Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al

Filing 1140

Administrative Motion to File Under Seal filed by Apple Inc.. (Attachments: #1 Wheeler Declaration in Support of Administrative Motion, #2 Proposed Order, #3 Declaration of Jason R. Bartlett, #4 Exhibit 1, #5 Exhibit 2, #6 Exhibit 3, #7 Exhibit 4, #8 Exhibit 5, #9 Exhibit 6, #10 Exhibit 7, #11 Exhibit 8, #12 Exhibit 9, #13 Exhibit 10, #14 Exhibit 11, #15 Exhibit 12, #16 Exhibit 13, #17 Exhibit 14, #18 Exhibit 15, #19 Exhibit 16, #20 Exhibit 17, #21 Exhibit 18, #22 Exhibit 19, #23 Exhibit 20, #24 Exhibit 21, #25 Exhibit 22, #26 Exhibit 23, #27 Exhibit 24, #28 Exhibit 25, #29 Exhibit 26, #30 Exhibit 27, #31 Public Declaration of Peter W. Bressler, #32 Exhibit 1, #33 Exhibit 2, #34 Exhibit 3, #35 Exhibit 4, #36 Exhibit 5, #37 Exhibit 6, #38 Exhibit 7, #39 Exhibit 8, #40 Exhibit 9, #41 Exhibit 10, #42 Exhibit 11, #43 Exhibit 12, #44 Exhibit 13, #45 Exhibit 14, #46 Exhibit 15, #47 Exhibit 16, #48 Exhibit 17, #49 Exhibit 18, #50 Exhibit 19, #51 Exhibit 20, #52 Exhibit 21, #53 Exhibit 22, #54 Exhibit 23, #55 Exhibit 24, #56 Exhibit 25, #57 Exhibit 26, #58 Exhibit 27, #59 Exhibit 28, #60 Exhibit 29, #61 Exhibit 30, #62 Exhibit 31, #63 Exhibit 32, #64 Exhibit 33, #65 Exhibit 34, #66 Exhibit 35, #67 Exhibit 36, #68 Exhibit 37, #69 Exhibit 38, #70 Exhibit 39, #71 Exhibit 40, #72 Exhibit 41, #73 Exhibit 42, #74 Exhibit 43, #75 Exhibit 44, #76 Exhibit 45, #77 Exhibit 46, #78 Exhibit 47, #79 Exhibit 48, #80 Exhibit 49, #81 Exhibit 50, #82 Exhibit 51, #83 Exhibit 52, #84 Exhibit 53, #85 Exhibit 54, #86 Exhibit 55, #87 Exhibit 56, #88 Exhibit 57, #89 Exhibit 58, #90 Exhibit 59, #91 Exhibit 60, #92 Exhibit 61, #93 Exhibit 62, #94 Exhibit 63, #95 Exhibit 64, #96 Exhibit 65, #97 Exhibit 66, #98 Exhibit 67, #99 Exhibit 68, #100 Exhibit 69, #101 Exhibit 70, #102 Exhibit 71, #103 Exhibit 72, #104 Exhibit 73, #105 Exhibit 74, #106 Exhibit 75, #107 Exhibit 76, #108 Exhibit 77)(Jacobs, Michael) (Filed on 6/26/2012) Modified on 6/27/2012 pursuant to General Order No. 62, attachment #1 sealed (dhm, COURT STAFF).

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HTC Hero review
Chris Davies, Jul 21st 2009 Discuss [67]
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Worth Reading?

+289 [315 votes]

There’s no underestimating the appeal of the HTC Hero; since we shot our unboxing video and
preliminary hands-on at the end of last week it’s been watched more than 300,000 times. The third
Android device to reach the market, the Hero promises not only an updated camera and design, but
HTC’s latest work in user-interface, HTC Sense. Can the Hero live up to the hype? Check out our
full review to find out.

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From the outside, the Hero blends elements of both the device that have gone before it; the
smartphone is size-wise more in line with the Magic, but with some of the angular style of the original
HTC Dream (aka the T-Mobile G1). It’s a thin handset, measuring 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm, and feels
even thinner thanks to the sharp beveling of the edges. Our review unit is white, but depending on
carrier there will be charcoal and black versions of the Hero, each with the subtle brushed-metal
display surround. It’s a distinctive design, but not unduly dramatic, and while we’ve heard complaint
about HTC’s persistence with the angled “chin” section this does make holding the phone and using
the buttons and trackball more straightforward.
Up top there’s a welcome addition to an HTC Android device, in the shape of a 3.5mm headphones
socket, while on the base there’s the company’s own ExtUSB port (which is compatible with standard
mini-USB). On the left-hand side there are surprisingly large volume controls, while on the back
there’s the 5-megapixel autofocus camera (which still lacks a flash of any sort). There’s no dedicated
camera button, either.

