HTC Legend review
By Richard Lai 
posted March 10th 2010 1:20PM
posted March 10th 2010 1:20PM
Features and build quality
Those who've used the Hero for some time will spot many similarities on the slimmer Legend. The phone's general anatomy on the front and sides remains unchanged, except for the keys below the screen -- the Search and Back buttons have pushed the entire row to the left, thus killing the pick-up-call key and flicking the power button to the top of the phone (near the 3.5mm headphone jack). Naturally, some may miss the ability to jump straight to the dialer, and the keys' occasional stickiness on our unit don't help, either, although this might be an isolated issue. The volume buttons -- now in the form of a thin silver bar that sticks out slightly -- have been moved up from the slope underneath to the straight side, making them more reachable and less prone to accidental presses. On the contrary, we found the new earpiece to be a tad higher than where we'd like it to be, so we often had to deliberately hold the phone lower on our ear to hear the call. The speaker on the back was amazingly loud, so good thing that we can quickly mute the ringer by placing the Legend face down (courtesy of the G-sensor, of course).
Moving on to the backside: due to the aluminum unibody construction, we no longer have a big battery cover that required some skillful hands and long nails to pry open on the Hero; instead, we access the battery, SIM card and microSDHC card (spring-loaded slot) under a smaller rubber cover at bottom, while the camera, LED flash and speaker near the top are padded with some rubber. Here's an advanced warning, though: the battery cover is actually part of the cellular radio antenna, so removing it while your phone's still on means you'll be temporarily out of reach. Obviously, letting the kids or the dogs get near your rubber cover may render your Legend useless. Flipping open the inner cover underneath will also loosen the battery thus killing the power. Naturally, this slide-in design for the battery bay means third-party manufacturers will struggle to produce batteries of larger capacity. As for the general feel of the Legend's metallic body, it wasn't as slippery as we had initially expected, but understandably the Hero's back has better grip and provides a warmer touch.
Software
As we've seen at MWC, HTC's made some pretty neat changes to the Sense UI for Android 2.1, and we're not just talking about those fancy colors and icons. First is the handy Leap feature that lets you view all seven homescreens in one go (similar idea to the XPERIA X1's panel interface), and this can be triggered by pinch-zooming any of the homescreens or by pressing the Home button when you're on the main screen. Leap's been responding pretty well all this time with both input methods, but we've noticed that the panels are actually just stills of each homescreen as last viewed -- it would be nice if HTC can make them all live, or at least auto-update the panels every now and then. Next up is Friend Stream -- an aggregator app (with widget) essentially for stalking people by the means of Facebook statuses, Flickr and Twitter (which launches Peep when you click on a tweet). While this isn't exactly a breakthrough feature -- Motoblur already does this with its Happenings app -- it's no doubt a welcomed addition to HTC fans.
The Legend spoils us with way more choices than the Hero did when it comes to audio entertainment -- not only does it support a wider range of formats (AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, MP3, WAV and WMA), but HTC's also thrown in FM radio along with a nicely designed app that auto-scans for channels upon first boot. Like other phones, you'll need a wired pair of headphones for the FM reception, although HTC ran out of handsfree headsets so your guess is as good as ours regarding their headphones' audio quality (and yes, the pair pictured above are our own Sony earphones). We never got around to testing the stereo Bluetooth feature on the Legend, but we'd be surprised if it's buggy at this stage.
General performance
Even though the Legend (Qualcomm MSM7227 at 600MHz) is clocked at just 72MHz more than the Hero (MSM7200A at 528MHz), we thought it'd be interesting to compare boot-up times, and behold: the Legend only needed about 20 seconds, whereas the Hero took almost twice as long. Nice work, Qualcomm! We then decided to test the Legend's battery and camera by treating it to a rare sunny trip around London. As fun as it sounds, the reflective nature of the AMOLED screen meant we had to keep web surfing to the minimal while out in the open -- perhaps some Super AMOLED could fix this.
We've also spent a few nights with the Legend in bed. First thing we noticed was that with the brightness turned down to minimal level, the AMOLED screen was suddenly given a brown tint and some noise pixels. Again, this could be just the general disadvantage of AMOLED that could be fixed by coping with one or two brightness levels up. A more pressing matter that we discovered on the Legend was the weaker WiFi (802.11 b/g) reception compared to the Hero and many other phones -- in the same spot, the Hero managed two bars while the Legend struggled with one or none at all, which ruined our bedtime web surfing routine. That said, there's always the good old 3G if you're on an unlimited data plan.
Camera
It isn't a nice thing to say, but we do have just a bit more hate than love for the Legend's camera. The 5 megapixel pictures taken during the day turned out pretty good, but night shots were hard to focus and some were terribly noisy -- it's what you get with small sensors anyway so we'll leave it there. However, the 640 x 480 videos were just choppy in general, and they became much worse when filmed in the dark. We've seen better filming performance on other smartphones so there's clearly some work to be done. To cheer things up a bit, the LED flash may be small but it did its job well with objects within two meters. You can see all the camera's good and bad below.
Video filmed during the day:
Video filmed at night:
Wrap-up
It's safe to say that HTC's broken yet another mold with the Legend, stunning the world with both its hardware and software design. There's no question about the unibody's toughness, and many other features we've seen here are of significant improvements over the Hero, namely the AMOLED screen (in general), FM radio, optical trackpad (debatable), still camera and the new goodies plus performance boost in Sense UI. Sure, there are major flaws in the battery life and video recording performance, but there's a chance that these can be fixed via a software upgrade, if they weren't of hardware glitches. Some may have hoped for some 720p video capture capability, but hey, isn't that what the Desire's for? We hope so. Anyway, we'll know which one's of the best value when both phones are available in European shops.
Release the reviews Engadget!!! Keep 'em comin' .
