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.
This review is lacking and it seems like this was one was quickie. It fails to go in-depth on the new Sense UI and performance. A good in-depth review would include a browser performance test, as well as some other performance tests. Also, the review says that the camera is lacking but fails to point out why. The only thing we get is that it can't focus well in dark, followed by a comment that most phones can't. Oh, and night shots are noisy. Wow, thanks for that. Not.
@Merkie Let me fill you in with what's apparently lacking: we've already covered all the new features and tweaks in Sense UI (not that many, as you can see, but very useful nevertheless); the new browser performed similarly with the old one hence we skipped it, but I do apologize for failing to point this out clearly; the camera only lacked in its dark environment performance, but was otherwise crisp and quick in well-lit places.
Feel free to throw in more questions.
@Richard Lai
I understand why you skipped it, but at least mention why you skip it. Just a comparison with the Droid and Hero (for instance) in a three-minute video would be nice. I appreciate your opinion, but I still value mine higher than yours (as everyone should, after all) after I see what you're basing your opinion on.
I do find it weird you critize the Legend for lacking in dark evironments, it's inherent to cell phones in general.
Another point I would like to shed my light on is the battery performance. You did one test and it resulted in 6 hours of battery life. This is not enough to base a conclusion on. If you want to test battery life, you should repeat the test maybe two times and do some other tests as well (like low brightness/no WiFi/no 3G/no GPS) in order to give insight to the battery performance. I understand that it takes a lot of time to do this test, but you could've just said that in your case battery life was disappointing and that you can't say how the battery will perform for other users. It might improve over time, maybe some process was draining the battery in the background, who knows? You just simply can't say battery life is a "major drawback". There's no way you can know that after one test!
Finally, I think you're not giving the aluminum unibody design enough praise. You mention it, but you seem to me more bothered by the fact that the battery cover is also the antenna and that the Hero feels warmer in your hand. Think that's a little odd.
@Merkie The battery life was based on our five-day trial and not just that day trip. Sorry about that.
We don't have a Droid to compare with, but yes, good call about us failing to mention the browser speeds (I do value your opinion!). It's definitely as good as the Hero, anyway.
The camera comment was just implying that we haven't seen better photos coming out from phones of similarly-sized lenses, as in the Legend would've needed a larger lens for photos of good enough quality to replace your compact camera.
The AMOLED screen is a Samsung by the way.
IN which Samsung is very foolish to sell their competitive advantage regarding screen technology to their competitors.
We've also spent a few nights with the Legend in bed.
0.0
The reason for the apparent speed discrepancy is that the MSM7227 has architectural enhancements over the MSM7200 in the Hero, including an added FPU and a vastly better GPU (pretty much the same one was in the Snapdragon).
Basically its not that good. maybe htc should take a peek more on those apple's tech ;D
@Richard,
Nice article. Didn't quite understand the comments on Adobe Flash playback though. So it has full Flash, not just Flash light? But the performance is poor? Like dropped frames and such when watching video, and so poor you can't play Flash games at all? What's the point then? Or is it just a little irritating but better than nothing?
With a 600MHz CPU you'd expect it to work better with Flash than you report. Do you have a general idea what the minimum specs for Flash playback actually are? Do you need a 1GHz CPU for it to work well?
@Fanfoot Good question. I haven't played with Android Flash on a Snapdragon device, although Adobe's done a demo on the Dell MIni 5 where it achieved smooth video playback. But yes, it's rather pointless to have a feature that doesn't work.
"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."
Why is this necessary? Considering that Leap is a shortcut for manually swiping through your homescreens, I would wager that as pretty as it is you'll only look at if for a second or two at most (pinch, select, tap). I certainly don't see myself taking time out to lovingly gaze upon those 90x120 thumbnails...
You want live preview? It's on your desktop. ;-)
Argh, didn't mean to post as a reply.
@TedJ Having come from an Android phone with a large screen (Dell Mini 5), I do fine Leap very handy to jump between the seven homescreens. Seriously, swiping becomes painfully boring after a while.
Let me summarize the review:
"We like... (insert awesome feature)...but... (insert trivial complaint)."
e.g.
"We like the overview homescreens view, but we would prefer if they were live."
Of course if they did that then the Engadget review would say:
"We like the live homescreens view, we only hope it wasn't so laggy."
@TareG Heh, but like I said, if they did this as a background update service for, say, every 20 minutes, then it shouldn't be that bad.
You have the same headphones as me!
They're v. nice.
Sony MDR MDR-EX500LP in case anyone was wondering…
@(Unverified) Takes some time to warm up though, don't they?
@Richard Lai
They're worth the wait.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZq1x9i6QIs&hd=1
The slot loading battery is.... awesome. I hope more phones in the future take this approach
@Luffy
true... its not new... not sure who did it first but i do remember my sony K850i having it!
I'm on my second Hero (after dropping the other in some water) and it's not a month old yet. BUT I've already ordered the Legend.
Sorry for not chipping in earlier on this thread...BUT the big question for me is "did HTC make a big mistake in downspe'cing the best looking phone on the market?"
Was it the marketing department who said the Legend shouldn't be top of the line? Ie. we have the Nexus One mold, lets just make a new casing and keep the internals. Or was it engineering who said it?
The Legend should have been the top of the line phone. When they did such a great job with the design, they are doing themselves a disfavor with not putting a snapdragon in there.
It's the first time I've opted out for the "top of the line" phone.....
OHH man i would love to have this phone. I think i going to sell my iphone 32 gig for this.
its made how reviews can really differ, just read gizmodo's review
"the Legend is the most well-built phone I've ever had in my hand."
"There just ain't no Android phone like a HTC Sense Android phone. It's simply the best skin an Android could ask for,"
"The Legend ran 36 hours before it died on me."
" I'm going to award it possibly the highest accolade a reviewer can"
only points to moan at was FriendStream could be faster and flash could be better !
Couldn't Apple, like, sue HTC - oh, wait....
Serbian mobile network operator VIP (subsidiary of Vodafone) sells Legend for cca. $400 on a 2 year contract, while you get 325 of minutes, sms's and MB for download monthly.
Ouch!
If I ever get this, the first thing I'm going to do is to change that horrible rainbow wallpaper. Btw, does anyone knows if the Legend supports animated wallpapers? Judging by the 600Mhz core, I think that's a bit far fetched.
Where was the first video filmed? It looked like London.