Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

There are two stories being told out of the MWC in Barcelona, Spain.  One is that the new HTC Legend is the hottest Android phone to fall out of big show and the other is it is a let down compared to to the phone it is replacing.  The truth is likely somewhere in between.

First, the hot stuff.

The Legend aluminum frame is carved out of a block of aluminum ala Macbooks, which explain some of the fanboy kneejerk response of lust.  The device looks hot.  The 3.2 AMOLED screen is bright and gorgeous according to most who’ve held this one.  Like the Desire, an optical joystick has found a home here.  Android 2.1 that is featured on the Legend is made friendlier by the addition of the Sense UI.

Then the not-so-hot stuff

The Legend’s screen maybe upgraded to AMOLED but it kept the same HVGA resolution of 320x480 (sub par for a super phone).  The Legend has a 600 GHz processor vs the 1GHz found in the Desire and Nexus One.  Internal ROM is limited at 521Mb but is expandable with microSD card. The Legend has a smaller battery than the Hero and is expected to have a shorter runtime.  Not the overwhelming spec that would make this the easy buy in Android world.

Clearly, the phone looks amazing and we wonder why HTC chose the build the way they did.  Forcing consumers to make trade offs might have unpredictable results, though North American’s may not get the chance but Europeans will get the chance in early Q2 of this year.

Read: [Engadget] and [Techtree]