Hi all,
After looking at a few reviews, youtube videos and desiibond's thread here, I decided to buy an HTC Legend. I managed to find one here in Chennai for Rs. 22.5k all inclusive. It came with a 2GB microSD card, handsfree, USB charger and a clip-on to use the same in an electrical socket.
I thought I'd post my initial impressions to help people who are eyeing this phone. Please look at desiibond's thread in the mobile phone buying help section too. It contains a lot of useful information. However, I think my usage is quite different from his so this "mini-review" is more aimed at people like me.
Before I went into the store, I had narrowed down my choices to 3 phones: iPhone 3GS, HTC Desire and HTC Legend. The Spica was interesting too but these 3 were definitely on another league and priced accordingly.
The Desire was available for around 30K but i didn't want to pay more than 25K for any phone other than an iPhone. However, if I bought an iPhone 3GS for around 33K, only to see Apple releasing the 4G within a month, I'd feel like jumping off the terrace so I scratched that from the wishlist. It came down to the Desire and Legend. Affordability wasn't an issue. I did have the money for either but I finally went with the Legend for the following reasons:
1. UI and ease of use is the most important thing for me in a phone and no Android phone comes close to an iPhone in this deparment IMO. Between the Legend and the Desire, it seems to go right down to the wire for day to day usage as the experience is almost identical. The Legend's UI (at least mine) does show signs of slowdowns when many applications are open while the Desire probably wouldn't but for me, this alone wasn't enough to warrant another 7.5K.
2. The bigger screen would probably be a plus for most people but the Legend with its 3.2" felt really natural to hold and use with one hand. My hands aren't very big so the extra real estate on the Desire actually felt a little off to me.
3. The aluminum unibody on the Legend. It definitely looks much better than the Desire but that's not all. Most of my phones usually take quite a beating and the aluminum feels way more solid than phones encased in plastic. The Desire looks rather generic but the Legend will definitely stand out in a crowd. Probably the only phone I'd call "sexy looking". The "chin" protrusion did not bother me at all.
Anyway, after taking the phone back home, I started toying with it, just like everyone else here would
Here are my findings:
1. Coming from a resistive touchscreen on a Nokia 5800 running Symbian, the touchscreen of this phone is light years ahead. It is much easier to type mails and messages, especially with its input correction feature. However, I must stress that IT IS NO IPHONE! People expecting iPhone-like touchscreen performance will be disappointed, as was the case with me. If I had to compare the two, I'd say that the iPhone's touchscreen (even my friend's old 2G) truly feels like an extension of your finger while this feels like a good quality input method but an input method nonetheless. It simply isn't as fluid when shifting homescreens, scrolling through contacts or using multi-touch to zoom.
That being said, it may well be as good as it gets on the Android side of things and if you've never used an iPhone before, you WILL BE PLEASED. It's great... just not the best.
2. One of the things that worried me about going Android was something I read on the internet : That I'd have to really tinker with the phone and install a lot of additional applications to get the best out of the phone. I don't like doing this. The App market to me, is more of an "oh that's nice" feature than a "must have". Luckily, this wasn't the case. Once I got used to the way of the Android, the out of box experience on the Legend running 2.1 with HTC's Sense UI was good enough for me. My requirements were good messaging, social networking, email, web browsing, contacts back up and audio quality. I was happy with all of these implementations. In fact, I haven't even opened the Camera application yet.
Oh, I forgot to mention that browsing the web on this phone is FANTASTIC. I had almost given up on anything other than an iPhone or iPod Touch for web browsing after finding the 5800 too cumbersome to deal with but this was a very pleasant surprise. SMS is also very nice with all messages from one sender grouped together in Google Talk / iPhone style conversations.
3. Syncing the phone with my computer was rather easy. I've only tried it with a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard but it worked as intended. When connected via USB, the phone gave me the option of connecting for charging only, HTC Sync for Outlook and Calendar syncing, Mount as Disk and another which I can't remember but they all seemed to work fine. I didn't have to bother with installing any drivers or things like PC Suite. I transferred some music files by dragging and dropping and they promptly showed up in my Music Player app when I disconnected the USB. No hassles whatsoever.