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Up front, there’s a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen running at 320 x 480 HVGA resolution, sitting
above the usual six Android buttons: call, home, menu, call-end, search and back. The trackball from
the Dream and Magic is also present, and it lights up when you receive an SMS or phone call. Above
the display is the long, narrow speaker-grill, flanked on the left by an ambient light sensor and on the
right by a two-color LED that flashes green to let you know a message has come in, and red when
charging. The whole handset is covered in Teflon, which HTC say will better resist scratches, fading
and staining; its matte finish is a tactile and aesthetically welcome departure from glossy devices.
Prise off the back cover – something which takes a little bravery to do, as it’s a tight fit – and there’s a
microSD card slot that can be accessed without removing the battery, together with the SIM slot and
1,350mAh Li-Ion power pack. The whole thing weighs 135g.
On the inside, things are far more similar to HTC’s existing Android range. The Hero has the same
528MHz Qualcomm processor, paired with 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM, as its siblings, together
with 900/2100MHz HSPA/WCDMA supporting up to 7.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink speeds
(network depending). There’s also 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE; we’re yet to hear
any announcement regarding a US-spec version of the Hero. Other connectivity includes WiFi b/g,
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR with A2DP support, and of course USB 2.0, plus there’s A-GPS, a digital
compass and accelerometer.
Of course, what makes the Hero particularly special is the work HTC have done on its user-interface,
under the auspices of their “HTC Sense” project. Sense is the culmination of three years of UI work,

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that has taken in multiple iterations of TouchFLO 3D on Windows Mobile across the years. Given
that TouchFLO 3D could arguably be credited with keeping the aging Microsoft mobile platform as
relevant as it has been for the past twelve months or so, that’s no small lineage. Sense aims to take
the basic Android OS and make it not only more visually appealing but functionally more immediate,
bringing commonly-used services and features to the fore and, in no small way, making the fledgling
Google platform more engaging “out of the box”.
HTC’s first, and perhaps most obvious way of doing that is through widgets. Previous Android
devices have had a few widget options – search, picture frame, music, etc – and those are still present,
but HTC introduce fourteen of their own, along with five “toggle” controls for connectivity options.
These range from bookmarks and calendar, through a new mail app and messages app, to contact
shortcuts, a Twitter app and a new weather app. As for the toggle switches, they cover airplane mode,
Bluetooth, GPS, cellular connectivity and WiFi, and present an easy way to lock-down the Hero or
simply shut off a potential battery glutton.
To accommodate all this flexibility, HTC have increased the number of homescreen panes from the
usual three to seven; you can switch between them with a horizontal swipe across the touchscreen in
either direction, or using the trackball. Your position in those panes is discretely shown by the arc at
the base of the homescreen, which also has a direct shortcut to the phone keypad, main menu and
widget control panel. Pressing the home hardware button also takes you directly back to the center
pane, so it’s always straightforward to navigate your way around. HTC’s widgets share space with
the usual shortcuts, which can be to apps, folders or bookmarks, and many of them have two different
sizes to choose from. The music widget, for instance, has a small, basic option which will fit on a
pane with other shortcuts, or a larger version which shows more track detail, album art, and takes up a
pane to itself.
Seven panes, then, can be occupied relatively quickly, but to get around that HTC have added Scenes
support to the Hero. Accessed by hitting the Menu button from the homescreen, Scenes basically
allows for multiple layouts which the company expects will be used to differentiate between workday
and social use. As standard the Hero comes preset with the standard HTC, Social, Work, Play, Travel
and “Clean Slate” (blank) layouts, which you can leave as-is or modify and save with your own
names. Each can have a different number of widgets, different wallpapers and other personalization.
Or, of course, you can ignore them altogether and focus on just one standard Scene; as with the slideto-unlock, which can be replaced by the standard Android pattern lock, Sense is about giving you
more options not taking them away.

