We touched on the Legend's innards during our
video demo of the phone at MWC last week, but at the time, we didn't see what was actually
under the plastic flap. The answer? A most unusual battery compartment, that's what. HTC's unibody follow-on to last year's
Hero throws away the concept of a battery cover altogether, opting instead for an endcap that conceals slots for the SIM and microSD card along with the battery -- in other words, it slot-loads rather than dropping into place like almost every other phone you've used. Besides eliminating a big, ugly battery cover, the setup means that all three components can be changed independently; gone are the days of yanking the battery just to swap SIMs, for instance. It's not a totally unprecedented configuration (the
Devour takes a similar path, for one), but with HTC's weight being thrown behind these slick designs now, we're excited to see where it could lead -- assuming signal strength still rules with that much aluminum in play.
posted February 22nd 2010 11:01PM
Make it robust and I will be a happy man.
@Evan ahhh how dare you!?
@Evan:
Don't use your battery. Not that big of a deal.
Steve
Sent from my iPhone
@michaspi
You aren't going to use your phone for 10 hours
-Steve
@michaspi
The worst thing HTC ever hid beneath the battery cover was the reset button for my Windows Mobile powered Touch Diamond. Sure I loaded a reset program onto the thing but whenever it locked up I was stuck having to remove the cover.
@DaveBach
***Fanboy Alert***
Yeah dude that's what you get for having a Windows Mobile phone...should have bought an iPhone.
@DaveBach
Actually, I've been quite happy with my Windows Mobile phones for the most part. If I had to make a purchasing decision today I'll go with a Windows Mobile device all over again because it provides me with the apps I actually need and the specs I desire. The HTC Touch Pro2 is looking real nice these days.
@DaveBach
whoa Jekyll and Hide over here.
@DaveBach You don't have to take the cover off a diamond to reset, you can reach the button from the hole the stylus is kept in. Pop the stylus almost all the way out and poke towards the screen at an odd angle and you can just reach it. Sounds just as annoying, but you get used to it really easily.
@Alex Wright You shouldn't have to "get used to" resetting you phone.....
@Alex Wright
Alex you must be smoking something as the reset bottom is on the opposite side of the phone.
@barry99705
For the record I reset my Windows Mobile phone about as often as I need to reset my iPod Touch.
So it's all slot loading, it's the future
@look a cow Will i need to blow on the battery connectors to make it work every once and a while?
@MisterSquared
Follow that with a nudge, and game's on!
@MisterSquared
That was my strategy with the NES and SNES when I was a lad. Nostalgia, Nostalgia.
What About like extended batteries?
@DaRiste1 i would guess Jay Leno size chin on your HTC
@DaRiste1 Legitimate question, if a bit unfortunately typed. Growth in battery efficiency is nowhere close to keeping pace with the growth of processing power and the spread of more constantly connected software programs present in modern phones. Battery swapping it is I suppose...
@DaRiste1
and what if battery itself expand after years of use?
@num0
If the battery itself expands, then YOU, my friend, have more important problems than talk time.
you mean like a camera?
HTC is great for their physical phone designs. My Tilt was incredibly tough, surviving a slam against the wall in the NYC subway amongst other things, and now they have a design team that can deliver stylish designs (hit or miss), unibody construction and a different battery compartment.
More firms should pay attention to their phone casings. The Pre is plasticy, the iPhone lacks a removable battery, Nokias wander from amazing (E72) to mediocre (N97, 5800) and Motorolas seem tough enough, but the Legend is clearly ahead with unibody aluminum.
@YpoCaramel nvm about Motorola I need to checkout the Devour.
It's almost like every digital camera created since lithium ion batteries were invented..
I don't see why more cellphones don't adopt this format!
@jellotime91
My camera uses two AAs. And I refuse to buy any that don't. I have four sets of rechargeable AAs, and _nothing_ is worth losing the ability to swap out batteries like that.
@urza9814
You can swap out batteries like that with proprietary lithium batteries, you just have to buy a spare one. It has the advantage of much skinnier cameras (and I like my compact to fit nicely in my pocket which ti does because it doesn't run on enormous AAs) and better battery life and flash charge rates than AAs anyway.
Saw it before k850i from SE, but this one look better in metal ;-)
@moeoz
Ah man I was going to say that! You stole my comment.
@where u at
Thief!!! Thief!!! Arrest that poster!
@moeoz Yeah this design worked great on my K850 and I was disappointed when it didn't show up again, I'm glad to see it make a comeback!
How has no one thought of this already?! This is brilliant!
@andrewjking You mean its QUIETLY BRILLIANT!
@(Unverified) Exactly!
@(Unverified)
That is not quiet. It is
quietly brilliant
It's a great design, my SE K850 did this almost 3 years ago.
@jon
Came here for this comment. I loved my k850i and this particular design element was an excellent idea. I actually wrote a far more detailed comment about it earlier but Engadget's comment system still f*cks up occasionally and it never saw the light of day.
Chris Ziegler, or JT, or anyone else: why, occasionally, does the comments system just completely fail to work and tell me that an email has been sent to me to confirm my comment when there's no need to. I'm sure I'm not the only person this occasionally happens to...
@Mr Oos
Yeah, that happened to me yesterday. My comment never showed up and I didn't try it again for fear of the dreaded double-post faux pas, so all my wittiness was lost in the cracks of the internet, like tears in rain.
My only consolation is that in my heart I know it would have been up-voted.
*fingers crossed this time*
Can they fix batt life on these things? I just got a DROID Eris and the battery life is terrible.
Remember the K850i?
@fernando SE w810 was like this aswell!
HTC just showed apple whats good.
@B3astofthe3ast
Apple designer will go off about how revolutionary their new aluminum iPhone is in June and HTC will laugh. Apple's should be a little more sexier some how though since they've invested more time in theirs than HTC on the Legend.
Sexy - mini-hdmi out ftw! :)
It was soo much easier. Why couldnt they just make sim and memory card swapable without removing battery but still maintaining conventional battery cover?
You could easily replace the back battery cover on those phones when it got scratched and started looking ugly. Now you will have to go through tedious process of replacing back housing.
Still, its a progress in some way.
@srk Because the SIM and MicroSD slots need a cover of some kind, and putting them under the battery cover is neater and easier than putting those little plastic flaps.
Smart and sexy. That's what I like.
"slot load"
back to 2004, baby.
*my* 6yo smartphone slot loads batteries.
@blland
Sure, but does it also slot load sims and memory cards?
Sony Ericsson K850i much?