Once you have the HTC Hero in your hands, you can say at first sight this is the first 100% HTC ANDROID project, as one of HTC members said.

In fact it’s the first device delivered by HTC not including the “with Google” logo on his back, what makes the Hero more independent from Google services than was Magic or G1.

GUI

With the introduction of HTC Sense, HTC gives Android their own look and feel, very close to the look and feel of their Windows Mobile devices, but integrating much better with the most basic applications of Android such as calendar, dialer, etc…

HTC Sense makes the device look more elegant than original Android and includes some functional improvements as well. For example, the number of desktop tabs. Pure Android devices as G1 or Magic have only three tabs for placing all your shortcuts and widgets, what becomes insufficient after the first weeks (well… at least for me), but HTC Sense provides up to 7 tabs for placing your favorite shorcuts and widgets.

And there is a lot of widgets to put on! It’s specially remarkable the great widget collection included in HTC Sense. Quantity and quality! Stocks, clocks, calendar, twitter, and more… This is one of my favorite things in HTC Hero.

Hardware

Looking at hardware design, HTC has tried to improve their previous models and to include something new. The most impacting thing is the Teflon layer that is covering all the external surface except for the screen. I really like it. It makes the Hero very comfortable in your hands. And, of course, harder to scratch.

The 3.5 mm audio jack is one of the improvements we expected and here it is. No more problem deciding listening to music or charging your device.

But there are a couple of things I don’t like. The first is the new layout of hard keys, that makes usuability go one step back in my opinion. Specially the ‘Back’ key, that becomes more difficult to use for right-handed people. The second, the curvature in the area of hard keys. I guess the goal was to make more usable the keys, speciallly with only one hand, but I think the only result is that HTC Hero is very uncomfortable when you left it on a table and try to use it with a single hand.
Maybe it’s just a matter of taste.

Software

Talking about productive software, I must confess I was a bit dissapointed with the software shipped with Android (at least on Magic). No PDF viewer, no documents editors, no task manager, … HTC has addressed this issue in some extent shipping on the Hero applications such as QuickOffice, Stocks, Footprints, PDF Viewer, Peep, … This provides a better experience with the device and can make life easier to some users as they won’t need to Android Market for getting some important applications.

A separate mention is deserved for web browser, due to the prominent place it takes in such a connected device. Two very important milestones have been reached with HTC Hero: multitouch and Flash. This allows a much better experience browsing the ‘desktop web’.

Moreover, some other little but yet appropiate improvements in the browser makes the experience better than in the original Android browser. And so it happens with the virtual keyboard, that shows a better performance and usability.

Another interesting point of HTC Hero is the management of social networks, integrated in system settings and in the configuration wizard for initializing setting at first start up. This allows you to manage your Facebook, Twitter or Flickr accounts in a very easy manner.

And last but not least, the mail application shipped with HTC Hero includes Exchange support out of the box.

Other features

Of course, HTC Hero includes all features already available in HTC Magic like A-GPS, compass, YouTube application, accelerometer,… that have become a commodity in this kind of devices.

To sum up here’s a list with pros and cons of HTC Hero, but, better than all I can say, you should look at the video review we posted yesterday.

Pros

• Great widget collection
• Improved virtual keyboard
• Flash support
• Multitouch
• HTC Sense makes GUI more elegant and usable
• New 3.5 mm jack for headphones
• 5.0 megapixels camera
• Exchange support

Cons

• New keys layout
• Curvature makes difficult to use on a table with a single hand

Now, we have put our hands on this little precious for a couple of days, and have new things to share with you: a video review showing the main features of HTC Hero and Sense and how the mobile applications can help in our daily life. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Thanks to our friends of Confëttika, for this great videos.

First, unboxing and looking at HTC Hero design …

Getting it to work …

Reviewing …

And a real life sample …

HTC has announced that their high-end smartphone HTC Touch HD, offered by Telefónica in Spain, will incorporate the awarded GPS software CoPilot Live, developed by ALK Technologies.

And what´s more, they give you a perpetual CoPilot license just for signing a 3G data contract !

In case you still don´t know the incredible HTC device Touch HD or the contract options with Telefónica, please visit our coverage for the Spanish HTC Press Conference presentation, where you will find all these details plus some interesting videos of the Touch HD´s TouchFLO 3D interface. You can also read its technical specifications here.

So, you know HTC´s Touch HD… now put its 3,8 inch high-res touchscreen together with a magnificient turn by turn GPS software. What you get its the best GPS on a smartphone nowadays. Apple finally announced support for turn by turn GPS software on iPhone 3.0 by summer, but there are still no announcements for any concrete GPS software, and the screen its not as good as HTC´s for this task. Also, CoPilot Live benefits not only from Touch HD screen, it also runs great and smoothly over HTC Touch FLO interface.

There are just a few dedicated GPS hardware devices with such a screen and capabilities, and the price for those which can face the specs of the Touch HD is just too high comparatively. Take into account that Touch HD runs Windows Mobile, so you have a media player (music, videos, photos) and a bluetooth handsfree.

Thanks to Telefónica 3G Data plans (10 and 15 euros depending on the maximum traffic) and the perpetual license you get with it (you can get a license for 99 € on ALK website shall you don´t want data plans), you will be able to upgrade CoPilot Live with new updated maps and POIs (Points Of Interests) like the included radar warners.

Check this out! Two people named “Simon and Steve” have developed a software application that lets remote control a F1 toy car from a BlackBerry Storm via Bluetooth.

