and the camera software upgrades.

HTC has also confirmed the UK launch will take place sometime in the near future, however it hasn’t provided us with any exact date as such.  Also the people at HTC refused to let us have a peep at what other tid bits the upgrade has to offer.

Thumbs up: Brilliant Sense UI, good call quality, well designed.

Thumbs down: Poor camera, bad media support.

Inside the trunk:

• Bluetooth: Yes
• Stereo Bluetooth: Yes
• WiFi: Yes
• Processor Speed (MHz): 528
• Playable Formats : AAC Plus, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, WMV9
• MMS: Yes
• GPS Receiver Details: A-GPS
• GPRS: Yes
• Android OS v1.5 / 320 x 480 pixels capacitive touchscreen

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: Well though the wait wasn’t long, the Hero has finally arrived. What is left to be seen is whether this one can live upto what it claims to be. This one doesn’t have the big G branding but it comes with all the android hallmarks.

Razzle-dazzle: Though this one wouldn’t be like the on the numero uno position on the style check list, this one with the bulging lip surely will stand out in the crowd. Like the other android phones from HTC this one also has seven buttons on the lip. The glitch here is that the power key is the same as the application terminate key. It took me some time to get used to this set up so that I don’t switch the phone off whenever I had to end an app.
Going in with the recent fad where in video calling is no longer the ‘IT’ thing, this one has eliminated the front facing camera. To click a picture one has to click the trackball because the camera key is absent in this one. It comes along with an USB cable, a U.K adaptor, and headphones.

Inside dope: The thing that HTC is bragging about with the launch of this one is the Sense UI, and it has enough reason to do so I feel, because its just brilliant. This one is like the fourth android phone from HTC and starting from three home screens, with this one it has moved up to seven home screens including the main home screen which can be accessed from anywhere by just hitting on the home button and with three to the left and the right of the screen respectively. HTC has also taken the TouchFlo3D interface and based its new Sense UI into it. This means that not only does thee user get different home screens there also a slider bar below a few applications to scroll through the pages.

This one comes with a 528mhz processor, which isn’t exactly fit for the kind of multitasking that the HTC hero is expected too provide the user with. I also noticed some lag at different intervals and I guess this has to do with the underpowered processor. I just hope that HTC looks into this soon. Switching the screen from the landscape mode to the portrait mode can be done by simply rotating the phone and then the inbuilt accelerometer does the rest.

For the social networking fans, the Sense UI brings in a lot of relief as it is well integrated with sites like facebook and twitter. You can easily scroll through your contact list and get a record of all the status updates and also when you call the person, his display pic on facebook pops up on the screen. Downloading the pictures through a 3G connection may take some time but then again once the downloading is done browsing through it is almost a breeze.

Though HTC had promised 211 contact imports at a time, it could hardly import 6 names at a time, and this was damn annoying.

Call quality as expected was brilliant. Though nowadays not much attention is paid to the styling of the phone because of high end microphone features like noise cancellation, the jutting lip provided a highly pleasant call experience. There was hardly any static or interference. Also the callers on the other end hardly has any complaints about the voice quality.

Sending messages using the phone is quite an easy task, plus it also provides with something called XT9 dictionary which means that when you have just started hitting the keys, the dictionary will spell the right word for you. Also when adding pictures to the message the pictures get automatically resized.

I was simply blown away by the internet browsing speed that this one had to offer, its second to none in the market. I would also advise watching youtube videos on it rather than actually watching the other flash videos, because whenever I tried playing flash videos it hung up invariably.

Its got a 5 megapixel camera as compared to the 3 megapixel one that the HTC magic had to offer. It goes without saying that more megapixels doesn’t mean a better camera. And this definitely stands true in the case of the hero. The pictures aren’t  sharp with very less brightness and low sharpness. Comparing the video camera and the camera I must say that the video camera fares better and is better than the one offered by the iPhone but is still not all that great.

The music player is not like really well integrated into the phone and just cannot be compared to the iPhone. The sound quality is definitely better using the 3.5mm headphone jack as compared to the speaker. If the disappointing music player was not enough, then let me add that the video player is bad as well. It doesn’t support AVI formats.

Apart from the other inbuilt applications, there are a few applications which can be downloaded for free like the beebPlayer, light racer, file browser, super Mario sounds and ringtones.

It comes loaded with a pretty impressive 1350mAh battery but with al the application running happening on the HERO this one could be expected to last for like 1.5 day.

