HTC
Hero

The Hero was HTC’s third Android phone after the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Magic. It was an evolution of the HTC Magic and underlined HTC’s design credentials with its distinctive “chin”, glowing trackball and its white Teflon-coated soft-touch finish that exuded quality compared to its rather plasticky predecessors. Users were also delighted that HTC added a 3.5mm jack to the phone, something that had been missing on earlier Android models. The Hero was the first phone with HTC Sense, a user interface and suite of software developed by HTC and used on many of its Android-powered handsets over the next decade. Sense was a successor to HTC’s TouchFLO user interface. The addition of HTC Sense added refinement to Android, which was still quite a functional platform at that stage. It set the benchmark for future products from manufacturers such as Motorola that were also creating Android devices with a unique identity and highly integrated range of Web services. The Hero's aggregation of different types of communication and social networking services was a distinct advantage. It echoed the design philosophy behind the Palm Pre, with all communications, including call history, SMS, MMS, instant messages and e-mail being presented in a single view. It also integrated updates from social networking sites including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. Promotional images of the device all featured social networking brands heavily and the launch campaign used services such as Facebook and Twitter to build awareness of these capabilities. It featured quad-band EDGE and dual-band HSDPA 7.2 Mbps. Other specifications included a 3.2-inch 320 x 480-pixel display, Wi-Fi, GPS, microSD expandable memory and a five-megapixel camera. The incorporation of features such as a grease-resistant screen, Teflon-coated casing, digital compass and gravity sensor indicated that HTC had designed and specified the Hero as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone 3G S. The HTC Hero is now widely considered as a breakthrough device for both HTC and Google’s Android operating system. It set HTC on a path that, by 2011, would see it to becoming the third largest phone maker in the world and largest smartphone manufacturer in the US with nearly 25 percent market share.