The HTC Legend is HTC’s successor to the all-conquering Hero, and it’s a powerful beast, with an upgraded Android OS and a rather gorgeous new aluminium shell. New Sense software beefs up the phonebook, social networking capabilities and widgets and the internet, email and camera have all been improved. It all makes for a user-friendly and intuitive device.

Style and handling for the HTC Legend

The HTC Legend’s smooth aluminium unibody with black rubber pads at the back is a handsome makeover and while it is lighter and slimmer than the Hero, it still feels solid and fits well in the hand. The curved-out ‘chin’ at the bottom of the handset is smaller than before, but still protects the screen if you place the phone face-down.

The battery, SIM card and microSD memory card all slot into the bottom of the handset rather than underneath the back cover, but you can’t remove the memory card unless you also remove the battery, which could prove irritating.

The 3.2-inch AMOLED display is brighter and more vivid than the Hero’s, and there are now just four keys on the fascia, along the bottom of the handset. The tracker pad is now an optical touchpad, which is a bit superfluous, as most things can be controlled via the touch-screen. It does, however, act as a shutter key for the camera and an OK key. We’re also pleased to see a 3.5mm audio jack, positioned conveniently at the top of the handset.

Contacts on the HTC Legend

The shiny new Android 2.1 operating system, overlaid with HTC’s upgraded Sense interface, is the real strength of the HTC Legend. It lets you synchronise all your phonebook, Google, Microsoft Exchange, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter contacts, automatically linking them via email address. So if a friend uses the same email address for Twitter and Facebook, for example, both accounts will show on the contacts card. You will also see status updates and photos and everything is sorted into texts, calls and emails for that person. It’s an incredibly efficient system.

When your friends are not linked, the Legend will suggest links to social networks based on their names, and it’s surprisingly accurate. Birthdays and Facebook events are automatically added to your calendar.

Another highlight of Sense is Friendstream, which streams updates from the three most popular social networks into one widget. It’s a handy way to keep track of your friends.

As for the applications themselves, the Legend is preloaded with Facebook, YouTube and Peep, HTC’s own Twitter client. The official Facebook Android app is as bland as ever and doesn’t offer much above what you get from Friendstream, but Peep fully featured and gives you push notifications.

YoutTube streams nicely over Wi-Fi and HD videos look fantastic on the AMOLED screen. You can also comment on, flag and share videos. It all adds up to a seamless demonstration of the people-centric interaction HTC has been pushing since its Touch Diamond2 handset.

Touch-screen on the HTC Legend

Multi-touch is another new feature. This works particularly well on the home screens. There are seven customisable home screens and instead of scrolling between them, you just need to pinch two fingers together to see them as thumbnails before tapping the one you want.

You can pinch-zoom on webpages and photos too, and it works very well indeed. It’s a shame you can’t use multi-touch in maps – to zoom in here, you have to double-tap or use the on-screen zoom bar to zoom.

The touch-screen itself is speedy and responsive with one of the best on-screen keyboards we’ve come across. The keys are well-paced and the auto-correction function makes up for mistyping.

Like all Android phones, you can customise your home screens with a massive selection of widgets, shortcuts and ‘live folders’ which update automatically; for example for Facebook, Bluetooth files and favourite contacts.

But for all its Android prowess, the Legend is still very much a HTC phone, its own-brand widgets particularly. We’re very fond of the weather widget, in which little animation go across the screen depending on the forecast, and the calendar also displays the weather, with little sun and cloud forecast for the next five days. Our new favourite widget is News, which lets you add feeds from any internet news site, blogs included.

Internet on the HTC Legend

Browsing the net is a truly enjoyable experience on the Legend. Wi-Fi and HSDPA make for speedy loading, and the HTML WebKit browser can display full internet sites as well as a PC. It resizes the webpages perfectly and the text always fits the page, even after zooming in close. Both pictures and fonts are sharp and clear thanks to that screen.

Best of all is the new copy and paste feature. Just tap and hold for a word to be highlighted, then drag out the highlighted area in either direction to paste into a mail or to the clipboard.

Even the best systems need a catch to stop them being perfect, though, and the Legend’s is Adobe Flash. It just doesn’t work, and videos that are embedded into webpages were slow and rough looking. Of course, YouTube is preloaded and therefore fine, and downloaded video streaming applications also work well, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The A-GPS fix was fast and consistent and thanks to Google Maps you can plan your route from your current location to anyone’s address in your phonebook or to an input address. Of course, all these heavyweight features do take their toll on battery power, and you’ll probably have to recharge daily.

Camera on the HTC Legend

For all their impressive features, Android phones have never shone when it comes to photography, but the Legend seems to have broken the curse. The five-megapixel camera has auto-focus and an LED flash, and takes decent pictures in most situations. There are no preset modes but you do get the option to adjust white balance, exposure and ISO.

We tested it out on auto settings and got sharp results in daylight, both inside and out. Even low-light photos were pleasing, with warm skin tones and close to true colours, although the picture was slightly soft. We got good clarity while zooming in and touch-focus calibrated quickly.

You can share your photos via email or social networks, or other downloaded applications. Your gallery sorts your pics into camera shots, shots you’ve shared on social networks and photos posted by friends on Flickr and Facebook.

The verdict on the HTC Legend

The Android OS is good enough on its own but when added to HTC’s software you get something even better. The brand new Android 2.1 coupled with HTC’s intuitive Sense put everything you could want within easy reach, and its social networking and messaging capabilities are second to none. It’s fun to use too.