@New Reformation
After reading: The HD2 is still king in my mind, even while running winmo 6.5.
Call me crazy but this phone is not real move forward. HTC has shown it can release great specs without an insane price ($200 for the HD2 on T-Mo on release date).
Oh my, it looks so.. indifferent..
@UbbeDall
this is a definite win for htc because this is their ENTRY-LEVEL smartphone. Its obviously is not gonna have the snapdragons and 720p VR but is great as an entry level purchase
@New Reformation
I would have liked to see a one of their software tour videos, as they usually do for mobile reviews. I'm interested to see what the Sense UI on Android 2.1 looks like.
@New Reformation
This looks... nice. Really, really nice.
@New Reformation
i like engadget's salt lamp
@New Reformation No. No. This is exactly the kind of short-sighted thinking that keeps subsidized phone pricing alive in the US. The HD2 is only $200 (on contract only, you'll note) because that's the effective price ceiling for a phone. Any more than that and people just don't want to buy it.
I seriously want to punch Jon Rubenstein in the junk. Why on why didn't Palm partner up with HTC and have them make the hardware. This stunning phone combined with the brilliance of WebOS could actually be an iPhone killer.
@taligent
Myself and many others have no problem with the hardware on the Pre. Why would would Palm partner with HTC?? So HTC can put a crappy camera in a webOS device? The Pre's camera is top notch, the best video recorder on a mobile device I've seen. Here are some samples for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRcwiAObnfQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCvncTJrjVg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYo6kBag_j4
@scorpeo
You own a Pre, you gotta say that else you look foolish.
The fact is 1000s of people never bought one cos of they look cheap and flimsy.
@taligent
That's a good point, though I bet HTC would just throw Sense on there somehow. I'm not really sure I understand what Sense is all about. At least on my TP2 (WinMo 6.5), the only real benefit I found to having SenseUI enabled is the at-a-glance weather. So even after trying a ton of custom ROM builds, I just ended up disabling SenseUI in favor of the standard WinMo home screen. It's lighter and less complicated.
@taligent they did... htc was the company that produced the hardware for palm lol...
@taligent
Not for the Pre...
@taligent
they have partnered up before, guess who made the treo pro
@scorpeo I tried the Pre for a short while and was immediately turned of by the build quality. You can literally shave yourself with the keyboard, and nothing seemed to really fit together. It felt like a children's toy, the Motofone F3 feels more expensive/better built than the Pre, let alone the cheapest Android phones like the Tattoo or the T-Mobile Pulse (by Huawei). The actual hardware INSIDE the phone and WebOS is great, seemed pretty fast and all, and the shape isn't too bad either, closed it feels nice. But oh well.
Too bad the Legend is doomed to be entry level (I thought that was the Tattoos job?). It's pretty attractive... slightly larger screen (3,5" perhaps) and Snapdragon and it would be very attractive. But this seems to be a very mild upgrade to the G1/Magic/Hero...
did anyone else find this picture slightly amusing or am I the only one?
http://www.engadget.com/photos/htc-legend-review/#2778249
@FabianG20 Ah, the good old 69 position. Good times, good times.
@Nitesh
I hope the Hero didn't choke...
@FabianG20
I can hear the feedback ringing in my ears. Oh wait, that's just tinnitus.
Or were you referring to something more lascivious?
@Jamesy Shouldn't Legend be the one that is choking?
Hero got a track"ball" while the Legend got a optical trackpad with a "hole" on it.
What am i saying.....
@FabianG20
phone sex at it's finest ... I'll be here all week
@FabianG20 Gadget pr0n at its best. Hah.
Is that an Android Engadget app on the desktop? :)
@mkriedel
I was thinking the same thing :)
@mkriedel
Good catch. They better release it soon.
@mkriedel
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but couldn't it just be a shortcut link?
@mkriedel
Newsroom is better, have all the news you want from any site + you can keep any site on the desktop as a widget. I live by it daily.
@mkriedel Just noticed that too. We can only hope.
@mkriedel I saw that right away, when will we get it? :)
And no, that's not a website shortcut, they look completely different.
@Commodorksixtyfork
No, at least on my Droid (2.0.1) the shortcut link shows the generic shortcut "icon" for any links on my desktop, with a small lower left corner displaying the site icon. Looks like the app :)
@mkriedel
Yep:
http://www.engadget.com/photos/htc-legend-review/#2776344
@mkriedel Well sure it's an App, just download Engadget official apps http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/24/engadget-for-iphone-ipod-touch-2-0-1-now-available/
@mkriedel It's the Android Engadget app. Josh said on The Engadget Show that editors were testing an early version.
HTC need to improve their camera. I think that's they drawback.
@techlord
I think that's they drawback, too!
?
@glamajamma no one questions the tech lord!!
@dr steve brule Don't you mean they tech lord?
And this is why Apple wants to pummel them into the ground - they are one of the phew handset makers who actually do a good job.
@Nitesh *Few, lol, I'm losing it*
@Nitesh Seriously man, you're phalling apart.
Very nice, but hardly enough to replace my DROID.
Is this ever coming to North America?
@NeoXY
Rumors are, AT&T is getting it by the Summer. I shudder to think though, what they do to neuter it, given how they knee-capped the Motorola Backflip. AT&T really is like the old Verizon now.
@NeoXY Nope, not coming to the US outside rumors, speculations, and wishful thinking.
@pika2000
HTC or whoever not saying anything or even stating it isn't coming doesn't mean it actually isn't. How many times has Sony said there wouldn't be a PS3 slim?
How long before the HTC Android phones become antiques?
I truly hope this eventually makes its way to AT&T in a non-gimped kind of way.
@jroff It's not coming to the US.
What would happen if you imported the european version and threw an AT&T SIM in it?