HTC Hero. 100% of win.

There’s touchscreens, then there’s touchscreens. If you know what we mean. You don’t? Hmm. Okay, so there’s some touchscreens that have been added to phone’s in a kind of last minute way. A bit like when someone realises at the last minute that the party they’re going to is a fancy dress party. You know the type. They’re looking sheepish in the corner, trying to explain to someone that the piece of foil stapled to their shirt and paper-clipped to their ear lobes is because they’re from outer space. The point being, some touchscreens just have FAIL written across them from the very first caress.

The HTC Hero, however, has a screen that screams WIN from a distance. From a very small distance, as it goes, but it screams it very loudly indeed. Why is that? How does three reasons sound to you? First, it’s been designed from scratch, with the user in mind, not transported from the same software used to run a now discarded physical keyboard. That means it just plain works, just plain makes sense, and that’s good enough for us. Second, it’s a capacitive screen, meaning that it’s about as sensitive, responsive and downright right as a touchscreen gets (capacitive screens work by sensing the electrical currents in your fingers, meaning that you don’t even need to touch it – just get very very close – and that the more/less you touch it, the more/less it responds. Third, and this is our favourite: the keyboard presses back when you press the keys. So, as your typing, the keys – somewhat like real keys – seem to be offering resistance. How cool is that?! So there we have it, the HTC Hero features a touchscreen made 100% of win.

Oh, and, well, yes, I guess there’s lots of other things going on with the phone… 5mp camera… yadda-yadda… some kind of new interface… blah blah… Teflon… Teflon?! Oh dear… you should probably read this official product overview or even this HTC Hero review for some less touchscreen fetish thoughts. Or just have a looksy at this video.