HTC Legend review

Taking Android to the next level - Apple should be scared

The definitive HTC Legend review
The definitive HTC Legend review

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The HTC range, and Android too, has never had media at its heart - although there are finally signs that things are starting to get better, and that's certainly true on the HTC Legend.

The music player sits apart from the video gallery, which for some reason is bundled under 'Photos'.

With the HTC Hero, we saw a distinct improvement in the music player - in the HTC Legend that improvement has continued.

HTC legend

We've mentioned before that the basic Android music interface, used on the likes of the LG Intouch Max GW620 (WHAT a snappy title) is just too bog standard - we want more than album, artist and title.

Thankfully, we've got it here: the HTC Legend music player offers up not only a full screen music player, but also the choice of artists, albums, tracks, playlists, genres and even purchased music from online services.

HTC legend

This makes sorting your tunes a much more pleasant experience than before - and the audio experience is also comparable to most other phones on the market as well.

We think Sony Ericsson still leads the way in terms of decent music phones, but there's nothing wrong with the sound on the HTC Legend.

There's no equaliser to play around with sound if you're having trouble with a tune and the speaker's not up to much - but for general use there's very little wrong with the HTC Legend.

The video player is also just fine for its purpose too - nothing over the top to blow your mind, but it performs all its tasks in a Ronseal-esque manner.

HTC legend

We tested a few video codecs on the phone - MP4, AVI and H.264 all worked fine with no judder. We're not sure about DivX, but early signs are that this isn't supported within the native Android player - we're sure the App Market can help out with that though.

HTC legend

Video on the 3.2-inch OLED screen is pretty nice - it's quite apparent this isn't a high-res WVGA screen, which we're becoming used to on high-end smartphones. Video looks fine, but lacks that extra pixel clarity.

The OLED does help matters though - the contrast ratios were lovely and the colours well represented.

But 3.2-inch screen isn't any good for things like watching full length movies - we weren't even that comfortable watching half hour videos.

Whether it's the thinner bezel or something else, we found ourselves pining for something larger - and the phone felt very tiddly in the palm for video.

HTC legend

The main other media elements lay with the FM radio and the YouTube application. The former is only OK - the sensitivity of the antenna (for which you have to connect the headphones) is pretty low, and couldn't find a few mainstream stations.

It also lacked RDS, which means you have to manually add the station names - which is irritating.

HTC legend

The YouTube application is cool though - not only do you have the option to watch videos in high quality over both Wi-Fi and 3G (although the latter is pretty slow) you can also rate, comment and share the video link all from the video itself - another example of the next-generation functionality Android is now offering.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.