Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil” — but when it comes to confronting Apple, it seems “see no evil” is the rule.

For while Apple has been unleashing a patent war against manufacturers of Android devices such as HTC and Samsung, Google has – publicly at least – turned a blind eye, appearing less keen to rock the boat than the captain of the QE2.

Apple has hardly qualified for the George Cross either, picking its fights with licensees rather than Google itself, even though many of the disputed patents appear to relate directly to Android.

Now it seems Google is actively urging its partners to do its dirty work. HTC has this morning launched a new lawsuit against Apple – using nine patents quietly slipped to the handset maker by none other than Google. Those patents include four acquired during the recent takeover of Motorola, according to Bloomberg. Google won’t reveal how much HTC paid for them, but I suspect the loose change in my pocket would have covered it.

Is this the most cowardly “battle” in legal history? Apple has a problem with Android, but won’t tackle its maker head-on; while Google relies on its mates to tackle the playground bully instead of standing up for itself.

This is one of those rare cases where I hope both sides lose.

The firm’s European product director, Phil Blair, said the Radar was “designed around a social and mobile lifestyle”, and our hands-on time with the device certainly suggested that it’s got enough oomph to make Windows Phone 7’s Mango update feel slick, with no hint of slowdown or juddering as we navigated the various menus and applications.

The Radar feels extremely sturdy as it’s hewn from one piece of metal, and its 137g weight is partnered with a 11mm depth, so it’s far more pocketable than its super-sized stablemate, the HTC Titan. It’s just a shame that, as with other HTC phones, the design doesn’t exactly scream innovation or adventure.

Instead, the Radar bears more than a passing resemblance to the Android-equipped Desire S and, while that’s no bad thing, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that HTC’s handsets are falling behind in the looks department.

The 3.8in touchscreen is a mite smaller than most other smartphones we’re seeing these days, but the 480 x 800 resolution is on a par with most rivals – which means the capacitive panel is extremely sharp.

The screen is responsive, and looked to be serving up vibrant colours, albeit under the dimmed lightning of HTC’s venue. And if you’re not keen on its white finish, don’t worry – it’ll be available in black or grey, too.

The usual 1GHz processor is installed, and it’s partnered with 512MB of RAM alongside all of the usual bells and whistles – GPS, the full range of positional sensors, 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 5-megapixel camera.

The Mango update is the big draw here, and it comes with several interesting enhancements: true multitasking is included, feeds from various social networks are now integrated into the People area, and Windows Phone 7’s familiar tiles now come with more dynamic features, such as notifications of when you receive an instant message on Facebook or the latest weather updates.

Elsewhere, there’s turn-by-turn navigation, QR-code scanning, and support for synchronisation of Office 365 documents – ideal for those who like to work on the move.

So, what do you think? Is this the handset that’ll convince you of Windows Phone 7’s merits, would you rather splash out on a Titan, or are you still wary? You’ve got until October to make your mind up – so let us know in the comments.

Truth be told, the sheer size of the Titan made it feel a little awkward in our hands, but HTC has worked its familiar magic on the hardware.

The device feels rock-solid, it comes with the familiar matte rear and glossy bezel around the screen, and it’s also been made from one machined piece of aluminium. Impressively, it’s also only 9.9mm thick at its widest point.

Under the hood is one of the beefiest specifications we’ve seen on a smartphone. The 1.5GHz processor makes short work of the most demanding applications, and there’s 512MB of RAM and up to 16GB of storage, as well as an 8-megapixel camera.

The result is silky smooth operation, with Windows Phone 7’s distinctive menus, tiles and graphical effects handled without disruption, and apps opening with the minimum of loading times.

One interesting inclusion is DLNA compatibility, which should make it easy to stream media from your phone to a TV, and is a feature that’s only been seen so far on one Windows handset – the LG Optimus 7.

The 4.7in panel should afford plenty of on-screen real estate, but we were a little disappointed to find the Titan only comes with a resolution of 480 x 800. While menus and apps look pin-sharp, it feels like a wasted opportunity; after all, that’s the same number of pixels as the smaller Radar, and even less than the 540 x 960, 4.3in screen fitted to HTC’s current Android flagship, the Sensation.

Still, HTC’s European product director Phil Blair, claimed that Windows Phone 7’s latest update, Mango, was “such a step forward it deserves a new update”, and fans of the OS will have plenty to look forward to when the Titan is unleashed in October.

