HTC pulled out all the stops today for their gala launch of the HTC Hero Android phone and HTC Sense secondary OS. They even got out the smoke machines.

The handset seems to have just about everything you could want, except a flash – no idea why smartphone manufacturers keep leaving that out – and. essentially. it’s got all the same internal build as the Magic. But you can read about these things forever, so take a closer look here…

The outsides are all very well and good. I did feel it was a little underpowered and laggy with a slightly dead touchscreen but I’ll wait for a review for the final words on that. What I feel this handset’s going to live and die by, though, is the HTC Sense Android toupee.

It looked fantastic in the demonstration and everything the HTC product designers said made perfect sense. The idea of integrating all of your communictions from each contact looked excellent and the degree of customisation looks beyond anything offered so far.

The trouble is that when I got the Hero into my hands it just seemed a little overcomplicated and rather ruined one of the beauties of Android which is its relative simplicity and ease of use. Now, bear in mind this was only a three minute play, so I’ll give you more on that when I’ve had the chance of a proper review.

I’ll get some more vid up of the Sense as soon as I can but, for now, you can take HTC CEO Peter Chou’s word for it. Chou like.

HTC