HTC Legend review

The HTC Legend was probably the most anticipated release that stemmed from Mobile World Congress this year. We take a look to see just how good it really is.

HTC Legend

IT Pro Verdict

The HTC Legend is an almost perfect device. It looks good, operates swiftly and the addition of HTC’s improved Sense interface makes this a perfect partner whether you’re looking for a consumer or business device.

There were few announcements at Mobile World Congress that excited us as much as the HTC Legend.

At first look, it seems just to be a re-mastered HTC Hero, but take a peep under the bonnet and it's much, much more.

Powering the HTC Legend is a 600MHz processor. It may not be as smart as that of the Google Nexus One's 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but it doesn't seem to need that extra boost of power applications run smoothly however power consuming they may be.

Multitasking is a breeze and functions, such as saving photos to the memory card, fire up quickly and easily.

Cosmetically, the HTC Legend is constructed in a completely different way to the Hero.

Gone is the plasticky exterior in exchange for an aluminium body, constructed from one solid piece the metal.

Because the Legend's casing is built from one solitary piece, it can be scaled-up and scaled-down in a way that no other HTC device can expect mini and mega Legends appearing on the market in the future.

The front of the Legend is almost all screen, with only four buttons gracing the panel below the display home, menu, back and search.

Home will take you straight to the home screen, menu is a contextual menu button, much like the BlackBerry key on a RIM device, back will take you back one step, whether you want to go back one page in the browser or back a step in the menu, and the third is a search key.

This will take you to a device search screen that not only searches your device and applications for the search term, but it will also pull in the most used Google searches that include your specified term. It's a handy button when you consider most other device searches on smartphones (think BlackBerry and iPhone) only include results for items on the device.

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.