Just yesterday came news of HTC's G2 Magic hitting the U.S. as the T-Mobile myTouch [2], and now HTC's pulled the veil from its third Android-powered smartphone. It's called the Hero, and unlike the iPhone it'll play Flash straight out of the box.

In terms of design, the phone is a half-way house between the sleek curves of the Magic, and the clunky shape of the original G1--it's slender, and has pretty clean lines, but still has that awkwardly-canted chin feature. The design this time incorporates anti-fingerprint technology on the screen, which should reduce irritating smudges, and the white version even has a Teflon overcoat to protect its finish--apparently a "first in the mobile industry." Looks like HTC is moving away from physical keyboards too--unlike the G1, and the competitor Palm Pre, the Hero is touchscreen only.

Inside there's a 3.2-inch, 320-by-480-pixel touchscreen, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, support for quad-band GSM and dual-band HSPA 3G signals, GPS, 802.11bg Wi-fi, accelerometer and digital compass. Memory expansion comes via microSD cards. That all makes it sound like a pretty typical smartphone, running a little slower on the processor side than the new iPhone 3G S too. But in the press supporting the Hero, HTC is stressing that this phone supports Flash right from the get-go. Flash comes by way of Adobe 10 technology, news of which hit just the other day [3], and makes it the first Android device with native Flash. HTC notes that "close to 80% of all videos online" are "delivered with Adobe Flash technology," which is a direct swipe at Apple's avoidance of Flash on the iPhone, and a reference to how much easier YouTubing would be on the Hero.

The phone isn't a fully-affiliated Google Android phone though, so some Google-centric features will be missing. HTC has instead added its HTC Sense front-end, a kind of easy dial-through access portal to favorite social-networking apps and the like. It's a new user interface from HTC, and you'll be seeing more of it as it's due to "be included on a portfolio of products moving forward." That, of course, also means that HTC has a number of Android surprises hidden up its sleeve.

The Hero's due to fly in to Europe come July, and land in the U.S. as a "distinct version" (read: new name) "later in 2009." When it does arrive, the one question everyone will ask is can it challenge the iPhone? It's hard to tell. The Engadget [4] boys said it felt slow in their hands-on test, albeit on a phone running pre-release software. That 5-megapixel camera is a definite plus though. 

[HTC [5]] 

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