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Each widget generally acts as a gateway to its own app, too,
so while they’re functional in their own right – you don’t have to leave the homescreen to browse
through your Twitter message stream, for instance – you’re also one touch away from a more
comprehensive experience. To stay with Twitter, the client – called Peep – shows the full message
list and allows you to post a new tweet from the homescreen, but tapping into the app-proper brings
up separate panes in which you can view your “@” replies, direct messages and favorites. It’s also
linked into your location, so you can send geographic updates letting people know whereabouts you
are, and there are options for update frequency (number of tweets to download, up to 250; frequency
of updates, from daily through every 5mins and manual) and even a choice of photo host, picture
quality and URL-shortening service.
Peep works well, spawning a little bird icon into the notification bar when there are fresh messages,
just as you would get with a new email. New messages have an easy photo upload button, which
offers the choice of an existing picture from the gallery or to take a new shot with the camera then and
there, and you can also tap the location button to tweet your geographical position as a link to a map,
custom text or plain latitude/longitude. Our one gripe is the seeming absence of any way to quickly
paste in Twitter contact names, beyond physically typing them out; an “insert follower username”
option would make this much easier. Still, a long-hold on any tweet will bring up a menu for reply,
send direct message, retweet, add to favorites or show profile.
A much-welcomed addition to an Android device is Microsoft Exchange support, and HTC have
provided a new Mail app on the Hero to cater for it. As you might
expect, it uses ActiveSync to wirelessly synchronize, and offer push-email from hosted Exchange
accounts. The Mail app also supports POP, APOP and IMAP, and can have multiple simultaneous
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accounts established; download frequency can be set from 5 minutes through to daily, plus manual,
and you can choose how many days of messages you want on your Hero and the maximum size of
each message (there’s an option to download the rest in each curtailed email). Once set up, different
accounts can be switched between via a drop-down menu at the top, while a sliding selection marker
at the bottom of the screen takes you between three main views. The first lists all emails by date and
individually; the second threads together email conversations; the third lists only emails with
attachments.
The most obvious comparison to be made is with Android’s native GMail app, also present on the
Hero. While the screen size devoted to messages in each app is different, both show at most seven
email headers at any one time; GMail obviously conversation-threads as standard, and tags one
message after another, while HTC Mail shows one email at a time with up/down buttons to flip
between messages in a thread. It’s arguable as to which system works better; those comfortable
skipping down long conversations via touchscreen swipes will most likely prefer the GMail app,
while the HTC offering does make it easier to get to the start of the next message. Happily, since
GMail offers IMAP support for their accounts, you can pick between the two clients depending on
your UI preference; remember, though, that Mail won’t let you search the GMail server like the native
app will.
Of course, the major difference is that Android’s GMail app has no homescreen widget, only a
shortcut, whereas HTC Mail does. You can choose to devote a whole homescreen pane (there’s no
cut-down mini-widget, though there is a simple shortcut button) to Mail, and from there flip through
the stack of emails, bin them, write a new message or go directly to the inbox. There’s no HTML
support in the widget, only plain text, but it’s certainly enough to see multiple lines of an email and
choose whether it’s worth heading into the app proper to do anything about it.
The new SMS app works in a similar fashion, grouping messages by sender and presenting them in a
conversation with icons – if present – from the contacts app. HTC provide a number of quick-text
inserts (such as “Where are you?” and “I’m running late”) together with the ability to easily attach
pictures, video, audio, location data, a vCard contact file, vCalendar appointment, or to create a new
attachment. This latter option takes you to the camera, camcorder, audio-recorder or slideshow apps,
allowing you to film a clip, etc, then attach it straight to an MMS. As for the accompanying widget,
this uses a Rolodex-style presentation to flip through the most recent messages from a contact on the
homescreen, together with a shortcut to write a new message.

