Today SmarTone-Vodafone announces the pre-sale of the new HTC Hero, Hong Kong's latest Android-powered smartphone. SmarTone-Vodafone continues its innovation on the Android platform by designing personalised user profiles on the horizontally scrolling 7-panel home screen and offering a wider range of exclusive apps and widgets to better meet the needs of Hong Kong users. This sets a new standard in smartphones for usability, Internet accessibility and speed.

“Building on the superb experience of the Android platform with the HTC Magic, we have taken HTC's new innovative Sense user interface and customised it for our customers," said Douglas Li, CEO of SmarTone-Vodafone. "We appreciate that our users lead busy lives and have different needs dictated by their hectic work schedules and social calendars. SmarTone-Vodafone Scenes organises the best of the Internet, alongside our multimedia services and exclusive widgets and apps, in a logical and intuitive way that is really easy to grasp and simple to recall. The HTC Hero offers unrivalled usability, convenience and Internet accessibility, with super-fast speeds provided by SmarTone-Vodafone’s HSPA network. The result is that our customers are better organised and better connected, while staying informed and entertained."

SmarTone-Vodafone Scenes offers two distinctive user profiles, "In Town" and "Travel", organising a combination of the HTC Hero's features and SmarTone-Vodafone's own customised widgets and apps across the 7 home screen panels.
"In Town" presents a clock and scheduler on the central home screen, together with People, Mail, Messages and Twitter. The Headline Express widget provides up-to-the-minute news updates, while the 5-day Weather widget receives information and real-time storm warnings from HK Observatory. Scrolling right, the 3 screens are dedicated to everything Internet-related, including Google Mobile Services. Users can access Gmail, Google Talk and Google Search, enjoy an enhanced YouTube experience or pull up Google Maps at a single touch of the screen. The panel also hosts the latest edition of SmarTone-Vodafone’s Always-on URL input bar, through which customers can type addresses to go directly to websites. A simple click reveals the browsing history, displaying all the web links in full, offering unrivalled convenience and usability. The next panel hosts a widget for capturing web page images to be used as visual bookmarks, which allows for instant recognition when scanning them for selection. New additions to SmarTone-Vodafone’s widget portfolio include Mark Six, which provides the latest draw results and JetSo, which displays the latest promotional offers from a wide selection of retail brands around Hong Kong.

Scrolling left reveals a full range of multimedia and entertainment services presented on the SmarTone-Vodafone Services panel, including FoneTV, the first Mobile TV service on Android, giving customers 26 high-definition channels including E!, Animax and CNN right on their handset. Also featured are news and finance services, like Market Watch, PLUS and 24-hour Chinese News, as well as entertainment services such as Sports Unlimited, Bet to Win and Game Shock. The next panel is dedicated for enhancing the enjoyment of the user’s personal content. It hosts separate galleries formusic, photos and videos and provides shortcuts to the music player and camera, as well as SmarTone-Vodafone’s Slide Show widget.
The "Travel" user profile displays the time and weather in different time zones simultaneously, as well as placing the camera and Google Maps within easy reach, while hiding those widgets more specific to Hong Kong use. A dedicated panel places useful and critical information readily at hand, such as Travel Assist, which provides contact information for airlines, embassies and hospitals at overseas destinations. There are also useful apps like a compass, currency converter, translator, Places Directory, Wikitude and access to the Lonely Planet Travel Guide.

A first for Android smartphones, the HTC Hero boasts a 5 Mega-pixel auto focus camera and its 3.2” HVGA touchscreen offers a multi-touch user interface with improved smudge resistance. It supports Flash 8, letting users view more and richer graphics, animations and video content on the Web. The HTC Hero has a multi-purpose search button, which can be used within the phonebook, mailbox, as well as browsing Android's official applications store, Android Market. Thousands of apps and games are currently available for download onto the smartphone free of charge to offer more variety and further enrich the user experience.

“The powerful Android smartphone platform not only offers a better experience for accessing Google Mobile Services but also the opportunity for SmarTone-Vodafone to tailor widgets and applications specifically for customers," adds Mr. Li. "With our launch of the HTC Hero, we offer an even greater range of services that are relevant and compelling to our customers and offer greater accessibility, faster speed and superb ease of use. And what is more, customers who have bought the HTC Magic can enjoy a free software upgrade in the very near future, to the same level as the HTC Hero, and they will be able to enjoy the same user experience and services. "