Personal Technology » carriers

HTC's Hero May Be Your Scene

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:02:02 +0000

Super-smart phones based on Google’s Android operating system have been relatively slow to take off since the first one appeared a year ago. Despite Google’s iconic brand, they have yet to develop the strong bond with U.S. consumers achieved by the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry or the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. And, after a year, Android has less than 10% of the 85,000 apps the iPhone now offers.

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But Android is beginning to blossom in the market for this class of device, which is really a hand-held computer that performs many laptop-like functions.

In August, T-Mobile began offering a new $200 myTouch Android phone. Motorola (MOT) will shortly launch a new $200 Android model called the CLIQ. And, on Oct. 11, Sprint (S) will start selling perhaps the most unusual Android phone so far, the $180 HTC Hero. I’ve been testing the Hero, a touch-screen phone without a physical keyboard that has some important distinctions from earlier Android models. In general, I like the Hero and can recommend it to Sprint customers, or others looking for something powerful, but different.

HTC, a veteran Taiwan-based maker of phones, has altered Android more than anyone else so far. It has been gradually developing its own signature software layer that sits atop phone operating systems. With the Hero, it has applied this software for the first time to an Android phone, and that’s what sets the Hero apart from its Android brethren. The latest, beefed-up, version of this HTC software is called “Sense.”

Sense includes handsome, large widgets with extra features that go beyond the vanilla Android experience supplied to everyone by Google (GOOG). So the Hero looks and behaves somewhat differently. For instance, a contact page in the address book application consolidates that contact’s Facebook and Flickr accounts. The music player and photo album look better, and the Hero with Sense can use Microsoft’s Exchange service to synchronize mail, calendars and contacts.

Sprint’s HTC Hero

Sense also offers something called Scenes—entire collections of sets of screens and apps, either canned or customized, that can change the phone software’s look and feel. With just a couple of clicks, you could switch between a work-oriented “scene,” that prominently features apps such as a stock tracker and your work email, and an entertainment-oriented scene filled with the music player, photo album and other apps.

As with Sprint’s Palm (PALM) Pre, the Hero’s price is a bit deceptive. To get the phone for $180, you must remember to mail in a rebate form worth $100. At purchase, you have to put up $280. On the other hand, Sprint’s monthly fees can be much cheaper than those for other carriers. You’ll have to pay at least $70 a month to use the Hero, the same minimum fee that AT&T charges iPhone owners. But Sprint’s fee, unlike AT&T’s (T), includes unlimited text messaging and unlimited free calls to any mobile number on any network.

The Hero’s hardware isn’t especially beautiful. It’s a dull grey, noticeably thicker than the iPhone, with a smaller screen and six buttons plus a trackball, which adds another navigation option to the touch screen. It’s the same length as an iPhone, but is a bit narrower and lighter. It comes with just two gigabytes of memory, compared with eight gigabytes on the $99 iPhone and 16 gigabytes on Apple’s $199 model, though the Hero’s memory, unlike the iPhone’s, is expandable via a hard-to-reach slot under its removable back cover.

One big drawback is battery life. Sprint is only claiming up to four hours of talk time for the Hero, versus five hours for the Pre and iPhone. But, unlike the iPhone’s, the Hero’s battery is removable. Another drawback: I sometimes found the touch screen unresponsive, requiring multiple pokes at an icon.

On the plus side, the Hero has a much higher resolution camera than the iPhone’s or Pre’s—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It also functions as a video camera, and in my tests, both still photos and videos I took looked very good. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were clear and strong, and the phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in addition to Sprint’s high-speed network, which in my view is better than its reputation. Web browsing was adequate.

HTC’s Sense gives the Hero seven screens on which to place apps, versus Android’s standard three screens.

And, in addition to the standard Android apps and the 8,000 downloadable apps from Android’s Market app store, there are a variety of large, beautiful HTC “widgets” you can use. The downside of these is that they can occupy an entire screen.

The most impressive widget is called People. It’s an address book in which each contact’s page features a scrolling bar at the bottom with icons that allow you to see that person’s most recent Facebook status, photos from Facebook and Flickr, plus emails and text messages she’s sent to you and recent calls between you. This is somewhat similar to Palm’s Synergy feature, which is also based around people.