Perfect fit, or just too big? Let us know what you think of the Titan on the comments below.

Handsets like the Magic and the Hero – which was my first smartphone – were followed up by phones like the Desire and the Legend, with the former providing the slickest Android experience we’d yet seen and the latter boasting some of HTC’s most experimental design.

However, HTC’s firm grip on the Android scene has been shaken by an influx of eager competitors as Android itself has risen to prominence. Samsung has led the charge with its Galaxy S and Galaxy S II handsets, but other manufacturers have also made waves: we’re fans of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc and Play, and the LG Optimus 2X. Motorola’s Atrix is also garnering plenty of attention.

The companies behind these handsets dipped their toes into the Android waters with sub-par handsets but, crucially, they’re now producing phones that are just as good – and, sometimes, better – than anything HTC offers. Their flagship phones now look nicer, are thinner and lighter thanks to more adventurous design. We also prefer their screens: the vibrant tones of the Super AMOLED Plus plus display on the Samsung Galaxy S II and the LG Optimus 2X’s IPS unit are superior to those of the S-LCD displays in use across the HTC range. And, while HTC’s Sense has long been the standard-bearer for Android software integration, it’s beginning to feel bloated and surplus to requirements.

I’m a huge fan of HTC, but the firm’s recent handsets just don’t excite me like they used to. If you want innovation, it’s clear you’ll have to look elsewhere: the accessories available for the Motorola Atrix may not be particularly good, but producing them at all is a chance that HTC just doesn’t seem willing to take.

HTC’s current slogan is “quietly brilliant” and, when HTC introduced it, that was true. Top of the Android heap, HTC’s phones weren’t the flashiest but, crucially, they were the best. Now, though, HTC’s competitors are churning out equally brilliant handsets and, while phones like the Sensation are still excellent, they’re no longer the best or the most innovative.

It’s the company that kick-started the Android revolution – and the firm’s obviously doing well, as its recent profits testify – but HTC is in danger of falling behind its rivals. Perhaps its quiet approach needs to be scrapped if it’s to regain some of its old brilliance.

In the last of our HTC first looks at Mobile World Congress (HTC’s Facebook phones – the Chacha and the Salsa, alas, weren’t available for us to glad-hand), we’ll be taking a look at the cheap and cheerful HTC Wildfire S, the successor to the popular HTC Wildfire.

Aside from a visual update and redesign, which sees the Wildfire S gain a pair of attractive ear-piece grilles and a lighter, smaller body, and lose the optical touchpad of the original, there are two major updates. The screen is the most obvious of these: it’s the same size at 3.2in, but the S gains a bucketload more pixels, moving from 240 x 320 to 320 x 480, and boosts the quality too.

Where the original Wildfire’s screen looks a little grainy, the new one’s display is bright and colourful — much closer to its high-end siblings.

The other major change lies under the hood, and this will hold the key to the success or failure of the Wildfire S. Its predecessor was great value, but with an older-generation 528MHz Qualcomm processor, it struggled with graphics intensive games and applications. Even complex web pages took a while to load.

The S offers a newer 600MHz unit, with a boost to the RAM, from 384MB to 512MB in the process. We’d hoped for a little more juice than that from HTC, and in our brief hands-on session with the handset it stuttered a little in places, but with Android Gingerbread on board, it should provide an improvement over its ageing sibling.

Alas, when we tried to run the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark on it, it failed to even start, and ominously none of the demo phones on HTC’s stand had games preinstalled so we couldn’t check the performance for you. You’ll have to wait for the full review for the details.

Elsewhere it looks fine, if a little underwhelming, with other specifications including 802.11n Wi-Fi, a rather mean-looking 512MB of built-in storage, an FM tuner and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash.

It’s all fine until we come to the battery. This, slightly worryingly, has seen a downgrade going from 1,300mAh to 1,230mAh. With the higher resolution screen and more powerful processor we hope that doesn’t mean shorter battery life, because it would put a big dent in the appeal of a likeable little smartphone.

If there’s one negative thing you can say about the design of HTC phones over the past couple of years, it’s that — aside from the odd blip — they’ve become stuck in a bit of an aesthetic rut. The Incredible S, however, could be the phone to jolt HTC out of its stupor and get it headed off in another direction.

