Hands on with HTC Legend

I’ve had the great fortune of being able to use pre-production sample of the HTC Legend smartphone for the best part of a week now and I must say I’m impressed.

Although I never personally owned a Hero, the predecessor to the Legend, I know it was plagued by problems, not the least that it was slow. After using the Legend I’ve not experienced any such problem. Instead it’s snappy and performs everything right away even with a few apps running in the background.

What makes the Legend really stand out, however, is the aluminum “unibody” design. The body of the phone is basically carved out of one solid piece of aluminum. This is the same technology Apple’s been using for a few years now on their notebooks. It makes the Legend feel very solid to hold and indeed also very nice to look at.

Besides being loaded with Android 2.1, HTC’s updated Sense software also brings some new functionality to the Legend. In Friend Stream you can follow what you’re friends and contacts are up to on Twitter and Facebook in one unified screen, the “stream.” To switch between the pages of the Sense interface you can now “pinch” with your fingers and small thumbnail versions of all pages will show. Then you tap on one to go straight to it. If you’ve ever seen Expose in action in Mac OS X you know how it works.

All in all the HTC Legend seems to be a combination of great hardware and software. Everyone I’ve shown it to says they’re very impressed with the design. HTC in Dubai says the Legend will be released in the Middle East “early second quarter”. Price is not yet known but I would expect it to be about the same as mid to high end smartphones.

You can see me talking about the Legend on Dubai One’s “Twenty Something” to be aired March 28 and you can also catch me talking about the HTC phone on Dubai Eye’s Nightline.