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Verizon Now Sells Subsidized Netbook With Cell Service

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:12:03 +0000

As laptops have shrunk in size and price, and cellphones have expanded in size and capability, the two are increasingly overlapping in function. Now, their pricing and sales models are blurring, too.

For a while, some wireless carriers in Europe and in Asia have been selling tiny laptops, called netbooks, equipped with built-in cellular modems, at low, subsidized prices, just as they do with mobile phones. And, just as with a subsidized phone or a plug-in laptop data card, there’s a catch: To get the low upfront price, the customer must agree to a contract and pay a monthly data fee.

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Starting May 17, Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, will try the same thing on these shores, selling a netbook model made by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) at $200, after a $50 mail-in rebate — less than half its usual price of $520. To get this price, the customer must sign a two-year contract and pay either $40 or $60 a month, depending on the amount of data to be consumed.

I’ve been testing this netbook, the H-P Mini 1151NR, a version of H-P’s Mini 1000 series with a cellular modem built-in. This model sports a 10.1-inch screen, and yet is very compact and easy to tote. It weighs just 2.45 pounds, is about an inch thick, and is only about 10 inches long and 6.5 inches deep. It has an Intel (INTC) Atom processor, common in netbooks; runs Windows XP; and includes one gigabyte of memory, a built-in Webcam and an 80-gigabyte hard disk. Like most netbooks, it includes Wi-Fi, but lacks a DVD drive.

My verdict: This netbook is an adequate light-duty computer, and $200 is a low price for a PC with a hard disk running Windows XP. But Verizon’s charge for Internet service is high if you intend to rely on that service as your main online connection, because the data levels covered by the carrier’s plans aren’t unlimited, and cost extra after you exceed a certain amount. It makes much more sense if you travel a lot, stay within the data limits each month, and want to avoid hotel and airport Wi-Fi fees.

But the Verizon (VZ) service is slower than many Wi-Fi connections, and it can be obtained for almost any laptop by buying a plug-in card that carries the same monthly fees. In my tests, at a typical Marriott (MAR) hotel, the Verizon cellular service achieved download speeds of around 1.6 megabits per second, while the Wi-Fi modem in the same PC got over five mbps.

The H-P Mini 1151NR

Also, even for a netbook, the computer itself is underequipped. Its 80-gigabyte hard disk is cramped by today’s netbook standards, and it has only a small three-cell battery that doesn’t last long. In my tough battery test, where I left the cellular Internet connection on, disabled all power-saving features, and played music continuously, the H-P Mini 1151NR lasted a pathetic one hour and 55 minutes. That suggests that, in normal use, you might get around 2.5 hours of use.

A bigger six-cell battery is available for $130 from Verizon, but that’s a huge price premium on a $200 PC, plus it makes the netbook 75% thicker and 30% heavier. Verizon doesn’t offer a larger internal hard disk.

By comparison, you can buy an Acer One Windows XP netbook with the same size screen as the Verizon netbook, and twice the hard disk and battery capacity, for $340. The Acer lacks the built-in cellular modem, but you can buy that from Verizon in plug-in form for $30, with the same monthly fees. Total upfront price: $370, versus $330 for the Verizon model with the bigger battery.

You could also pay much less at a RadioShack (RSH) store, which is selling a subsidized netbook with a built-in cellular modem and required contract (with AT&T) (T) at $60 a month. This model, also an Acer running XP, has a smaller 8.9-inch screen, but most other specs are similar to those on the Verizon model. Yet there’s one enormous difference: It costs only $50, plus a $36 activation fee.

In my tests, the Verizon/H-P netbook handled all common tasks well, if not at blazing speeds. It lacks Microsoft Office, but includes the lesser Microsoft Works productivity suite. I was able to download and run common third-party programs like Firefox and iTunes. The built-in Verizon software for managing the cellular and Wi-Fi connections worked very well, and can be upgraded to a new version with added features.

The hardware has some notable downsides. The keyboard feels too flexible, and some symbols on the function keys are hard to read. The mouse buttons are awkwardly arrayed on the sides of the touch pad, not below it. And the speaker, while loud, is tinny. Also, the machine has a bunch of craplets, mostly links to H-P Web sites or to companies like eBay (EBAY) and Pandora.

