HTC officially kicked out their latest Android handset today, the Hero. The big piece of news attached to this phone is that it is the first of its type (Android OS) to ship with support for Adobe Flash. Battery skepticism aside, HTC is also pushing a trifecta of options that are intended to make your mobile life easier, which in my opinion sound more like a repackaging job.

First up there is the ‘make it mine’ which is simply a number of widgets and skins that can be tailored to your lifestyle. For instance you can have a ‘work’ profile, a ‘weekend’ profile and a ‘going to the club’ profile. Next up is something called ’stay close’ which associates info, such as emails, contact info, notes, social networking with contacts or persons at a glance. Lastly, they’ve rebranded the phone’s local search and called it ‘discover the unexpected’, which is designed to expedite the process of looking for a contact numbers and so forth. The HTC Hero will hit Europe in July, Asia late summer and North America some time later this year.

Specs wise the phone breaks down like this:

• Qualcomm MSM7200A 528MHz processor
• Android OS
• 3.2-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 320×480 HVGA resolution
• 288MB of RAM
• 512MB of ROM
• Size: 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm ( 4.41 x 2.21 x 0.57 inches)
• HSPA/WCDMA (900/2100 MHz) and Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) connectivity
• Trackball with enter button
• GPS
• 5MP camera with auto focus
• Media player
• 1350 mAh battery
• microSD card slot
• Digital compass
• Accelerometer

Flash on the HTC Hero demo’d here

Full release below

HTC SENSE™ DEBUTS ON NEW HTC HERO™

HTC Hero is the world’s first Android-based phone with a
customized user interface

HTC Sense to be integrated across a portfolio of
phones beginning with HTC Hero

LONDON – June 24, 2009 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of mobile phones, today debuted HTC Sense™, an intuitive and seamless experience that will be introduced across a portfolio of phones beginning with the new HTC Hero™. With its distinct design and powerful capabilities fully integrated with HTC Sense, Hero introduces a unique blend of form and function that takes Android to new heights.

HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were designed by quietly listening and observing how people live and communicate.

“HTC Hero introduces a more natural way for reaching out to the people and accessing your important information, not by following the status quo of todays phones, but by following how you communicate and live your life,” said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corporation. “HTC Sense is a distinct experience created to make HTC phones more simple for people to use, leaving them saying, it just makes sense.”

HTC Hero
HTC Hero continues HTCs leadership in cutting-edge design that focuses on introducing a variety of distinct devices to represent your own individuality. Boasting bevelled edges and an angled bottom, the HTC Hero is contoured to fit comfortably in your hand and against your face while youre on a call. The HTC Hero is built to last beginning with an anti-fingerprint screen coating for improved smudge resistance and a longer lasting, clearer display. The white HTC Hero includes an industry-first, Teflon coating, resulting in an improved, durable white surface that is soft to the touch.

With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including a GPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.

HTC Sense
Built on a culture of innovation and a passion to enhance peoples lives, HTC shapes the mobile experience around the individual. Debuting on the HTC Hero and available on all new HTC devices moving forward, Sense delivers on three basic principles: Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected.

Make It Mine
Make It Mine, is about feeling your HTC phone was created for and by you. To do this, HTC encourages you to dictate and organize how you want to access the people and content in your life in a way that fits best for you. For some, this means adding glance view widgets that push content like twitter feeds, weather and other content to the surface while others may want quick access to business-focused information like email, calendar and world-times. HTC is also introducing a new profile feature called scenes that enables you to create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times in your life.

Stay Close
Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls, emails, texts, photos, status updates and more. HTC Sense takes a different approach by integrating these communication channels and applications into one single view enabling you to stay closer to your important people. With HTC Sense, friends Facebook status updates and photos along with their Flickr photos are included along side their text messages, emails and call history in a single view.

Discover the Unexpected
Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. HTC Sense is focused on providing a variety of these simple yet innovative experiences on your HTC phone that will sometimes bring you moments of joy and delight. It can be something as basic as turning the phone over to silence a ring or as simple as improving the smart dialler for making calls quicker. HTC Sense also includes perspectives, a new way for viewing your content such as email, photos, Twitter, music and more in different ways.

Availability
The HTC Hero will be available to people across Europe in July and in Asia later in the summer. A distinct North American version will be available later in 2009.