/ 23 October 2009

Could this be the iPhone killer?

It is somewhat confusing that the HTC Hero has been launched in South Africa with more of a whimper than a bang.

If I were the HTC representative in South Africa, I would have been screaming from rooftops that the best cellphone this company has made has just hit the local market. The Hero is the latest phone to hit the market that uses Google’s Android operating system.

Most people have yet to hear of Android but with more manufacturers offering at least one handset based on Android, this is likely to change soon. Although most people are familiar with the concept of an operating system on a personal computer such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX or Linux, many don’t think of phones in the same way.

All phones, however, run some kind of software that allows access to underlying features, be it taking a photo, sending an SMS, making a call or surfing the internet.

Android is, with Apple’s iPhone OS and Nokia’s Symbian Series 6 OS, one of the most sophisticated phone operating systems available on the market. The problem with the first few phones that used Android was that they were not tweaked in the right way to get the best out of the software.

The HTC Hero remedies that and takes the whole experience to a new level. Calling the Hero an ‘iPhone killer” may be overstating how good this phone actually is, but in many ways it surpasses the iPhone. That this phone is closely linked to Google is evident from the time you turn it on.

Before you can even start making calls it asks you for your Gmail logon details and if Gmail is your primary email service, you have full access to it through a dedicated Gmail application, which is the best mobile email client I have come across.

If you are using your work email or any other internet service provider then there is a separate email program available and it is quite a work of art. I have often baulked at setting up work email on my phone because it is such a tedious exercise, but with the Hero it was so simple I had to pinch myself to make sure I had done it right.

Compared with the iPhone, the Hero’s email programs are streets ahead. Part of this is owing to Google’s decision to build one application for Gmail and one for all other mail. This allows the phone to present Gmail in the way Google intended you to see it, with threaded conversations.

As with all touch-screen phones, the quality of the screen is what makes or breaks the device. The Hero screen is excellent. Navigating with your fingers is dead easy but I noticed that for some reason it doesn’t respond properly if you put the phone down on a hard surface. Pick it up, cradle it in your hand and it’s awesome.

Now for the bad news. If you are looking for a phone that can last for a week without needing to be recharged, then this is not the phone for you. In fact, you should stay away from smartphones altogether as their battery life is dodgy, to say the least.

So if you can’t plug in your Hero once a day, then you will be unavailable on a fairly regular basis. You will experience the same problem whether you buy an HTC Hero, a Nokia N97 or an Apple iPhone.

The speed of the Hero is not in the same class as the iPhone 3GS. Sometimes you may tap the screen and wonder whether it has even registered. Other times, however, the response is instant. There doesn’t seem to be any hard-and-fast rule about when you get the slow train or when the express will come. But on the whole, I wasn’t overly frustrated by the speed of the system.

There were a few functions of the phone that took a little getting used to, especially for someone who has spent the better part of a year using an iPhone. Suddenly having seven buttons at the bottom of the phone instead of the one that is on the iPhone meant I kept turning the screen off instead of going back to the ‘home” screen.

I’m not sure why HTC insisted on including the little trackball when all its functions are replicated by the touchscreen. It took me a while to work out that there is a ton of extra functions hidden by the ‘Menu” button and I am still not sure whether pressing the ‘Power/Screen Off/Hang Up” button actually hangs up a call. It is clear that HTC needs to hire someone who hates buttons as much as Apple chief executive Steve Jobs does, just to add some perspective to the debate.

For me the difference between the iPhone and the Hero is similar to the difference between school and university. At school there is a rigid set of rules dictating what you can and can’t do and heaven forbid if you break those rules. At university there are still rules about general behaviour but they are much more relaxed and you are allowed more freedom in how you choose to live your life. So it is with the Hero.

The basic rule is that if it is physically possible for the phone to do something you can probably do it. This freedom to choose how you interact with a phone is refreshing and makes it stand apart from the iPhone.

Personally, I still prefer the iPhone. But that is a personal preference rather than a pronouncement on which is the better device.