Instead of HTC’s usual duotone colour scheme, the Incredible S is clad entirely in midnight-black soft-touch plastic. From the front it doesn’t stand out that much, but from the rear it’s a completely different story: a geometrically irregular bulge dominates affairs, running like the rim of a chunky ceramic sink around the edge of the chassis.

It looks a bit like a hybrid of the Motorola Defy and the Motorola XT720, but it manages to avoid the ugliness of the latter, and in the hand it feels light yet solidly built. The only thing we don’t like about the design is the matte-black finish. As you can see from the photo below, it picks up fingerprints and smudges like nobody’s business.

Still at least there’s nothing to complain about when it comes to specifications. As with the HTC Flyer, the Incredible S leaves no specification stone unturned with a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, 768MB of RAM, a twin LED flash for the 8-megapixel camera, plus all the expected wireless connectivity: 14.4Mbits/sec HSDPA, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, GPS and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling.

The camera records HD video at 720p — no surprise there — and internal storage comes in at just over a gigabyte. That’s a touch disappointing, but there is at least a microSD slot so you can add up to 32GB more.

The 4in, 480 x 800 SLCD screen places the phone snugly between the Desire HD (4.3in) and Desire S (3.7in) and in stark contrast to the former, we found the Incredible quite comfortable to hold and operate with one hand. Despite the bulge at the back, it’s only 11.7mm thick, and the weight is a perfectly acceptable 135.5g.

More good news comes in the form of a 1,450mAh battery, bigger than the unit in the Desire HD, which means it should easily outlast its bigger brother.

If there is a black mark against the Incredible’s name, it’s that it will initially only be running Android 2.2 (Froyo) underneath HTC’s Sense skin. When it becomes available (sometime in Q2), HTC is promising upgrades first to 2.3 (Gingerbread) and finally 2.4.

We’ll have to wait and see whether HTC fulfills its promise on that front, but it would be a shame to leave this great-looking device lagging behind for any longer than absolutely necessary.

What’s frustrated me isn’t the wait as such – obviously I’d rather get the upgrade sooner rather than later, but I’m old and jaded enough to take these things philosophically. And yes, I understand that O2 needs to test the update fully before it can roll it out to customers and take responsibility for supporting it.

But it does seem to be taking an unaccountably long time, especially when you note that (as reader Alan Robertson pointed out in a recent email) Android 2.2 has been running on unbranded handsets without issue since the day of release.

And in the meantime, those of us with branded phones are barred from trying it out independently: though the software is freely available, my phone is restricted to installing only O2-approved firmware, as and when the company sees fit to make it available. Hmm, why did I ditch the iPhone again?

De-branding the phone

Happily, there’s a solution. Cast around the internet and you’ll find plenty of resources telling you how to flash your Android phone with generic firmware, which removes all customisations made by O2 — or by Vodafone, Rogers, Bharti Airtel or whoever your provider may be. Once it’s done you can install OS upgrades as soon as Google releases them, without having to wait for your provider to perform its own testing (and slap on its own branding). And this morning, having decided to wait no longer for an official O2 upgrade, I performed the procedure on my phone.

There’s a certain amount of hackery involved in the process, and once you start off down that road you’re on your own.

It’s worth noting that there’s a certain amount of hackery involved in the process, and once you start off down that road you’re on your own. Good luck getting support if you run into difficulties while trying to install an unsupported OS. And even if the installation goes perfectly, you may hit problems down the line if, for any reason, you need to send your phone back for repairs: de-branding your phone shouldn’t affect its operation in any significant way, but companies like to find excuses to void warranties.

But to me that’s the joy of technology. It’s taking ownership of your device, and making it work for you in ways that weren’t previously possible, even if — no, especially if that means creatively sidestepping technical and practical obstructions. Once I’d got the generic firmware onto my phone, it immediately picked up the Android 2.2 update, and though I’d done nothing cleverer than finding and following some instructions, it felt like both an achievement and a reward.

Getting away with it

And the thing about Android is that, so far as the OS and network are concerned, my device is still a perfectly regular handset, just like you might buy SIM-free from an online retailer. Unlike users of a certain other phone, I’ve no need to fear that future updates will seek to punish my audacity in tweaking my own phone, by deliberately breaking it or disabling features.