4. If you are like me and use Google Mail and Talk extensively, you will love this phone. They are very well integrated into the HTC Sense UI and aren't obtrusive in the least bit. In fact I've been doing all my mailing and chatting while lying in bed instead of sitting up at the desktop. This is probably my favourite bit about the phone. It's quick AND easy for purposes like this.
5. File downloading is handled nicely too. It happens in the background without disturbing your browsing. I downloaded some User Manuals and a couple of applications from the App Market without having a hundred popups like in Symbian.
Now moving onto the cons (according to me):
1. I hate the fact that I had to download a 3rd party application just to close the ones that were running. I really cannot understand why Android/HTC doesn't give you an easy way to quit unused apps. Opening too many apps at the same time on the Legend really makes a noticeable difference on the fluidity of the UI. Scrolling smoothness takes a hit, window opening animations get choppier etc.
2. Battery life is shockingly bad, probably the worst I've come across in any smart phone. A fully charged phone dropped a notch in the battery life indicator after 10 minutes of usage. I thought I had been given a faulty battery until a quick search confirmed that many people all over were reporting poor battery life. I don't know if this can be fixed with an OS update or not. Recharging every day is going to be a pain in the ass.
3. This isn't really a con but definitely something to keep in mind. Although the set up assistant that runs when you first turn on the phone does a great job at quickly getting you up to speed, it doesn't clearly give you the details about data usage. If I remember right, it defaults to allowing all applications to access data over Wi-Fi / GPRS as needed... and the Android OS itself seems to be built around such a function. This could be a big problem for people on limited or expensive data plans. You will have to manually find and turn this off like I did to save on bills and battery life (Yes, Wi-Fi apparently drains a lot).
I guess that's about it for now. I'm going back to mess around with the phone a little more I read an article recently that listed my 3 initial choices as the Top 3 Phones of 2010 so far with Desire, iPhone 3GS and Legend at 1, 2 and 3 respectively. I strongly feel that this listing is highly interchangeable according to what the end user is looking for. To conclude, I'd say that out of these phones and while considering my own usage patterns and requirements, I'd go with iPhone 3GS at the top spot followed by Legend and finally the Desire.
Either way, you simply cannot go wrong with any of these. They are all fantastic phones in their own right. The Legend's cheaper pricing is simply icing on the cake.
Hope that helps.
After looking at a few reviews, youtube videos and desiibond's thread here, I decided to buy an HTC Legend. I managed to find one here in Chennai for Rs. 22.5k all inclusive. It came with a 2GB microSD card, handsfree, USB charger and a clip-on to use the same in an electrical socket.
I thought I'd post my initial impressions to help people who are eyeing this phone. Please look at desiibond's thread in the mobile phone buying help section too. It contains a lot of useful information. However, I think my usage is quite different from his so this "mini-review" is more aimed at people like me.
Before I went into the store, I had narrowed down my choices to 3 phones: iPhone 3GS, HTC Desire and HTC Legend. The Spica was interesting too but these 3 were definitely on another league and priced accordingly.
The Desire was available for around 30K but i didn't want to pay more than 25K for any phone other than an iPhone. However, if I bought an iPhone 3GS for around 33K, only to see Apple releasing the 4G within a month, I'd feel like jumping off the terrace so I scratched that from the wishlist. It came down to the Desire and Legend. Affordability wasn't an issue. I did have the money for either but I finally went with the Legend for the following reasons:
1. UI and ease of use is the most important thing for me in a phone and no Android phone comes close to an iPhone in this deparment IMO. Between the Legend and the Desire, it seems to go right down to the wire for day to day usage as the experience is almost identical. The Legend's UI (at least mine) does show signs of slowdowns when many applications are open while the Desire probably wouldn't but for me, this alone wasn't enough to warrant another 7.5K.
2. The bigger screen would probably be a plus for most people but the Legend with its 3.2" felt really natural to hold and use with one hand. My hands aren't very big so the extra real estate on the Desire actually felt a little off to me.
3. The aluminum unibody on the Legend. It definitely looks much better than the Desire but that's not all. Most of my phones usually take quite a beating and the aluminum feels way more solid than phones encased in plastic. The Desire looks rather generic but the Legend will definitely stand out in a crowd. Probably the only phone I'd call "sexy looking". The "chin" protrusion did not bother me at all.
