HTC Unveils the Next Chapter in Android Development with Sense and Hero. HTC officially announced their third Android-running handset – HTC Hero. Sporting the most complete feature set of the three it is destined to battle it out with Samsung I7500 for the full-touch Android throne. Different sites offer Mobile phone deals of  HTC Sense and Hero

The new HTC Hero runs on the familiar Qualcomm’s MSM7200A chipset, with a 528MHz CPU, 288MB of RAM and 512 MB of ROM. Just like the HTC Magic and the HTC Dream, the Hero sports a 3.2″ TFT LCD touchscreen display of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels). However this time it will use the capacitive technology and will support multi-touch as visible from the demo video published by HTC.(embedded further down this article).

Customized UI overlays over mobile operating systems are nothing new, especially when it comes to HTC, which has been doing it with Windows Mobiles for years. However, this time it’s different, as Android is a far more exciting – for lack of a better word – mobile platform than any current iteration of Windows Mobile. Android is poised to appear on many different pieces of mobile hardware this year, but we can also expect many of those Androids to have completely different UIs. It’s somewhat like Linux (linux) – yes, there are many different distros and it can all confuse the end user, but once you get acquainted with the basic idea you can find the version that suits your needs perfectly.

Connectivity is perfectly covered with the HTC Hero as it will feature quad-band GSM and dual band UMTS (with HSPA) support as well as built-in GPS receiver and a Wi-Fi antenna. The mandatory USB and Bluetooth are present too.

The final attention-grabbing features of the HTC Hero are a 3.5mm standard audio jack, a microSD card slot and a built-in accelerometer.
HTC Sense

HTC Hero pioneers the new custom UI that HTC have prepared for the Android OS. HTC Sense is based on three basic principles dubbed as Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected. Here are the three principles as HTC explain them.

Here’s the official demo video of the new HTC Sense UI that comes to enhance the already quite user-friendly Android OS:

Hero’s specifications on paper look better than those of the Pre and iPhone 3G S, but how big a dent will it leave on the smartphone market remains to be seen. One thing is certain; Android is all about choice, and choice is a great thing on any market.