For me, though, that’s not the best part. That came a few hours ago, just as I was preparing to flash my phone with the generic firmware. I’d used the USB debug tools to get the CID from my phone, generated a custom boot sector and was just about to dump it onto my microSD card to create a key device for firmware updates when I realised that – at that precise moment in time – I had never been happier to be an Android user.

After Editor/Overlord Tim Danton gave it a glowing review last month I took the plunge and upgraded my aging phone to the HTC Hero – and, so far, it’s been a fantastic experience. Android is proving to be a solid OS and HTC’s TouchFLO 3D interface makes the phone more intuitive than any I’ve used before.

I’ve been particularly impressed by the Android Market, though, which has introduced me to numerous tools and widgets that have quickly become indespensable.

Take Google’s own Places Directory, which is a prime example of how apps can be used to make life easier. Using the Hero’s built-in GPS, the software notes down your location and figures out what banks, bars, restaurants, shops, attractions and transport links are in your area – and then provides you with a route to the service you’ve chosen using Google Maps, which updates in real-time. It’s already proved invaluable when wandering around unfamiliar areas of London and works extremely well – and is a superb advert for the Hero.

Another application that’s even more impressive is Layar, an augmented reality browser which also makes good use of the phone’s GPS and net connection. It may sound complex, but it’s remarkably easy to use: choose a layer – the default finds pizza restaurants within a mile, for instance – and this information is then presented geographically over a live feed from the Hero’s camera, using both the real world and a computer-generated overlay to guide you to your destination.

It doesn’t just do pizza, either: featured layers at the moment cover golf courses, tube stations and links to Wikipedia articles, and another layer will use your GPS and Twitter details to find which users are active near you. Other layers can be used to view photographs, find a hotel or see what’s playing at local cinemas. It’s a spectacular piece of software that could be used for finding dinner or for some high-tech tourism – and is a fantastic demonstration of how this sort of technology could be used in the future.

Other applications are less spectacular but still very useful: the BBC News app sits on the homescreen and provides updated feeds from every nook and cranny of Auntie’s website, and the eBuddy is a simple and well-designed IM application that means I’m always kept in touch. The Reddit Is Fun widget, meanwhile, keeps me in touch with the weird and wonderful side of the internet that the BBC, surprisingly, doesn’t cover. Other news applications, including those from the Telegraph, New York Times and Huffington Post, are never far from my homescreen either.

Of course, not all applications are perfect. Wapedia, which is high on the list of popular applications on Android’s Market, can be slow to unresponsive even with a decent web connection, and the Hero’s built-in Twitter client is normally fine – but links, whether to hashtags or other profiles, normally don’t respond until the third or fourth click. It’s not what I’d expect from a screen which has been virtually flawless elsewhere.

Many of the apps that top the Market’s popularity charts are those that are either very, very cool, like Layar, or those that are incessently practical – but occasionally something a bit quirkier turns up, too. Take the Metal Detector. I’ve no idea how it works but, somehow, it does, filling the screen with a simple meter that grows larger as metallic objects get nearer – hit the jackpot and the phone buzzes, indicating that you’ve either found a record-breaking stash of ancient currency or a few bottle caps lurking in the soil.

One of the best things about all of these applications is that they’re all absolutely free -and I’d wager that, if they were being sold on the iPhone’s app store, some of them wouldn’t be available for nothing.

The sheer variety available is also pretty impressive: while it may not boast the volume of programs available from Apple’s store, there was still more than 10,000 pieces of software available at the beginning of September, with almost two-thirds of them costing absolutely nothing.

That means that there must be some hidden gems out there – and more popular applications that you just can’t live without. These may be some of my favourites, but what are yours? Let me know in the comments section below.

Perhaps I’m a luddite but my mobile phones have tended to be, well, pretty basic since my first, screen-less brick 13 years ago. My priorities had been limited to good signal quality, long battery life, the best possible camera and easy-to-use texting. Occasionally, I’d look up the football or cricket scores on the BBC’s mobile site but that was about the limit of my ambitions.  The BlackBerry passed me by completely (I don’t like phones with QWERTY keyboards) and I’d had little interest in the iPhone due to its long, expensive contract options and umbilical connection to the truly loathsome (on a PC at least) iTunes.

