Once you root the phone you can mod the battery stats, etc. Install custom boot animations using the Root Tools app,use Root Explorer or mod other things and give the phone more internal memory. Check out
Android & Windows Phone: Tablets, Apps, & ROMs @ xda-developers and there are tons of ways to root the phone. Overall you can put an update Android OS on the phone and have better reception and better battery stats. I updated with a CyanogenMod 7 Nightly ROM for my Hero and went from Android 2.1 to Android 2.3.5. I updated my kernel and radio and received a MUCH better signal(reception) and my battery use is not as bad now. You should definitely try it out. The best way is to use the ROM Manager app and Z4Root.apk app to root the phone first then ROM Manager to flash a recovery and install whatever ROM you want.