HTC has added two more Android smartphones to its mobile mix, both running Android 2.1 plus an enhanced Sense UI packed with sweet new features.
MWC 2010, Barcelona | HTC looks set to continue its dominance of the Android market with today’s launch of two new smartphones running Google’s open-source mobile OS.
The Desire is HTC’s new flagship for the Android family.
It sports a vibrant 3.7 inch 480x800 AMOLED touchscreen and runs the same 1GHz SnapDragon processor as the HTC HD2. This is backed by a meaty 576MB of RAM to give full reign to both Android and the updated Sense UI layer, and a 1400mAh battery.
Telstra will launch the Desire in April, having inked a three-month exclusivity deal with HTC.
The Legend sees HTC branch out in a new design-led direction, with the phone milled out of a single block of aluminium into a seamless frame so that the shell doubles as the chassis.
Sound familiar? Yes, Apple’s MacBook manufacturing process is now available in smartphones, and it’s perhaps no accident that this premium smartphone feels like you’re holding a little MacBook Pro in your palm.
The Legend has slightly lesser specs than the Desire, with a 600MHz processor and 3.2 inch 320x480 AMOLED screen, although the battery is a still ample 1300mAh cell.
Both the Desire and Legend run Android 2.1, pack a 5.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and sport the obligatory microSD card slot.
The familiar trackball of previous HTC Android phones has been replaced with a tiny optical joystick (shown above), while the bezel surrounding this acts as the primary button.
The enhanced Sense overlay introduces several new touches which are exclusive to these Android devices due to HTC’s ability to access all of the platform’s open source code.
These include an Expose-style ‘Leap’ action which shows all the home screen panes as thumbnails by pinching any screen. Tapping any thumbnail jumps you straight to that screen.
HTC has also created a new ‘FriendStream’ app which pulls updates and photos from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr into a singe view.
The new Sense also inherits a ‘meeting mode’ phone feature introduced in the HD2. When the phone rings, the volume of the ringtone decreases as you lift the phone and is then silenced completely if you turn the phone face-down onto the table.
David Flynn is attending Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona as a guest of Samsung.