Still, if you travel a lot and like using a cellular modem, the machine’s $200 price is compelling, so long as you can handle the wimpy battery and small hard disk.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

No BlackBerry? Your Cellphone May Do the Trick

Vauhini Vara — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:01:00 +0000

A message for those of you with no iPhone or BlackBerry: Your cellphone is smarter than you think.

In fact, your boring old cellphone has enormous potential. Here is a guide to checking your email, looking up information and updating your calendar, just by sending text messages. You can use any cellphone, but you’ll need a generous text-messaging plan.

For email, I tested TeleFlip, a free service that lets you send and receive email via text messaging. TeleFlip works with any email account that doesn’t require a secure connection to the Web. That applies to all the major Web-based email providers, including Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail.

Signing up for TeleFlip took me under five minutes. All I needed to enter was my Gmail email address and password, my cellphone number, and a confirmation number that TeleFlip sent to my cellphone — via text message, of course. TeleFlip then had me build a “whitelist” of contacts, by importing my address book or manually adding email addresses. If I receive an email from someone not on that list, I don’t get it on my cellphone — an annoying quirk. (TeleFlip has plans to let users access all of their emails, beginning around August.)

TeleFlip does what it promises — but it’s neither fast nor pretty. It took from three to 35 minutes for TeleFlip to text me my emails after Gmail received them, averaging about 10 minutes. Because cellphone carriers typically limit text messages to 160 characters, TeleFlip chops each email into snippets, sent in successive text messages. You can decide how many snippets you want to receive. I thought three was enough to get the gist of the messages.

You can also instantly send email. TeleFlip assigns a nickname to each of your contacts — the first six characters of their email address. To send email, text TeleFlip at 33715 and type the recipient’s nickname and the message — for example: “walt.m Thanks for your email. I’ll get back to you soon.” It will appear to the recipient as if it came from your email, not your cellphone.

One turnoff: Each time I received an email via TeleFlip, the company sent a one-time email to the sender telling them about TeleFlip. I found that intrusive. TeleFlip says it will let users disable those emails starting around August.

To search the Web, I tried services from Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and 4info. Google can be reached by sending a text message to 466453 (”Google”); for Yahoo, text 92466 (”Yahoo”); for 4info, text 44636 (”4info”).

To find information, it’s useful to know some shortcuts: For a stock quote, text message a ticker symbol. For sports scores, type a team’s name. For local information, type “weather,” “movies,” or the name of a local business, along with a ZIP Code or the name of a city. In my tests, all three services responded accurately to my text messages in under 10 seconds.

Each service has unique features. To find local businesses, I liked Yahoo because it includes cross streets. For instance, when I searched for a certain Indian restaurant, Yahoo gave me its phone number and address, as well as the text, “Near the intersection of Valencia St and 21st St.”

I liked that 4info lets you set up customized alerts to your cellphone — texting you, say, when Target’s stock falls by more than 5% (4info.net/alerts/add/stock) or when a Red Sox game ends (4info.net/alerts/add/sports).

Google, meanwhile, sends you driving directions if you text it this: “directions from (address, city or ZIP Code) to (address, city or ZIP Code).” You can also do rudimentary searches by texting Google: “web” plus the search term.

In response to Web-search queries, Google typically sends back text messages with words from the top search results. So, be extra-precise with your search terms. While parking my car, I couldn’t remember what a blue curb meant. I texted Google, “web blue curb” and got an unhelpful result from a university Web site. Next, I typed, “web parking blue paint curb” and received a message telling me that a blue curb designates parking for the disabled.

With Google Calendar, you also can check and update your calendar using text messaging. To start, visit calendar.google.com. Click “Settings” in the top corner and then click the “Mobile Setup” tab to register your cellphone for notifications. Click the “Calendars” tab. Next, click “Notifications” and follow instructions.

You can receive text-message reminders for events. You can also ask for a daily agenda, or even get reminders on the fly at 48368 (”Gvent”). Texting “day” got me the day’s schedule, texting “next” got me my next event and texting “nday” got me the following day’s schedule.

My favorite part: You can add events to your Google Calendar by texting “Gvent.” To add a dinner date for the following week, I simply wrote, “dinner Tuesday 7 pm.” When I visited Google Calendar online a few minutes later, the event was already listed.

Send email to Vauhini.Vara@wsj.com. Walter S. Mossberg returns on June 5.