You can see it in the above video, but that is not the end! Simon and Steve were invited by Vodafone and McLaren to the Grand Prix training circuit to show them something.

Also they had developed a similar application, but more advanced and for a real F1 car! It lets control everything just like if you were driving it. In the video you will see how Lewis Hamilton uses the Storm to control his car.

Just amazing. =O

Thanks to Jesus Viñuales for these news.

Yesterday, Sagem Orga and BlueSky Positioning presented a SIM card that integrate A-GPS positioning technology.

The card contains a GPS receptor and a antenna that can be used either to mobile triangulation, or to position by satellite.

At now, the primary purpose of A-GPS SIM is to provide accurate positioning information of the phone to emergency services in case of an emergency call.

In addition, have to test how reliable it is, as well as the software to be taken to use on any mobile device.

You imagine an application that lets you find, not a place, but a person. It seems very interesting.

Via Xataka

Do you want to know the tv schedule just holding the tv remote?, Can you imagine your computer displaying the weather forecast just opening your umbrella?. Can you?. It sounds futuristic, but is real!!

Violet (the makers of Nabaztag rabbits) is about to launch Mir:ror, a small USB gadget which acts like an interface between your everyday belongings and your computer, now you can connect all your stuff with the digital world.

Just place and object on top of the device above, it´ll automatically execute a task on the machine that you’ve synced up with your items.

The Mir:ror can instantly identify many objects with built-in RFID tags, but you can tag pretty much anything you want with their colorful identification stamps (ztamp:s).

You can know everything about Mir:ror and how to use it on Violet’s new web site.

Violet expects to release the Mir:ror in the US on October 27th, and you can order the $69.99 starter kit (including Mir:ror, 3 ztamp:s, 2 nanoztag rabbits, and an additional skin for the surface).

This is pretty funny, and sometimes useful, I like this kind of gadgets but I love the Nanoztag rabbits

Via Technabob

Seiko Epson has released a prototype of 2.57-inch color LCD high-resolution 3D display for mobile phones that affords some freedom of viewing position, compared to conventional 3D displays, without using special glasses.

Traditionally, 3D displays present a slightly different image to each eye. Special lenses called “lenticual lenses” are placed in front of the LCD panel in order to each image reaches the correct eye. But, in this way, there is only one viewing point, and this is not enough to mobile displays because it is impossible to control the point of view of the mobile user.

One solution is to capture the object’s image from multiple angles, split it up and display as many images as possible on the panel. So, the more the image is split, the more depth that can be created for the object displayed on the screen, but the less resolution is achieved. This is the problem that Seiko has solved achieved an ultra high resolution of approximately at about 500ppi. Seiko Epson’s solution consists of narrowing the image width that reaches each viewing point and devising special pixel alignment on its LCD display.

Seiko Epson plans to commercialize the display in two years. I don’t know if it will be useful, but I am sure that it will be impressive.

Vía MobileHandsetDesignLine,

Intel Moorestown is something like the heir of the UMPCs idea, a mobile internet gadget.

Just two days ago Intel Demostrates World´s first working “Moorestown” platform at the INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Taipei, Taiwan.

The surge of new Internet-based applications and innovations will require a common, yet flexible platform from which the industry can innovate upon, and the Intel® Architecture is well positioned at the core of exciting new innovations and transformation, according to Intel executive Anand Chandrasekher.

Discover this Brand new gadget after the jump.

One year after its first presentation, Intel is finishing its own iPhone killer. This kind of MID (Mobile Internet Device) is based on SoC (System on a chip), that means that Moorestown combines 45nm chip processor, graphics, memory and other technologies in only one chip.

Moorestown will be build with Wimax and 3G connectivity, so mobile phone could be supported as you can see in the  video above. One year ago Intel promised battery autonomy for 24h, Great!

As you can see in this picture Moorestown size is longer than the iPhone and although is provided with an extrange wide screen frame ratio (not 16:9), interfaces and apps gui functionality are great resolved.

Its powerful chips, its “tiny” size (compared with laptops) its low battery consumption and its great yield could reach a great success in following years. Will be available for retail between 2009 and 2010 so we must wait.

Via Xataca

Have you ever dreamt about controlling your mobile applications with your mind? Well, you can stop dreaming, NeuroSky has brought it to real life.

NeuroSky has demonstrated its last brain-controlled applications at the CTIA 2008. These applications need the NeuroSky headset, which has some sensors to find out the state of your mind. This headset reads the alpha and beta waves from the brain and send them wirelessly to the mobile phone.

Then, the mobile phone application precesses the information received about brain’s waves. This information is useful to measure the degree of the brain’s relaxation, tension and concentration. So the applications will be based on the degree of concentration you have. Don’t think you can make decisions with your mind and transmit them to the applications, not so far at least… It’s more like the application is programmed to do something and it will only work if you are well concentrated on it.

As an example, I can talk about a simple game NeuroSky has developed. It’s about a bug that has to run throw a line or a bigger bug will eat it. In this case, the more the gamer concentrates on it, faster will run the bug. But the gamer can NOT decide to turn, the bug will turn automatically. You can see other game example in the official website, following this link, but this time the game is for computers.

I think this is incredible and it will be used in the future for sure, but I have to say that I was waiting for transmitting my decisions (like in some movies…) and not only transmitting my grade of concentration.

Via Cellphone Beat