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Now that the HTC Hero is finally official, how about some high-quality live pictures with it?

First of all, I must say that this third Android smartphone from HTC looks good. Maybe not better than the Magic, but certainly better than the G1.

HTC Hero will be available in two colors (white and black/graphite), although we previously saw it in no less than seven versions, including red, pink, green and yellow. Maybe HTC will introduce more colors later this year – we’ll see.

Until then, here you have a set of live photos with the Hero:

(Hero vs. Magic)

(HTC Hero vs. iPhone)

(HTC Hero vs. HTC Touch Diamond)

(HTC Hero vs. HTC Max 4G)

(HTC Hero vs. Samsung Omnia II)

The pictures were found via Mobile-review and GSM HelpDesk. Mobile-review also has a HTC Hero review, in Russian. The reviewer is quite happy wit the build quality, the HVGA display, and the 5MP camera. Overall, it looks like the HTC Hero is worth the money you have to pay for it – apparently, in Russia the smartphone will costs about $700 unlocked.

As we already said, Orange UK is the first operator to launch the HTC Hero, sometime in early July. After that, the smartphone should reach many other European countries, and probably North America too.

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We didn’t think the LG Arena KM900 was any great shakes when we briefly got to play with it at Mobile World Congress, and it sounds like our initial impression was right on the money — GSM Helpdesk just reviewed the touchscreen handset and more or less called it a weak iPhone clone. Ouch. The S-Class 3D UI drew particular scorn for being “cumbersome,” and the browser was “sluggish” and “uncomfortable,” taking some 30-40 seconds to render pages. There were some positives, though: the camera was solid, and the Dolby Mobile-enabled media player impressed, but overall the phone scored a 7 out of 10 on potential alone — let’s hope LG can improve things next time around.

[Via Slashgear]