HTC Legend: first impressions

[cbrace]

I've had the Legend a little over a week now. This is my first smartphone, so I can't compare it with anything else, but here are some first impressions:

Pros: there is lots to like about this phone. Amazing screen, extremely bright and detailed. It is hard to believe it is made up of pixels. Looks almost like an analog image. Facebook/Flickr/Google integration is well-done. The phone feels very solid and compact in your hand. Entering text in the on-screen keyboard at first seems very fiddly, but once you get used to it it is OK. Love the GPS and the GPS apps.

Cons: WiFi reception is rather poor. It seems like a good idea to use WiFi rather than G3 when in range of a WAP, since latency is presumably better with WiFi, but in practice the Legend drops the WiFi connection quite regularly. Using WiFi, you get a lot of timeouts, unless you happen to be sitting directly on top of the WAP. I am tempted to simply turn off WiFi and use G3 all the time. I assume this problem is due to the body of the phone being a solid block of aluminium.

Also, the battery life is rather short; you basically have to recharge it every night, but I assume that this is the case with all smartphones of this size and capability.

 

[torro]

I previously had iPhone and the wifi reception on the Legend is on pair, maybe even a bit better that the 3gs had. The battery capacity is also on pair with the 3gs.

Always sync/push enabled seems to drain the battery fast.

I would suspect any phone needs to be charged every night the first week you own it. New toys are usually played with the most the first weeks

 

[gringooo]

I previously had iPhone and the wifi reception on the Legend is on pair, maybe even a bit better that the 3gs had. The battery capacity is also on pair with the 3gs.

Always sync/push enabled seems to drain the battery fast.

I would suspect any phone needs to be charged every night the first week you own it. New toys are usually played with the most the first weeks

What is your opinion, which phone is generaly better Legend or iPhone 3GS?

 

[cbrace]

Always sync/push enabled seems to drain the battery fast.

Yep. I've turned off automatic polling of my imap account; I just refresh manually when I want to check my inbox.

To improve battery life, I also switch off services I don't need, like Bluetooth. There is an app in the Market called Quick Settings which I've installed on the home page which gives makes it very easy to toggle GPS, BT, and WiFi, as well as ring modes. Very useful!

I would suspect any phone needs to be charged every night the first week you own it. New toys are usually played with the most the first weeks

Very true indeed my friend!

 

[torro]

What is your opinion, which phone is generaly better Legend or iPhone 3GS?

They are similar in many ways; I like the Legends look, aluminium unibody, the crisp AMOLED screen in the perfect pocket-friendly 3.2" versus the 3.5" iPhone. The Desire is bigger and has better specs, but it looks nerdy, and is even wider than the iPhone, which is too wide in my opinion. The previous phones from HTC did not look as good as this one. Hopefully Legend will look good after half a year of (mis)use as well. The previous HTC models really have wear and tear after a few months. I had my previous 3gs for 8 months and it still looked in mint condition, as did my 1st- and 2nd generation iPhones.

The iPhone is more user friendly; much better keyboard, although I might get used to the android keyboard, I do misspell a lot. Media handling on the iPhone is plug-and play. iTunes takers care of all the media with no hassle. The media interface on the iPhone is close to perfect. While the lack of lossless audio on the Legend, audibooks with bookmarks is more-or-less unsupported (does not even recognize m4b), and an interface that looks like something Nokia could have made in the 90's, it is not something to exactly brag about.

They say that the reason to choose Android is because of a more open system, while Apple censor the apps and games on appstore. I do not think the ones who says that live outside the US. We can not get any paid apps or games in Europe. We can not get the apps published on the american marked, tried with the Free eBay app, but it does not show up on the marked.

The best applications on Appstore is also available for Android. 99,9% on the Appstore are crap, but Android marked is not great. Why someone want to pay for a lockscreen modification, that is totally rubbish, or a Video player that does not support any codecs but the ones already included with Android is also beyond me. Since the Legend can handle multi tasking, unlike the iPhone, you have the options to run several tasks in the background. Those tasks will however use up your memory and probably your battery power as well. Reviews in Norway claims you only get 5-6 house before you have to recharge your phone. As mentioned, I have to recharge every 2nd or 3rd night, just as with my iPhone.

If you want the most out of your Legend you also need a Google account. It is free however, unlike Apples MobileMe.

Which one is best overall; Hard to say really. They both have good and bad sides. Car stereo, surround receivers and many radios have an iPod/iPhone connector, and third party accessories for the iPhone seems endless. The bluetooth support on the iPhone is bad, stereo works but A2DP remote keys did not work the last time I checked (3.1.3). With the Legend even FTP over bluetooth is possible, and it is also working like a dream with my bluetooth enabled car stereo. Sound quality is good on both phones. The wired handsfree shipped with Legend does not match the phone, they are rubbish; looks bad, uncomfortable, hopeless buttons, no volume buttons, stiff cable, the sound quality is the worst i have ever heard (a US$1 handsfree on DealExtreme sounds better)....but you can use a 3gs headset with it

In just 3 months iPhone HD, or 4g is released. If I want an iPhone I would at least wait for that one. Not necessary because it is a new invention, probably not, but the 3gs will most likely be cheaper, and eBay will overflow with used ones.

 

[gringooo]

Thank you, torro, for detailed answer.

 

[cbrace]

Since the Legend can handle multi tasking, unlike the iPhone, you have the options to run several tasks in the background. Those tasks will however use up your memory and probably your battery power as well. Reviews in Norway claims you only get 5-6 house before you have to recharge your phone.

The issue of multitasking doesn't seem in practice to have any major drawbacks. When the phone runs out of memory, the background apps are swapped from active memory to cache, but they reactivate instantly. Of course, anything that polls other sites a lot is going to run down the battery; you have watch this kind of thing.

I don't know what kind of activities the Norwegian reviewers subjected the Legend to, but in normal use for me (some browsing, playing music, a few text messages, etc) the phone easily manages ten hours or longer.

 

[visions77]

I had the same problem with Wifi for my legend. Even though i'm quite near my wireless router, the signal strength is still displaying 1 to 2 bar.. and dropping the connection quite often. I tried Milestone and didn't have this issue. I have connectivity all around my house.

 

[GeoffBot]

A question about the apps - can you close them? I can't see an option to on any of them! And is there a need to? Does it use battery if I have 5 webpages and 6 apps (not functioning ones like a music player running, obviously) open in the background?

 

[GeoffBot]

A question about the ap...[edit] - mods - please feel free to delete my double-post!

 

[cbrace]

A question about the apps - can you close them?

Yes, Settings_>Applications--> Running applications. You can close them here. Various 3rd-party apps enable this as well. You can also see how much cpu time (=power) each has used

I can't see an option to on any of them! And is there a need to? Does it use battery if I have 5 webpages and 6 apps (not functioning ones like a music player running, obviously) open in the background?

Closing an app isn't really necessary. If it is inactive and memory is needed, an app is transparently swapped to disk (cache), and reloaded nearly instantly when needed.

AFAICT, the display uses waaay more power than anything else. After that the phone of course.

If you don't need services like GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi, switch em off.

Beyond that, just use sensible settings for things like imap mail, polling for new mail 1x hour (every two minutes will certainly drain your battery).

 

[GeoffBot]

Good advice - thanks cbrace. So it's fair to say that the RAM shouldn't be an issue as the phone manages that. For the battery though other than turning down the brighness of the screen, minimising net polling and disabling wireless, bluetooth etc (all of which I've done) there's nothing I can do to improve it, no? It's not great - only a few hours of solid use! And closing apps won't help it, you say? Or at least, not enough to worry about?

Ta