HTC Legend

I was originally put off this phone by the size of it and was going to opt for the HD mini, however after seeing it in the store and playing around with it I found it was a much more comfortable size than I anticipated. It is quite a nice looking phone although I would have rather had it in white rather than silver, which is available now but wasn't at the time of purchase. I bought this on a contract (phone was free) at £20 a month for 500 texts, 100 minutes and 500mb of internet with vodafone but I think there are even better deals available now.

The overall design is good, and I have found that the aluminium body is very good and extremely hard to scratch. In fact my phone, despite being a year old now, doesn't have a single mark on it! I have had many people question why the bottom of the phone is curved, but I have to say it is a great idea that I feel should be implemented into more phones, especially larger smartphones. The curve not only makes it more comfortable to hold, but also when you put it down with the screen on the surface the screen does not actually touch the surface it is on and so will not scratch, which is definitely handy. The buttons on the front do feel a little cheap but definitely don't seem likely to fall off anytime soon so I'm fine with it!

The interface, with HTC sense, is one of, if not the best aspect of this phone. With seven individual home screens you can place widgets and apps anywhere so that they are readily available. You can just flick past widgets and see what is happenning in the world without even having to open an application! Particularly smart is the weather system, where when you turn the screen on and unlock the phone, a sun may shine out of your screen or a cloud may float past to represent the weather in any part of the world you like! There is also obviously a menu and different wallpapers to choose from, and obviously you can set a wallpaper as a picture you have chosen yourself.

There are a lot of neat features with this phone as well, and one of my favourites is that when you get a call, once you've taken hold of your phone, the ringer volume goes down or even stops depending on the setting you've chosen. If your phone is placed on a surface and you turn it over it again does the same thing. This is particuarly useful and is a very subtle but brilliant feature. Another major feature of the phone is the wide variety of applications that are available for it, made by HTC, Android and of course other companies. While the iphone is notorious for having the best app store currently, most of the apps are now available on the Android marketplace and it is steadily catching up.

The only real downside to this phone is the battery life. While with internet and wifi turned off the battery can last anywhere up to a week even with heavy text and phone usage, with these two turned on the battery quickly goes down and you may find your self recharging it every day. Of course this isn't much of a problem if you can put it on charge each night, but for those of us who use our phone as an alarm and don't have a plug nearby, it can be a little annoying!

All in all though, I would say this is an excellent phone and I am thoroughly pleased with my purchase!