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Moving to the Phone app, this can be accessed via the listing in the main programs menu or by
pressing the shortcut button at the base of the homescreen. It opens by default with your recent calls
list overlaid with a number pad; tapping the buttons either enters the number or uses T9 to search
through your contacts for a matching name. Alternatively, minimizing the number pad shows the
contacts list itself; the Menu button gives shortcuts to the contacts app proper, your full call history,
favorites and speed-dials, as well as settings. Call quality is fair, with the Hero relatively tenacious
with a signal and no problems for either party with volume or noise. The side volume keys adjust
earpiece volume when in a call or ringer volume (down to vibrate and silent) otherwise; during calls
the number pad is a button-press away, while the Menu button brings up options for speakerphone,
putting the caller on hold, adding another party, launching the contacts app and muting the
microphone.
HTC are proud of the work they’ve done with Sense when it comes to contacts, on the Hero called
People, and they’ve good cause to be. As with other apps, People is navigated primarily by a sliding
bar at the base of the screen, which takes you from the full contacts list, to favorites (with the option
to add a new favorite), to groups, to Updates and Events (more on this in a moment) and to call
history. The Menu button brings up options to add or delete a contact, view an entry, search through
People, import from SIM and synchronize Exchange contacts
What elevates People above and beyond the standard Android address book is its integration with
Facebook and Flickr. By entering your login details for one or both, People automatically tries to
match up contacts you have on those networks with entries in your address book. Doing so pulls in

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their latest Facebook status update, photo galleries from both sites, their birthday and email address,
and their avatar photo which is used as a contact photo. If People can’t match them up correctly – we
had a few different names in our lists, which confused it – then you can manually link profiles. The
“Updates and Events” tab shows any new changes from the two sites, such as upcoming birthdays and
new galleries; tapping into an individual contact shows the same for just that individual, together with
panes for any messages, emails and calls between you and them.
It all works surprisingly well, and is certainly a straightforward way to fill in contact photos and
missing birthdays across your address book. There’s little lag in updating, and by tapping your own
entry at the top of the contacts list you can see your own Facebook and Flickr notifications, handling
any unread messages, event invitations, friend requests and other alerts. We wish – given the work
HTC have obviously done on Peep – there was a way to link in Twitter accounts in a similar fashion
to Facebook, but currently there is not.
Plugging the Hero into a PC brings up the options to either treat it as a mass storage device or to
launch HTC Sync. This latter app, available as a free download though only for Windows PCs,
allows you to synchronize your Outlook or Windows Address Book (i.e. Outlook Express contacts)
with the Hero, rather than using a wired ActiveSync connection.

Unfortunately HTC Sync doesn’t seemingly manage your
calendar entries in the same way, which is a shame because the new Calendar app on the Hero is a
generally pleasant way to get organized. It defaults to a month view (as does the large homescreen
widget; the small version has a single line of the next upcoming appointment) but offers day and
event-list views via the Menu button. There’s also a Calendars button, which allows you to switch
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between various different agenda sources: Outlook (wirelessly via ActiveSync) and any Google
Calendars you might have. These can be set to all simultaneously display (with different color
coding) or toggled off to only show particular agendas.
If the Calendar is intended to organize your life moving forward, then HTC Footprints is more about
looking back. A feature of certain GPS-enabled Windows Mobile devices from HTC’s stable,
Footprints basically allows you to snap a photo with the Hero’s camera, geotag it, and then add
various details including phone number, website, a voice memo, star rating and notes. Finally you
can categorize it – shopping, dining, etc – and share them via SD card. It’s a straightforward system,
and if you regularly travel then it’s handy to make a note of favorite restaurants and the like, but we
wish there was a simple way to share Footprint entries online with others.

Loading up content for the Hero’s media app is easiest done
via a USB connection, and HTC supply a suitable cable in the box. The smartphone mounts the
microSD card as a removable drive, and you can drag and drop audio and video files straight across.
Files on the microSD card are automatically registered into the app, which is a basic though
functional PMP. There’s the usual shuffle, repeat and playlist functionality, together with sorting
tracks by artist, album and other ID3 data, and you can also set files as the active ringtone directly
from the mediaplayer app. Audio quality from the built-in speaker is loud if not especially refined,
but thankfully we’ve no complaints with quality via the 3.5mm headphones jack, particularly if you
do the sensible thing and plug in your own headphones rather than those HTC supply. During
playback the volume keys control the music, rather than ringtone volume.