And then I found myself tempted by the Apple beast just because I’d come across some teenagers mucking about with theirs, leaving me feeling jealous and inadequate (shallow, me?). So I nearly gave in. But I just couldn’t justify it. I’d either have to pay the best part of £100 for the phone (pay? for a phone?) or saddle myself with a £45 a month contract for two years: that’s an expensive and long-lived mistake to make.

Thank heavens for Google’s Android OS. PC Pro has carried reviews of the latest Android phones and my attention was drawn to the HTC Magic and HTC Hero. In the end, I plumped for the slightly older Magic because I could get it free on a cheap but generous 18-month contract with Vodafone and the only practical difference appeared to be the slightly better camera on the Hero.

Holiday Hero

I’ve been away on a working holiday for a week and the Magic has excelled itself. In the past, it’s been necessary to boot up a laptop every day to check for emergency emails, but even that isn’t ideal as it might be hours after the client contacts me before I can get back to them. By setting up a special “emergency” email address and redirecting that to my GMail account, I was then able to use GMail’s filter functionality to mark as read all emails other than those routed from the emergency address. I then set up my phone to only synchronise with items tagged “emergency” so I was only disturbed when absolutely necessary.

Android itself is a joy to use. The Magic uses version 1.5 which is one minor version behind, but it’s missing very little and I live in hope that Vodafone will eventually allow me to update it. The onscreen keyboard is, for me at least, only usable in landscape mode and is less responsive in bright conditions. In general use it certainly beats using a standard mobile keypad but the predictive text is not nearly as intelligent as that on my Sony Ericsson, neither does it learn as it goes.  Call quality is excellent but battery life, as with the iPhone, was far shorter than the bog standard phone it replaced. However, it seems to me that this is the trade-off for the increased functionality and large screen size so charging it up overnight is a price worth paying.

Given the cost of replacing the phone, I immediately invested in a screen protector and a belt-pouch and augmented the standard Android implementation with a number of “essential” apps from the excellent (and largely free) Android Market. I’ve been using Swift for Twitter and Facebook’s own Android app which allows me to snap a picture and upload it to Facebook in seconds. Google’s voice-recognition search works well and avoids the need to use the keyboard at all in most cases. The built-in browser is excellent although, oddly, Opera’s mobile browser doesn’t work properly at all. Android includes Google Maps (surprise surprise) which provides simple navigation functions but for “proper” SatNav I purchased the Co-Pilot app. Given that it was the only app I had to pay for, I have to say I was unimpressed. It was very sluggish in use and took an age to fix my position.

Spotify on Android

The pièce de résistance, however, is Spotify; the streaming music service. I’ve been using the free Spotify service on my desktop for some time, gritting my teeth as the small selection of adverts interrupts me every few tracks but unable to justify £9.99 per month for paid membership. The Spotify app for Android only works for paying subscribers and I decided to give it a try. Perhaps the single most useful feature of the Android version is the ability to create offline playlists. In practice what this meant was that before I went away I created playlists of my favourite tracks using the desktop client. I then connected my phone to my wireless network at home and launched the Android app. It automatically synchronises the playlists and then it’s a simple matter of clicking the “Offline Playlists” button and ticking those playlists I wanted to be able to listen when the phone wasn’t connected either to wireless or 3G. Indeed, the app includes an option to force it to work offline so you don’t use your data allowance accidentally. A few minutes later and all the tracks in those playlists were on my SD card and ready to go. What a cracking application.

Overall, I’ve been impressed in this real-world field test and won’t be going back to my faithful Sony. The Android OS is slick and easy to use. The only real failing I’ve found is that it can’t be used to establish a data connection via Bluetooth, unlike my Sony, so it can’t be paired with my TomTom for traffic reports. The HTC Magic itself is similarly impressive; robust and stylish it could hardly be easier to use, although battery life could do with improving and I still find myself getting confused between the menu, back and home buttons.

1. With the Touch Diamond2 switched off, press the volume up and down buttons simultaneously.

2. Keeping them pressed, use the stylus to briefly press the red soft reset button (you’ll have to remove the back of the Diamond2 to do this).

3. Release the volume buttons when a message flashes up to say, “This operation will delete all your personal data, and reset all settings to manufacturer default. Press VolUp to restore manufacturer default, or press other keys to cancel.”

4. Press the volume up button.

Then sit back and relax while Windows Mobile 6.1 goes on its voyage of discovery to set up the device with the default factory settings.