Got my Hero at Best Buy today!

princem131 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 12:22 PM

Walked in and bought my Hero at Best Buy today! No problems the phone is sweet! much smaller than I thought it would be very solid. Its a little laggy opening some programs but certainly no worse than windows so far I love it! I will try to post more today as I figure it out!

regression · #2 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by princem131

Walked in and bought my Hero at Best Buy today! No problems the phone is sweet! much smaller than I thought it would be very solid. Its a little laggy opening some programs but certainly no worse than windows so far I love it! I will try to post more today as I figure it out!

Let us know what you think of the keyboard.

aggie6600 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 01:19 PM

Did you have to ge the Everything plan?

#4 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 01:26 PM

laggy?? thats a buzzkill....

hope to see more reviews

nebula · #5 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 11:05 PM

I have been playing around with my Hero for a few hours now, a little laggy definitely. But there are so many pros to it 1 con is easily overlooked.
Looking forward to making this my phone of choice for a while. I am also eagerly waiting for the "Donut (1.6)" OTA update. HTC/Sprint need to hurry up already. "Cupcake" is almost outdated!

nebula · #6 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aggie6600

Did you have to ge the Everything plan?

I believe so, I am using the employee refereal Everything 500 Plan $59.99/month with a lot of features

ajones7279 · #7 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 11:17 PM

Picked up mine this morning. Replying from it now.

I like it. Way better than the Instink that I had for a while.

chocmatic · #8 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 11:53 PM

Phone is working great. A little laggy at times...but I'm very impressed by the android OS

princem131 · #9 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nebula

I have been playing around with my Hero for a few hours now, a little laggy definitely. But there are so many pros to it 1 con is easily overlooked.
Looking forward to making this my phone of choice for a while. I am also eagerly waiting for the "Donut (1.6)" OTA update. HTC/Sprint need to hurry up already. "Cupcake" is almost outdated!

Couldn't have said it better! I am still adapting to the switch to Android after years of WinMo. It feels awkward at first but what I am finding is I am conditioned to do things using very complicated methods like on Winmo and Android is so much more simple. The lag I am running into i am pretty sure is in part due to all of the crap I am doing, especially with all of the contacts I was updating simultaneously. Once I got most of that done it seemed faster. I think I am really going to like this phone and may actually be able to ride it out for 2 years (unless I give into my tech junkie tendencys). The Pros thus far greatly out weigh the cons. The keyboard is excently and will only improve with use as it learns your words. I love that you dont have to exactly type what you want and the software handles correcting it. Again, it may be a little off intially but investing time early in your phones dictionary will pay off big in the long run. And this is coming from a guy who swore he'd never go to a phone without a hard keyboard, I don't miss it at all! The predicitve text also makes it easy to text while driving or one handed (though i guess you shouldnt be doing that anyway lol).

The Camera is great, sound quality is excellent on speaker, earpiece, and with headphones or audio system. The default twitter App Peep is a little slow but not only are there many other apps for twitter I am also not that concerned with it and it is otherwise a very solid twitter app.

I love the non intrusive but very informative notifications system. The phone handles multi tasking pretty well it could be a little more smooth (like the Pre). But I wouldnt be surprised if there is an app for that. *edit* Just figured out that holding the home key down brings up a menu with all active apps, which really speeds up the process of switching between apps. So add smooth multi-tasking to the list of pros. *edit*

I will defintiely need a screen protector (HTC usually includes those not sure what happened

) and probably a case as well though I reall don't want to cover up the phone I love how it looks!

There are SOOOO many features and setting that you can customize not to mention Android market Apps! It will take me a day or so before I really have it up and running to my taste to fully review. I plan to get it set up and tweak things this weekend to give it a real test during the week to see how it performs during regular usage. Definitely glad that I didn't get the TP2. Nothing against it I know it is a great device and very powerful, but in the end android is a much better experience than Winmo regardless of how updated the touchflo 3D is. Sense UI far > than Touch Flo 3D.

Oh and yes I had to switch to an everything plan unfortuantely after many years on SERO. I switched to the EPRP 500 joint. Still not a bad deal! Honestly, Sprint's regular plans can't really be matched by any carrier. Especially with that Any Mobile offer they have now.

I think I may be a long term android fan. The future looks good Android will only be getting better. This thing with a next gen processor would be a MONSTER!!!!

* Facebook and Flikr upload slows the phone down horribly and takes forever to complete. It seems like it is slowing down my web significantly while it is uploading also.

sjh858 · #10 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 03:51 PM

I got the HTC Hero also from Best Buy yesterday. I had an HTC Touch Diamond before this phone and couldn't stand how slow it was. I had hoped for a huge speed pick up and received it with this phone.

I initially downloaded Pandora and Shazaam from the Android Marketplace. Downloads were speedy and the software ran great. I did notice some lag with running Pandora and browsing the phone, but nothing terrible. I agree with princem131, this device would be a monster with that 800mhz processor (next gen) the Samsung Moment will have.

Overall, though, I think I will stick with this phone as the Sense UI is undoubtedly much nicer than the standard Android UI.

The keyboard is nice, reminds me of TouchFlo's default keyboard (coming from a Diamond) and in both landscape and vertical modes it fairs quite well. There is a bit to get used to with the touch feedback on the phone, it seems much more sensitive compared to my Diamond, which I am finding I like a lot. It's word prediction/auto-complete function is a great implementation and I've begun using it instinctively already in my first 24 hours with the phone.

I had no idea how extensive the Android Market was and I am impressed with how many free applications are available. Google Stars is definitely my favorite so far as you can move the phone around the room and see the sky below you or above you. I guess I am surprised because I didn't realize it could orientate itself based on all tilts including north south east and west. Everything is on the fly with this phone. I have only utilized three of my screens (out of 7 with Sense UI), which makes me happy knowing that eventually I will be able to bog my phone down with fun apps in the future. I may suggest getting a task manager (free from the market) that allows you to shut down apps on your own that otherwise sit in the background hogging system resources.

I hope that whoever is responsible (Sprint, Google, HTC) will roll out the 1.6 Donut Android OS with Sense UI soon. Although, in most of my frequents to the Market I've noticed not all of the applications work with 1.6... but I'm sure soon I will find apps that don't work with 1.5.

All in all this phone is great, I highly suggest running over to your local Sprint retailer and picking yourself up one of these badboys. It is definitely the best phone I have owned to date, considering I had the Samsung Instinct and HTC Diamond.