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As for the impact of music playing in background on other apps, we noticed a very small amount of
lag introduced, particularly when loading a data-heavy application such as a full inbox or lengthy
contacts list. Happily there was little impact on web browsing speed, with page panning and zooming
as smooth as usual. In fact, our general impression of the Hero’s performance has been very good,
with the Sense modifications doing little to slow the smartphone down.
Turning to the browser, the biggest news here is the addition of multitouch support for pinch-zooming
together with Flash playback. The app is generally the same as on previous Android devices, only
instead of zoom in/out buttons you can close and spread your fingers to manipulate the page. It’s a far
more natural way of browsing, and allows for much finer control, and frankly it’s about time an
Android smartphone supported it (officially). Double-tapping to reformat text works well, and the
trackball steps neatly between links for when navigating more crowded pages. Multiple browser
windows can be opened, though we did experience a couple of odd moments where background pages
were closed without warning.
As for Flash support, this instantly kicks the HTC Hero a step ahead of many other smartphones on
the market. Although there’s HTC’s usual excellent YouTube viewer preloaded on the phone, you
can now stop by the full YouTube site and watch in-page streaming video too. To be honest, the
layout of the standalone app actually makes it more usable than YouTube’s site, but the Flash support
comes into its own when you encounter in-page videos on news and review sites. In our tests, only
Vimeo videos failed to load, though connection speed also has a significant affect on overall browser
performance when buffering footage.

Flash is more than just video, though, and so we stopped by some graphics and animation-intensive
MySpace pages to see if we could overload the Hero’s browser. Unfortunately not every element
loaded; the music player many users have underneath their profile information was the most obvious
error, telling us we needed an upgraded version of Flash. Stepping over to a Flash game site proved
disappointing too, with games taking very long periods to load and then usually proving
uncontrollable in the absence of a keyboard or mouse. It’s certainly possible that some titles will be
better suited to the Hero than others, mind.
With pinch-zoom supported in the Android browser, it was a surprise to find that the same
functionality didn’t work in Google Maps on the Hero. Instead, you’re left with the same zoom in/out
buttons as usual. The Hero has the same Street View support as earlier Android phones, accessed by

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tapping and holding a point on the display and selecting it from the pop-up menu. There are
directions for driving and walking, but no voice-prompts so in-car use isn’t advised.

The Hero’s camera is a step up, offering 5-megapixels with autofocus though no flash. It records both
stills and video, toggled between with a simple on-screen button, and has basic white balance,
brightness and flicker adjustment. There’s also a self-timer and optional geotagging. Photos are
captured as JPEGs while video can be H.263 or MPEG4; once taken, they can be uploaded to
Facebook, Flickr, Picasa or YouTube, or sent via GMail, HTC Mail, MMS or Peep (Twitter).
Quality, meanwhile, is reasonable though not likely to displace dedicated point-and-shoot digicams or
some of the high-end imaging featurephones we’ve seen in recent months. Still, it’s a welcome step
up from the Dream and Magic.
One of HTC Sense’s more impressive introductions is the new on-screen keyboard, and this is a real
step up from what arrived on the HTC Magic with the Android OS 1.5 Cupcake release. Obviously
both portrait and landscape orientations are catered for, each with well-spaced QWERTY layouts and
secondary pages of numbers and symbols, while those secondary characters can also be accessed by
pressing and holding the relevant letter key. As you do so, a preview of the character pops up above
your fingertip, handy for ensuring you’re tapping the key you intended to. There’s also auto-complete
and auto-correct, with a list of words showing up above the keyboard as you type; you can either tap
them or press space to select the current highlighted word. Adding new words to the dictionary is
also well handled; if you type a word the Hero doesn’t recognize, you can tap space to insert it or tap
the word itself on-screen to not only insert but to add it to the dictionary for later use. In all, the

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keyboard is a real pleasure to use and we had no problems building up a decent typing speed in either
orientation, especially when holding the Hero in landscape and thumb-tapping with both hands.