Nitty-gritty: Its absolutely unfair when every other phone launched gets compared to the iPhone but this one surely was launched to give the iPhone some competition but again the Hero failed to do so. For sure this one tried hard, and still there are many Android phones being launched and I guess there are many from the HTC stable itself. And probably one of them could be the iPhone killer. And on that note I d like to add this one with a some firmware upgrades should solve most of its problems.

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Brilliant looks, great audio quality, decent call quality, impressive TouchFlo3D interface.

Thumbs down: Bad video streaming, exorbitant price, slow GPS acquisition.

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: With the launch of this one, the best Windows mobile just got better. Finally after all the rumours doing the rounds Sprint and HTC Touch Pro2 have tied the knot. Like always Sprint always has something on offer for everyone and this time it’s the chance of power business users. This one comes loaded with features which are sure enough to satisfy the most fussy customers.

Razzle-dazzle: Jaw dropping looks… oozes out a lot of oomph as far as looks are concerned. Available in charcoal gray it’s got a classic contoured look. At 4.56 inches tall by 2.33 inches wide by 0.68 inch thick and 6.3 ounces this one is quite a clunky one. But I guess all the bulk accounts for all the features that it comes loaded with.

The screen is a 3.6-inch WVGA touch screen with support for about 262,000 colors at 480×800 pixels making browsing through the web, word processing etc. a pleasant experience. This one was responsive enough for being a resistive one. Also it has an efficient inbuilt accelerometer using which the orientation of the phone can be easily switched by rotating the phone.

Coming to the QWERTY keyboard, using this one was quite a delight with its comfortable spacing and large buttons. At the bottom of the device is a 3.5mm headphone jack with the volume controls on the left side of the device. And for all those who love their music loud it has 2 dual speakers at the back. What I didn’t like is that the memory card slot is behind the battery door which means that every time the user needs the card he or she will have to open the battery door.

Inside dope: This one offers dual-mode functionality which means GSM and CDMA together. When using within the country it works on the CDMA network aand while on roaming it works on the GSM network. While on roaming Sprint offers voice coverage in 180 countries and Data coverage in 150 countries. The other functionality that the Sprint mobile offers are HTC’s Straight Talk Technology, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition.

Navigation through the Windows has been made more easier with the TouchFlo 3D interface. There are also a few other tabs that Sprint has added too make navigation easy. In my opinion the TouchFlo 3D interface is what has to be looked forward to.

Its got a 3.2 megapixel camera which has five resolution modes along with four quality settings. The only glitch here is that it doesn’t offer flash, though to make up for it there are several brightness control settings. The video mode supports video capturing in any of the four formats i.e. H.263, 3GPP2, MEPG4, or H.264. the internal memory it has to offer is 288MB which can be extended too 16GB using a memory card. I wasn’t quite impressed with the picture quality, though the objects were quite distinguishable in the photos they weren’t all that sharp and always exhibited some amount of haziness. The video quality was not that great either being choppy at times with some interruptions. Also viewing videos on Youtube was not cumbersome, just that it took some time for the videos to get buffered. And the Sprint TV was a huge disappointment with none of the clips being played accurately with heavy interruptions here and there.

Coming to the call quality I must say that I found it absolutely mind blowing. Crisp sound without any interference and hardly any static and absolutely no background sounds. However on the callers end they were not all that satisfied. They experienced a bit of an echo. And they also added that when I was talking through the speakerphones some parts of the conversation would get cut.

Web browsing hardly took any time and the pages loaded within seconds using the Sprint’s  EV-DO Rev. A network. Compared to this the speed of the GPS facility was not that great. It took quite some time to get through the exact location but once it is started tracking it was quite efficient with the spoken commands being pretty much loud and audible and helped me too my way through the traffic.

The battery life has a rated talktime of  4 hours and can run on the standby mode for as long as 14 hours.

Nitty-gritty: This one comes a huge price tag for sure but it balances the features that are being offered with it. Its got lots of stuff to offer as compared to the one launched by T-mobile and the best being the 3.5mm headphone being offered. If your looking for unique high end features wallet is ready to take the blow then probably you could go ahead and get this one…

This one is the fourth Android phone being launched by HTC. Apart from being an Android phone this one is equipped with the same brilliant Sense UI which made many gadget freak go crazy over the HTC Hero. This handset supports 3G along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and it comes loaded with a 2.8 inch touchscreen display, FM radio,audio jack, 3.2 megapixel camera. And obviously being an Android phone it supports a lot of google applications.

HTC has started promoting this one as the Android phone for all, and if what it claims is true then possibly this one should be priced at around $100 or less.