HTC Legend's battery compartment ready to blow minds

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.

[PaladinX13 Posted Feb 22nd 2010 11:32PM]

Are there any other unibody Smart Phones out there? This is incredibly attractive solution to having a usable candybar phone without a separate case.

[sibahi Posted Feb 23rd 2010 12:04AM]

Wow , this phone looks amazing . Just stick WP7 on it and it'll be the greatest gadget ever .

..

Oh, wait . I should say this about the Nexus One .

[MrAffrox Posted Feb 23rd 2010 12:04AM]

Anyone else think the author is just a tad too excited about the implications of slot loading batteries?

[reallynotnick Posted Feb 23rd 2010 12:19AM]

So I can swap a SIM card without turning my phone on and off? I don't really see this as a big advancement, I can do that with my iPhone (mind you I can't take the battery out and I need a paperclip) but I can't think why I would to switch them on the fly. I also don't want to be carrying around multiple micro SD cards, those things are tiny and easy to lose.
I do however love the aluminum with replaceable battery and memory card unlike my 2G iPhone, there is just something nice about metal compared to plastic.

[sloppyjoe Posted Feb 23rd 2010 12:58AM]

great, just like my old SE k850i. I hope they make the battery door robust, the ones made by Sony are super fragile.

[glenskey Posted Feb 23rd 2010 2:10AM]

the downside to that design, though, is that you lose reception every time you want to insert a sim card.. but i am sure that is an easy design fix..

[month Posted Feb 23rd 2010 2:15AM]

@glenskey Well that's a lot better than the alternative of turning your phone off every time you need to take the SIM card out?

[glenskey Posted Feb 23rd 2010 2:24AM]

@month Damn, i meant "insert an SD card" not sim card. does that make more sense?

[6knowspring Posted Feb 23rd 2010 2:31AM]

About time- I'm pretty fed up with having to plop out phone batteries to switch SIM cards!

[DrBlaze Posted Feb 23rd 2010 3:09AM]

Niiice!
Now, we need to split the battery in 2, so you can change a battery on the go.
2 small batteries would be some awesome!!!!

[Oli D Posted Feb 23rd 2010 3:26AM]

Can you hot-swap SIMs?

[Epedemic Posted Feb 23rd 2010 3:51AM]

Don't worry about the aluminum obstructing the signal. The antenna is in the endcap itself. ;)

[NeoSeer Posted Feb 23rd 2010 4:39AM]

It us quite a handsome phone indeed.

Sent from my iPhone

[arshia Posted Feb 23rd 2010 5:13AM]

This solution have been on my old Sony-Ericsson k850i for a couple of years now. This is nothing new for me.

[Mars478 Posted Feb 23rd 2010 6:12AM]

Hey, Apple, you down for this?

[MikeZ Posted Feb 23rd 2010 7:15AM]

Still don't think it's a good thing to have "battery" and "blow" in the same sentence.

[pewp Posted Feb 23rd 2010 7:30AM]

Ground breaking. Just like my 4 year old K850i.

[MVMNT Posted Feb 23rd 2010 7:49AM]

"iPhone Killer" :-/

[maximusfilms Posted Feb 23rd 2010 9:41AM]

hey its the sony ericsson k850! Man i loved that phone a couple years ago