Anyway, after taking the phone back home, I started toying with it, just like everyone else here would
Here are my findings:1. Coming from a resistive touchscreen on a Nokia 5800 running Symbian, the touchscreen of this phone is light years ahead. It is much easier to type mails and messages, especially with its input correction feature. However, I must stress that IT IS NO IPHONE! People expecting iPhone-like touchscreen performance will be disappointed, as was the case with me. If I had to compare the two, I'd say that the iPhone's touchscreen (even my friend's old 2G) truly feels like an extension of your finger while this feels like a good quality input method but an input method nonetheless. It simply isn't as fluid when shifting homescreens, scrolling through contacts or using multi-touch to zoom.
That being said, it may well be as good as it gets on the Android side of things and if you've never used an iPhone before, you WILL BE PLEASED. It's great... just not the best.
2. One of the things that worried me about going Android was something I read on the internet : That I'd have to really tinker with the phone and install a lot of additional applications to get the best out of the phone. I don't like doing this. The App market to me, is more of an "oh that's nice" feature than a "must have". Luckily, this wasn't the case. Once I got used to the way of the Android, the out of box experience on the Legend running 2.1 with HTC's Sense UI was good enough for me. My requirements were good messaging, social networking, email, web browsing, contacts back up and audio quality. I was happy with all of these implementations. In fact, I haven't even opened the Camera application yet.
Oh, I forgot to mention that browsing the web on this phone is FANTASTIC. I had almost given up on anything other than an iPhone or iPod Touch for web browsing after finding the 5800 too cumbersome to deal with but this was a very pleasant surprise. SMS is also very nice with all messages from one sender grouped together in Google Talk / iPhone style conversations.
3. Syncing the phone with my computer was rather easy. I've only tried it with a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard but it worked as intended. When connected via USB, the phone gave me the option of connecting for charging only, HTC Sync for Outlook and Calendar syncing, Mount as Disk and another which I can't remember but they all seemed to work fine. I didn't have to bother with installing any drivers or things like PC Suite. I transferred some music files by dragging and dropping and they promptly showed up in my Music Player app when I disconnected the USB. No hassles whatsoever.
4. If you are like me and use Google Mail and Talk extensively, you will love this phone. They are very well integrated into the HTC Sense UI and aren't obtrusive in the least bit. In fact I've been doing all my mailing and chatting while lying in bed instead of sitting up at the desktop. This is probably my favourite bit about the phone. It's quick AND easy for purposes like this.
5. File downloading is handled nicely too. It happens in the background without disturbing your browsing. I downloaded some User Manuals and a couple of applications from the App Market without having a hundred popups like in Symbian.
Now moving onto the cons (according to me):
1. I hate the fact that I had to download a 3rd party application just to close the ones that were running. I really cannot understand why Android/HTC doesn't give you an easy way to quit unused apps. Opening too many apps at the same time on the Legend really makes a noticeable difference on the fluidity of the UI. Scrolling smoothness takes a hit, window opening animations get choppier etc.
2. Battery life is shockingly bad, probably the worst I've come across in any smart phone. A fully charged phone dropped a notch in the battery life indicator after 10 minutes of usage. I thought I had been given a faulty battery until a quick search confirmed that many people all over were reporting poor battery life. I don't know if this can be fixed with an OS update or not. Recharging every day is going to be a pain in the ass.
3. This isn't really a con but definitely something to keep in mind. Although the set up assistant that runs when you first turn on the phone does a great job at quickly getting you up to speed, it doesn't clearly give you the details about data usage. If I remember right, it defaults to allowing all applications to access data over Wi-Fi / GPRS as needed... and the Android OS itself seems to be built around such a function. This could be a big problem for people on limited or expensive data plans. You will have to manually find and turn this off like I did to save on bills and battery life (Yes, Wi-Fi apparently drains a lot).
I guess that's about it for now. I'm going back to mess around with the phone a little more
I read an article recently that listed my 3 initial choices as the Top 3 Phones of 2010 so far with Desire, iPhone 3GS and Legend at 1, 2 and 3 respectively. I strongly feel that this listing is highly interchangeable according to what the end user is looking for. To conclude, I'd say that out of these phones and while considering my own usage patterns and requirements, I'd go with iPhone 3GS at the top spot followed by Legend and finally the Desire.Either way, you simply cannot go wrong with any of these. They are all fantastic phones in their own right. The Legend's cheaper pricing is simply icing on the cake.
Hope that helps.
