HTC Legend, HD mini land at MWC

HTC's turn at MWC includes two mid-range but very important smartphones. The Legend replaces the popular Hero as HTC's bread-and-butter Android phone but borrows a pair of design cues from Apple. It uses an upscale, unibody aluminum shell much like a MacBook Pro and uses black plastic over the antenna section much like the first-generation iPhone.

The handset has been given an upgrade on the inside to a 600MHz processor and now uses a more color-rich 3.2-inch AMOLED to replace the earlier LCD, the addition of an LED flash to the 5-megapixel camera and an optical trackpad instead of the trackball. HTC has moved the Legend up to Android 2.1 and supports multi-touch across the OS, though unlike the Desire it lacks built-in Flash Lite 4. The Desire's new version of Sense UI is intact and again uses an Exposé-like gesture to show all home screens at once.

The phone is due to reach Asia and Europe starting from April, with Vodafone as one of the main carriers. HTC says the Legend on offer won't support North American 3G, though in the past it released the Hero through Sprint and (as the Droid Eris) Verizon in the US and as-is through Telus in Canada. A roadmap leak has also hinted at a possible T-Mobile US model.

The HD mini is HTC's lone Windows Mobile phone release today and is effectively a budget version of the HD2. It carries a much smaller 3.2-inch display and just a 600MHz processor, but it still support multi-touch and has an upgraded version of Sense UI. Underneath, it runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 and so should be better-suited to touch even outside of HTC's interface. It shares the Legend's absence of Flash and 5-megapixel camera, and it too will ship internationally in April with no immediate plans for North American models.

Legend



HD mini

By Electronista Staff