God damn, I adored this phone. When it was released back in late 2009, I was stuck on a Blackberry Curve 8900, and I badly wanted the Hero. I’d been eyeing up the (then young) Android operating system and, like many others, saw the huge potential. Unfortunately, the only device I would consider running Android at the time was the HTC Magic. While it had a neat little design, there were quite a few features lacking that ruined the device for me. No 3.5mm headphone jack? Very basic Android software and user interface? No thank you. But then along came the Hero. 

The Hero ran HTC’s Sense user interface, a UI running on top of Android that made it feel like an entirely new operating system. With Sense, I felt that Android became usable and tolerable - Android 1.x on the HTC Magic wasn’t exactly pretty, nor was it terribly functional. Sense allowed you to take advantage of tons of new widgets and apps, all packaged in one sleek operating system. 

The Hero also had a really distinctive hardware design that incorporated the ‘chin’. This section at the bottom of the device fitted to the side of your face nicely, making phone calls an absolute pleasure. This was the first phone I owned that I actually looked forward to using; I found myself finding any excuse to whip out my Hero and use some of the awesome apps that were on it. One of the biggest features that the Hero was advertised with was the inclusion of Adobe’s Flash player. While this wasn’t exactly full-fledged Flash akin to that of a desktop version, it proved enough to play most online videos smoothly, and even play most basic Flash games that were around the Internet at the time. As a sidenote, I don’t use Flash on my current Android phone, which is kinda ironic, but is also another story. 

The Hero was something truly different, and stood out from the crowd. I’d probably put this phone in my top ten smartphones of the last decade, simply because it brought a ton of new features to the table that other manufacturers had been way too scared to bring themselves. Well done, HTC. 

I was recently talking to someone about our favourite smartphone design. That’s purely based on the look and feel of the device, and completely disregarding the OS it’s running. I came up with a top three, which I thought I’d share:

3. HTC Magic

I rant and rave about this phone a lot. I always thought it felt great in the hand, and the finish and colour looked great. It also featured a trackball, something that complimented the slightly smaller 3.2” screen rather well (particularly when it came to text editing). The compact size also made the Magic really pocketable. 

2. Apple iPhone 3G/3GS

As Engadget never cease to remind us, you can’t ignore the iPhone. The 3G and 3GS’s curved back was a pleasure to hold and, in my opinion, miles better than the iPhone 4’s unergonomic form factor. The chrome bezel also added a nice touch of class to the iPhone’s design, and the 3.5” screen size was the perfect size at the time of its release. 

1. Blackberry Bold 9000

Yep, I still reckon the original Bold 9000’s industrial design was and is terrific. At the time it felt like a huge device; there was a certain heft to it that made it feel like a hugely powerful piece of kit. It had a huge keyboard which made typing a breeze, and featured Blackberry’s signature trackball. The Bold 9000 had a leather back, which took it leaps and bounds ahead of anything else when it came to the feel of the product. For this reason, I’m happy to say that the Bold 9000 is my favourite phone design of the past decade, and that’s why I’m excited about the Bold 9900, as it seems to follow some of the design cues of the original 9000. 

Android has become so successful over the past couple of years, people are starting to cry over silly little things. There’s been an increasing number of people in the community crying (my term for moaning) about HTC’s locked bootloaders on certain Android devices. In short, a locked bootloader prevents users from installing custom ROMs (such as Cyanogen) on their devices. What does this mean? Hackers’ nightmare; average users probably couldn’t care less. 

I’m taking the Phil Nickinson approach to locked bootloaders: if you want an unlocked bootloader, buy a developer phone such as the Nexus S; don’t buy a more consumer-orientated device such as my HTC Incredible. Just because you’re a developer, or even just lean toward the developer community, doesn’t mean you should expect all companies to be open to hacking. After all, most people won’t hack their device. 

PS: Luckily, HTC recently made an announcement that they would no longer be locking bootloaders. No comment. 

Since this phone came out, I’ve always been drawn toward it more than anything else. It certainly lives up to its name. 

The Incredible S features a 1Ghz 2nd Gen Snapdragon CPU, with 768MB of RAM and 1.1 GB of internal storage. On front there’s a 4 inch SLCD display and a 1.3 megapixel camera; on the back there’s an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and 720p HD video recording. The phone runs HTC Sense 2.1 on top of Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread.

I love the design of this device. It features a sort of rubbery soft-touch plastic all round, and the ‘plateau’ on the back (under which sits the battery) gives the phone a rugged and industrial feel. I have a case on mine (not pictured), but even without that it feels pretty sturdy; with it on, the phone feels absolutely indestructible. 

The screen is breathtaking, and I honestly thought that the lack of an AMOLED display (present in my previous device, the Legend) would set the Incredible back, but the Super LCD really is super. One of its strongest points is colour reproduction; the screen presents colours in very high contrast and everything looks very natural. 

It’s fair to say that the screen dominates the front of the Incredible. Comparing it to the Legend, you can see that HTC have wasted no space on the front of the device, and really have made the screen as large as possible. On the Legend, the screen didn’t really feel like the ‘centrepoint’ of the phone; it certainly is on the Incredible. 

With the addition of that huge RAM and fast processor, the Incredible is incredibly (!) fast. Where this phone excels in terms of performance is web browsing; multitouch gestures are buttery smooth, and Adobe Flash content loads and runs perfectly. This is a testament to the new browser in Gingerbread, but also shows up just how good the combination of RAM and processor speed is in this device. 

Despite only using it for about a day at the time of writing, the Incredible S has been fantastic so far. Look out for continued coverage of my lovely new device. 

I like to get myself a new phone every year, and this year will be exception. I’ve spent months thinking about what I was going to get, and the time has come to choose the HTC Incredible S. While the Desire S is a nice device, its camera isn’t up to the standard of the Incredible, and its screen feels small in comparison. I went back to Carphone Warehouse today to check out the Incredible, and comparing it side-by-side to the Desire, Desire S, and Desire Z (much to the annoyance of the staff, lol) it stood out as the clear winner in my opinion. 

It’s decided; I’ll be ending my Legend’s contract at the very end of this month, picking up my Incredible, and selling my Legend to cover the cost of early exit. 

PS: I’ll be attending the HTC Roadshow event in Bristol on Tuesday 24th May; hit me up on Twitter if you want to meet me.