Mobile phone maker HTC, once favoured by corporates for its Windows Mobile support, has become one of the most high profile Android supporters to date and has been rolling out a continuously successful line of smartphones. At the end of March the company will be introducing another three phones locally, the Smart, Legend and Desire. We look at what to expect.<\/p>\n
The Smart<\/strong><\/p>\n The Smart is HTC’s latest budget phone, not really in the same league as the Legend and Desire but rather aimed at users not looking for a high-end phone. The Smart is not underpowered however and includes a 300MHz processor, 256MB of memory and uses MicroSD cards for storage. The screen is a 2.8-inch touchscreen and in usual HTC style, uses the company’s Sense interface.<\/p>\n The Smart, unlike a growing number of HTC’s phones which run Android, runs Qualcomm’s Brew MP operating system which includes Flash support for application development.<\/p>\n The phone has single-band HSPA 3G and quad-band GSM\/GPRS\/EDGE connectivity, but no Wi-Fi. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 and a 3.0 megapixel camera.<\/p>\n The Legend<\/strong><\/p>\n The HTC Legend is the successor to the very popular Hero, perhaps the company’s best Android phone to date. There are a number of improvements over the Hero including a better screen, faster processor, LED flash camera and the new aluminium chassis. The Legend runs the Android 2.1 operating system on top of Qualcomm’s 600MHz processor. This isn’t as nippy as the Desire but is still a good boost over the Hero’s 500MHz processor.<\/p>\n The Legend includes dual-band HSPA and quad-band GSM\/GPRS\/EDGE support as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with enhanced data rate. The 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus now also includes LED flash as well as supporting geotagging for pictures. The 3.2-inch screen, the same size as the Hero, is now an AMOLED screen as opposed to the LED on the Hero, which saves some space and gives better colour clarity. Also new in the Legend is the optical trackpad in place of the trackball in the Hero. Storage wise the Legend ships with 384MB of memory which can be supplemented with a MicroSD card of up to 32GB. <\/p>\n Although the Legend has better specifications than the Hero, it’s not really positioned as HTC’s flagship model. That honour goes to the Desire.<\/p>\n The Desire<\/strong><\/p>\n HTC’s new flagship phone is the Desire, a phone first unveiled at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year. The Desire has a 3.7-inch AMOLED display and 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. On top of that is HTC’s Sense user interface running on Android 2.1. The Desire also includes Flash support, dual-band HSPA and quad-band GSM\/GPRS\/EDGE.<\/p>\n Like the Legend the Desire has a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and geotagging but also has face recognition built in. Both the Legend and the Desire have built-in FM radio. The Desire also features the new optical trackpad in place of the trackball.<\/p>\n Performance wise the Desire has 576MB of memory and includes MicroSD support which can be expanded up to 32GB. HTC ready to roll<\/a><\/strong> << Discussion<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Related links<\/strong><\/p>\n
The Smart, Legend and Desire phones will be released in South Africa in early April.<\/p>\n