Elsewhere, there’s the usual array of Android apps and options, including the Android Market for
software downloads. The BBC iPlayer app works well on the Hero, and of course you can add
shortcuts to newly downloaded software onto the various homescreen panes. We’re hoping HTC – or
third-parties – release some more homescreen widgets, as we really like the instant ease-of-use they
bring to the platform.
HTC supply a 1,350mAh battery with the Hero, 10mAh more than the Magic, but quote up to 420
minutes of WCDMA talktime or 470 minutes of GSM talktime (20 minutes more than its
predecessor). They also suggest up to 660 hours of WCDMA standby or up to 420 hours of GSM
standby. We didn’t have enough time to put the Hero through the sort of charge/discharge and use
cycles we would have liked to; however, with regular use of messaging and browser, plus several
calls and email regularly checking over a mixture of WiFi and 3G, we found the phone would last
morning to night before needing a recharge. This is certainly a handset you’ll be charging every
night, but from our experience over the past few days it shouldn’t require the mid-day top-up many
iPhone 3G users, say, report.
Back in our initial unboxing and overview of the HTC Hero, we tongue-in-cheek suggested that it
could be the best Android smartphone to date. Having spent more time with it, that cavalier
prediction is looking highly accurate. Android’s flexibility is, arguably, one of its biggest stumbling
blocks; out of the box there’s little to guide a new owner through the platform’s capabilities. By
introducing Sense, however, HTC have made the Hero instantly usable, and they’ve done so not with
the bare minimum of app investment but with a range of programs that offer up-to-date functionality
like social network integration.
Best of all, HTC’s dedication to developing Sense and treating UI as a long-haul process rather than a
short-term prettification exercise gives us hope that the few shortfalls and omissions we’re currently
seeing in version one of the Hero will be addressed over time. It’s reassuring to know that not only is
the Hero a great smartphone but that it’s only likely to get better as HTC continue their tweaks. It’s
safe to say that, in the HTC Hero, Android has come of age.
The HTC Hero is available unlocked and SIM-free from Clove.co.uk, priced at £335 pre-VAT. They
offer international shipping.
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HTC Hero unboxing and Sense UI overview:

HTC Hero media widget and Flash-capable browser:

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LaughingJohn 2 years ago
Several other reviews seem to suggest that the interface has quite a lag to it, although you don't seem to highlight this very much. Can
you comment on whether the phone is actually usable or whether the lag becomes annoying?
Thanks.
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to LaughingJohn
We've actually been talking about this in the forums over at AndroidCommunity.com. The reason I didn't mention lag is because I
didn't really experience any; there's a slight slow-down in flicking away from a homescreen pane if the widget is updating (such

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as Peep getting the latest tweets) but it's incredibly minor (IMO). There was never a lag or delay that I could legitimately say was
annoying. The camera, too, seemed faster than some sites are reporting.
The speed you see in the demo videos is basically the speed the Hero ran at all of the time. I've talked with HTC about the
differing experiences, and they're just as confused as we are; they say all the review devices (which I'm taking to mean those in
the UK and those shipped to the US for reviews there) are running the same production ROM. However there are obviously some
differences in performance across the board, not to mention I know a few people have had glitchier devices than others.
In short, this could be a "good" Hero and there could be "bad" ones out there with other reviewers, we just don't know. Given that
Orange UK are apparently beginning sales of the smartphone today, I imagine we'll soon hear whether those versions live up to
expectations or not.
Chris
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KaP 2 years ago in reply to Chris Davies
I got a Hero few days ago, and i'm not experiencing much lag in the homescreen. Though if i run some heavy apps or load a
long contact list it gets a bit laggy.
By the way, you can change the homescreen to the classic android one (with the 3 pages, but without HTC widgets :( ), and
it gets really smooth then.
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to KaP
Thanks for the feedback! I didn't see the classic homescreen option, but I think it would be too great a loss not having
the HTC widgets.
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bgadget 2 years ago in reply to LaughingJohn
Sllooooooooow! That's my biggest issue with it. Also, this guy makes a couple good points: http://tomaszdzido.com/blog/ht...
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WitchSmeller 2 years ago
Great review. I was happy to hear it has a Gmail app. Did you say that it does have calender and contacts that sync with my google
calender and Gmail contact list?
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to WitchSmeller
It does indeed, yes. The HTC "People" contacts app syncs with Google Contacts, and the new Calendar app syncs with Google
Calendar (as well as Exchange).

