Second Take: The HTC Hero

Costs Rs 31,990 in India

A week ago Taiwan-based handset maker HTC Corporation launched the Android-juiced mobile phone HTC Hero in India.

Priced at Rs 31,990 the HTC Hero is loaded with 3.2-inch display and a 5 megapixel camera. Many have called the Hero as the best Android phone yet; the gadget has also been nicknamed as the G2, a successor of Android's very first phone, the G1.

HTC Hero's vital stats are 112 x 56.2 x 14.4 mm and it weighs just 135 grams. The 3.2 TFT touchscreen displays 65k colours at 320 x 480 pixels. Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and trackball have been included as bells and whistles. The camera with Touch focus (via software update) has a max resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and can record videos at 15 frames per second.

The HC Hero boasts a standby time up to 440 hrs (2G) and up to 750 hrs (3G); while the talk time is allegedly up to 8 hrs (2G) / Up to 7 hrs (3G). The Hero is distinctive for its shape, which is mostly rectangular with an angled "chin" bar at the base. The design of the Hero is very clean with just six buttons below touchscreen. The six buttons are for making a calls, a home key, menu key and a hang-up key. The other two are for "search" and "back" and are placed to the bottom right of the phone. Apart from these six keys all input on the screen is through the touchscreen interface or the trackball.

There is a 3.5mm jack port on the top side and a recessed volume rocker switch on the side. In addition to the dedicated YouTube player the Hero also includes a media player that is mostly unchanged from previous releases. The audio player does, however, support a broad range of formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, Real Audio and Ogg Vorbis, which makes it one of the most capable phone audio players around.