Sure took a long while, but the Android 2.2 update is now available to all HTC Legends residing in Europe and… no, sorry, this isn’t the just-announced Gingerbread. It’s Froyo, the one before it — trust us, this isn’t a frozen dessert you won’t mind in the midst of winter. And don’t bother asking about 2.3 because HTC isn’t giving specifics yet. Wildfire? That’s “coming soon,” according to the person behind the HTC UK Facebook curtain.
It’s almost a given that HTC may have a little announcement for us next Monday, but chances are you’d like to let Windows Phone 7 settle in for a bit while you cling on to your trusty green bot. Assuming neither the Desire HD nor the troublesomeDesire Z / G2 tickled your fancy, you now have two more options for consideration: a “phantom black” Legend and a “brilliant white” Desire (as seen a few weeks ago). Patrons in Europe should be seeing these new handsets starting this month, but here’s a caveat: we’re told that rather than going 100 percent SLCD for the Desire, it’s actually a mix of both SLCD and AMOLED, so be sure to double-check with your store before handing over your hard-earned euros.
It’s a sad day for fans of Android, brushed aluminum exteriors, and retina-searing AMOLED displays. Bell’s HTC Legend seems to have come to the end of its days, the provider moving the phone to “end of life” status due to “ongoing supply constraints from the manufacturer.” Phandroid speculates this is due to AMOLED shortages slowing down HTC manufacturing, and that certainly seems like a reasonable conclusion. We also checked out some other suppliers of the phone and they too are not listing it in stock, so this could be a rather abrupt end of the road for one of the best looking, though not necessarily best performing, Android handsets.
Update: David D. wrote in to point out this Forbes article pointing out that chip shortages could also be at least partly to blame here.
It’s summer. It’s hot. Naturally, everyone wants to lick some frozen dessert in one form or another. Shortly after the Nexus One got its absolutely official Android 2.2 update, HTC has once again leaped out to tell us of its own Froyo offering. The Taiwanese mobile giant has informed Recombu that it’s expecting “several of our 2010 models including Desire, Legend and Wildfire” to join Google’s latest green bot party “beginning in Q3.” We went to the trouble of confirming this with HTC ourselves, and while this isn’t really much of an update from the company’s previous statement in terms of time frame, here’s hoping that at least some of its customers will get the delivery before the summer fiesta ends.
Sure, the Desire’s coming to a handful of regional American carriers later this year, but what if you want the smaller, sleeker, more aluminum-clad Legend? Well, there aren’t any carrier-branded options in the States — but it seems that a number of unlocked units with US 3G bands are starting to ooze out of the cracks. Negri Electronics has an 850 / 1900MHz 3G Legend in its store for a shade under $500, which means you’re not getting much of a discount over the more powerful 850 / 1900MHz version of the Nexus One — but you are getting a pretty sweet unibody shell and an optical d-pad. Any takers?
The phone, the myth, the Legend has just become available over in Canada, giving North Americans their first taste of that aluminum unibody construction. It’s looking highly likely that this is the same handset we saw gracing the FCC’s pages not too long ago, indicating that Yanks should be getting in on the fun relatively soon as well. AT&T already let one HTC cat slip out of the bag today, guess this confirms the Liberty won’t be feeling lonely in Ma Bell’s Android cupboard whenever it does launch. And hey, Canadian friends, just think of the Legend as consolation for your teams not sniffing the Stanley Cup the past three years.
Attention, possessors of the European HTC Legend! Have you noticed a handful of missing apps in the Android Market, namely Twidroid, Layar, MySpace Mobile, Barcode Scanner, Google Goggles, FxCamera, and so forth? Today, the brilliantly quiet HTC has finally come to light with the bizarre offending bug — camera incompatibility. Oopsie! Any moment now your metallic slab should receive the OTA update to patch things up, and hopefully the Droid Incredible will get the same fix even sooner. Crisis averted.
Compared to some gadgets, a two-week waiting period is only as painful as a mere mosquito bite, but we’re pretty sure that British fans of the HTC Legend would strongly disagree. Thankfully, our friends over at TechRadar ended this torture today with the news that Vodafone UK finally has a date for its exclusive Legend — “arriving on 2 April.” This presumably refers to stock availability in retail stores, since Vodafone’s still honoring its website’s April 6th date for its pre-order deliveries due to the Easter weekend. As for the Desire, Vodafone’s still pointing at the April window, which provides plenty of time to choose between the various UK carriers. Oh, so many decisions!
Vodafone has today announced that it will be the exclusive UK carrier of that aluminum-clad successor to the Hero: the HTC Legend. Advance registration pages for it and its family mate, the Desire, have gone live today and indicate an April launch date — something we’d already expected thanks to Amazon’s delivery estimates for unlocked handsets. The two HTC devices are flanked by Sony Ericsson’s long awaited X10 and the Nexus One, with the latter lacking a release date. It’s interesting that as things stand the Desire (HTC’s own-branded Nexus One) will beat its precursor to the UK market. Same could be true of Spain, where Engadget Spanish notes that Vodafone has confirmed an April arrival for HTC’s full family of new phones, including the HD Mini.
After four three flavors of the HTC Hero, the Taiwanese mobile giant has finally brought back the chin with an additional lick of aluminum and a similarly quirky name — the Legend. If this alone isn’t of much interest to you yet, just bear in mind that this is HTC’s first Android 2.1 device with Sense UI. It didn’t take much for us to fall in love with this Android phone at MWC — HTC convinced us of its unibody toughness by banging it against the wall, and needless to say, the vibrant AMOLED screen caught our eyes, too. However, there are still some questions to be answered before we can decide whether the Legend lives up to its name, especially on battery life, wireless reception, camera quality and software performance. Unless there have been major tweaks, we’ll try not to bore you with features already seen on the Hero — so please, won’t you join us?
