HTC unveils the Legend

The HTC Legend, which runs the latest Android software called Eclair, is made from a single block of aluminium and has a very bright and clear 3.2 inch AMOLED (ultra-bright LED) display. Vodafone has grabbed the handset in Europe, wary of losing out after missing the iPhone in some of the company’s key European markets.

The Legend will come to the UK in April and already analysts are predicting that it will be a design classic following its launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Legend’s clever use of milled aluminium casing could scoop Apple’s direction for the next iPhone design,” said CCS Insight.

Despite its body being engineered from a single piece of aluminium, the HTC Legend has a removable battery – something which the iPhone conspicuously lacks – which slides out from a compartment at the bottom of the phone. The back of the battery casing also contains the phone’s antenna so that its metal body does not hinder signal strength.

HTC has updated the user face – called HTC Sense – that sits atop Android on the device. Alongside refinements to the phone’s address book, so that contacts can be organised into groups such as business contacts and friends, it pulls information from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter into a single Friend Stream of updates.

The Android platform has been the making of HTC. It created the first phone, the G1, using the software, while the Legend is the new version of another successful Android phone, the Hero. The Legend, however, has a rather less intrusive “chin” at the bottom of the device than the Hero.

Alongside it, HTC also unveiled the HTC Desire, which also uses HTC Sense. It had previously been codenamed the HTC Bravo and several UK operators have been vying to get hold of it as it is essentially the same as Google’s own Nexus One device, which HTC also produced. However, it has an optical trackpad rather than a roller ball, and is understood to be cheaper than the Google device.

HTC Unleashes Desire

HTC, maker of Google ’s Nexus One , unveiled a new handset dubbed the Desire — which looks a lot like the Nexus One.

The device, shown Tuesday at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, is, like the Nexus One, an Android smart phone with 3G connectivity. It lacks a trackball, instead using an optical trackpad — a tweak that could make the new phone less tactile when users try to navigate through its menus.

HTC’s Desire is also different in that it will has a “sense ” display, a custom Android user interface sporting a new “leap” function that allows users to view different home screens at the same time by one pinch. The new phone has also a new “friend stream” feature which keeps social-networking updates in one list.

The Desire joins other HTC Android phones, including the myTouch 3G, sold by T-Mobile USA, and the Droid Eris, sold by Verizon Wireless.

In terms of specs, the Desire, like the Nexus One, includes a 3.7-inch multi-touch screen, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and the Android 2.1 operating system . It comes with 512 megabyte ROM and 576 megabyte RAM (the Nexus One has 512 megabyte RAM).

The Desire won’t be available in the U.S. anytime soon. It will, however, be launched through T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, in Europe and Asia in the second quarter.

Gizmodo already made a bold statement about the new phone , calling it “a real iPhone contender in 2010, no matter what Steve Jobs brings out later this year.”

Along with the Desire, HTC launched two other devices — HTC Legend and HTC HD Mini.

Sprint to offer HTC Hero

Sprint will be getting the highly anticipated Android-based HTC Hero, sans the quirky form factor with which the device debuted in Europe with T-Mobile and Orange.

According to a press release, the Sprint Hero will be available at all Sprint retail locations and online beginning Oct. 11 for $179.99 after a $50 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year service agreement. Pre-registration begins today online.

From pictures provided by Sprint, the U.S. version of the Hero does not appear to take the device’s European form factor, which included a unique beveled mouth piece.

European & US HTC HeroRoger Entner, senior vice president of the communications sector for Nielsen IAG, said the U.S. version is a great improvement. “I have no idea why it was left out, but they got rid of a great big wart,” Entner said. “Ideally, you want to keep it flat. That bevel on the European version was just an admission that they couldn’t get the mic and voice quality right.”

Enter said the quality of the recent wave of Android phones has produced some possible competitors to the iPhone. “We’ll see if they’re competitive with the iPhone. They should come pretty close,” Enter said, adding: “Hopefully it means less iPhone envy on Captiol Hill.”

The HTC Hero features an integrated 5 MP camera and camcorder, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, Wi-Fi, exapandable microSD slot up to 32 GB and integrated Facebook, Twitter and Flikr.

Including the Hero, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Tour, Sprint now has three high-profile smartphone devices on its network. The carrier also offers what is considered one of the cheapest rate plans on the market. Sprint’s Simply Everything plan provides unlimited nationwide calling, texting, e-mail, data and navigation for $99.99 per month.

HTC to launch ‘at least’ three Google phones this year

High Tech Computer (HTC) will ship “at least” three smartphones this year that use Google’s Android software, HTC’s CEO said Tuesday.

HTC, already the largest maker of smartphones that use the Windows Mobile OS, was first to the market with an Android-based smartphone last year, when it teamed up with Google and T-Mobile to launch the G1 in the U.S.

The Taiwanese handset maker last month announced its second Google phone, the HTC Magic, or G2 as some are calling it. The handset is being sold first in Europe by Vodafone.

HTC will sell at least two more Google phones this year.

At the sidelines of a Merrill Lynch technology conference in Taipei, HTC CEO Peter Chou was asked whether or not a report saying HTC will market five Android-based handsets this year was true.

HTC will launch “at least” three, he replied, declining further comment on the matter.

HTC gained a march on smartphone rivals in using Google’s Android software by working with the popular U.S. company for three years on the software and compatible smartphones before launching the G1 last September. The G1 is also marketed under the name HTC Dream.

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Google G2 is coming out?

It appears the successor to the T-Mobile G1, the first smartphone based on the open-source Google Android mobile operating system, is coming soon.

Photos of what is suspected to be the new T-Mobile G2 were posted this morning on gadget blog Gizmodo.

According to the blog, the HTC-made device could be ready in May. The G2, while having some similarities to its predecessor, is much thinner and sacrifices the physical slide-out keyboard, one of the key features of the T-Mobile G1. In place of the keyboard, the G2 is expected to have a virtual keypad only, similar to the Apple iPhone. Additionally, the new G2 is shown as having a 3.2-megapixel camera and a touch-screen interface that Gizmodo’s sources said will be “very similar” to the G1.

T-Mobile released the original G1 in October, marking the first — and still only — Android-based device on the market. The T-Mobile G1 was a shot across the bow of the Apple iPhone 3G, which dominated the touch-screen smartphone scene. Since the iPhone’s release, several other touch-screen titans hit stores, including the G1 and BlackBerry’s first-ever touch screen, the BlackBerry Storm. The T-Mobile G1 was vaulted to success, mainly because it was the first to feature Android, and quickly became one of the coolest smartphones of 2008.

New Android devices are expected soon, but have yet to become commercially available. So far, manufacturers like Garmin, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others have been said to be readying Android-based devices.