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ghoonk 2 years ago
Excellent review, I really enjoyed reading it. I have a HTC Hero order placed with Expansys UK and am waiting for them to receive
their shipment of the devices, so after reading this review, I'm looking forward to it even more.
I have noticed a small issue with the HTC Magic that I have (a non-Google branded device) where the latest version of Google Maps
cannot be installed successfully, and I was wondering if this problem is still present in the Hero. Apparently, this was caused by a
problem with the application signing, though neither Google nor HTC have taken any positive steps towards resolving this problem that
currently afflicts all HTC Magic devices sold in Singapore through at least 2 of the 3 mobile operators there.
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to ghoonk
Our demo Hero is running Google Maps 3.1.2 (#3182) which was released yesterday; the phone alerted us to the available update
and downloaded/installed it with no problems. There's still no multitouch zooming support, sadly, but the new version does at
least make clear that to access street view you need to hold down on the map and choose it from the pop-up box.
I'm assuming this is the latest version of Google Maps - it's the only one on offer in the Android Market - so hopefully that
answers your question! Let us know how you get on with your Hero when it arrives...
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chingf0rd 2 years ago
Thank you for the review - Does the Hero have a proximity sensor (Does the screen blank out when approaching face to answer a call)?
I'm glad you had no lag on the UI - I hope to get the Hero soon and replace my WinMo Touch Pro...
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to chingf0rd
As far as I'm aware it uses the light sensor to shut off the screen mid-call. It doesn't turn the display back on mid-call if you take
the phone away from your face; you have to press one of the buttons.
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mcfly 2 years ago
Hi! I have following two questions: Is it possible to sync the HTC Hero via iSync on the Mac over Bluetooth, cable and/or WLAN? Is it
possible to copy files from a Mac to the HTC Hero an vice versa via WLAN? Thank you for the impressive review!
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to mcfly

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Unfortunately I'm not a Mac user, so I couldn't try out iSync compatibility, and nor did I receive a user-manual so I can't say
whether it was mentioned in there.
As far as I'm aware, there's no way to copy files across WLAN. Plugging the USB cable into a computer brings up an option on
the Hero to mount as an external drive, but there's no way to do that via a WiFi connection.
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LaughingJohn 2 years ago in reply to Chris Davies
Thanks for the answers!

KaP 2 years ago in reply to mcfly
I have tried to sync the HTC Hero via iSync in my MacBook using bluetooth but it doesn't find it :(

LaughingJohn 2 years ago
Chris,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. One other quick question, other reviews have also mentioned that the touch screen can require a few
goes to get a click or swipe to work and this appears to be visible in some of the (many) videos I've watched.
I guess it may be related to the lag problem or just be present on pre-release versions, but did you have any problems with the touch
interface or keyboard not being sensitive enough?
I know this is the opposite question in a way, but I also noticed a lot of video reviewers seemed to end up dragging things around when
they meant to swipe the screen or pull down the notification area. Did you find that a problem and do you know if the screens can be
locked once you're happy with them?
Sorry I know that's actually 2 questions ...
Thanks again,
LJ
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to LaughingJohn
Not sensitive enough? No, not really. I usually use a resistive touchscreen phone, so I probably press a little harder "normally"
than some might, but I found the Hero coaxed me into being more gentle with my touches. The onscreen keyboard is one of the
best I've used, though whether that's because of the screen or because of the auto-correct software I don't know.
Dragging widgets or icons around requires tapping and holding for a second or two, and it's not really something I had a problem
with doing accidentally. I don't think you can "lock" the screen, no, but you can save your custom layouts and recall them if you
do major rearrangement damage!
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KaP 2 years ago in reply to LaughingJohn
Same than Chris here, the touchscreen is really responsive. Though sometimes it seems like you failed pressing because of the lag
(this almost never happen).
I've found the on-screen keyboard even better than the iPhone one, even with a smaller screen, all because of the auto-correct
software, which is the best i've ever seen. You have to train it a bit though, with some words it doesn't recognize (i am spanish so
maybe this doesn't happen to english writters :P).
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da_blob 2 years ago
gr8 review only reason im hesitant about getting it is cos sony e hv rumors of x3. i heard android doesnt officially allow u to save apps
to sd card. so:
1 is this true?
2 is the internal memory enuf? or do i need to delete apps to download new ones?
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Chris Davies 2 years ago in reply to da_blob
As far as I'm aware, no, there's no way to save apps to a memory card. As for whether the internal memory is enough, that
obviously depends on how many apps you're downloading; I should think you'd be able to install plenty with the onboard
memory, but my idea of plenty may differ from yours!
As for the X3, the renders look great but there's no sign of an official release or anything close to a shipping date/price. We're also
yet to see a leaked in-the-wild photo, which usually tends to happen well in advance of Sony Ericsson devices being officially
unveiled. The old advice stands true: you could wait forever to upgrade, always in fear of there being a "better" device just round
the corner, but it's much better to ask yourself whether the phone you're looking at now will do everything you want it to, and if it
does, there's your answer :)
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