HTC Hero Reviews

[Osz]

Keep the reviews coming guys. I'm really thinking about getting this... once I get a job.. lol But I played with it in the store and thought it was very comfortable feel. Nice large screen and love the apps available. I was surprised that they have so many available, apparently 10k and 95% of them are free from what I've been told. I just hope I wont miss my keyboard.

[suzannaski]

I've had the phone about 24 hrs, and so far so good. The hang-up with my face problem that I had with the Vogue is gone, but I still accidentally hi tthe keys. Salesguy said there was some sensor that detecs when the phone is against your face to stop those problems, but either the sensor didn't take into consideration that skin gets cold in cold weather, or its not working.
It's out of the box configuration is way better than all of the cooking I had done on my vogue.
It is FAST! as long as you have signal, that is. It also buzzes without turning on completely when you get a text.
I was worried about the touchscreen keyboard, because that was always a PIA for me, but the new touch keyboard is bigger, and by rotating the phone to landscape, the keys get even bigger. Again, great for cold weather texting!
The downside is that I have to figure out how to customize. Not to the extent that I needed before, but I am an artist and I like to have my own background, font and clock. I miss the HTCcustomizer. (Anyone know of the Hero/droid equivalent?)

Oh, one other thing- I could only get the usb mount to work with vista, and had to resort to taking out the sd card and putting it in my XP laptop directly to move things from pc to phone. Any thoughts why? I did restart to make sure all was well. Had to download the htc sync from their website because phone-> pc wasn't working.

[ObsoleteE]

Originally Posted by suzannaski

I've had the phone about 24 hrs, and so far so good. The hang-up with my face problem that I had with the Vogue is gone, but I still accidentally hi tthe keys. Salesguy said there was some sensor that detecs when the phone is against your face to stop those problems, but either the sensor didn't take into consideration that skin gets cold in cold weather, or its not working.
It's out of the box configuration is way better than all of the cooking I had done on my vogue.
It is FAST! as long as you have signal, that is. It also buzzes without turning on completely when you get a text.
I was worried about the touchscreen keyboard, because that was always a PIA for me, but the new touch keyboard is bigger, and by rotating the phone to landscape, the keys get even bigger. Again, great for cold weather texting!
The downside is that I have to figure out how to customize. Not to the extent that I needed before, but I am an artist and I like to have my own background, font and clock. I miss the HTCcustomizer. (Anyone know of the Hero/droid equivalent?)

Oh, one other thing- I could only get the usb mount to work with vista, and had to resort to taking out the sd card and putting it in my XP laptop directly to move things from pc to phone. Any thoughts why? I did restart to make sure all was well. Had to download the htc sync from their website because phone-> pc wasn't working.

Download HTC sync.
http://www.htc.com/www/support.aspx

[suzannaski]

I did. I stated that. But thanks anyway.

[snowplow54]

great reviews guys, i have a couple questions about this phone before i commit to buy it though.
1) how is the flash on it? how does it perform, and what will it and won't it play? would i be able to watch the live feed of sunday night football on nfl.com?

2) along those same lines, how well does the NFL mobile app work? as compared to the WM one.

3) is there any way to use it as a wifi router yet? I think PDAnet works for this, but would that allow me to connect to something like and ipod touch or just the computer i have the program on.

4) I would be buying this while still under contract, so i would be paying about $300-350. do you think it is worth that price, or i should just stick with my diamond and wait it out?

[mrzieman]

Originally Posted by snowplow54

great reviews guys, i have a couple questions about this phone before i commit to buy it though.
1) how is the flash on it? how does it perform, and what will it and won't it play? would i be able to watch the live feed of sunday night football on nfl.com?

2) along those same lines, how well does the NFL mobile app work? as compared to the WM one.

3) is there any way to use it as a wifi router yet? I think PDAnet works for this, but would that allow me to connect to something like and ipod touch or just the computer i have the program on.

4) I would be buying this while still under contract, so i would be paying about $300-350. do you think it is worth that price, or i should just stick with my diamond and wait it out?

1) Flash is pretty good, but not infallible. I'd give it a 7.5/10 in terms of what it can load and the overall speed. It takes a while to load in some cases, but most of the stuff I've thrown at it can handle eventually. If I were to compare it to skyfire coming from WM, I'd say perhaps a little slower, about the same in supported content, but much better resolution.

2) NFL mobile app works great on the whole. It's about the same as the WM one in terms of functionality, but a bit more finger friendly and it includes a convenient widget for the desktop. I've found it can be a little flaky at times, as I've encountered a force close once or twice and sometimes it gets kind of choppy - but that's about the same experience I had with the WM version. Overall I like it more than WinMo's contribution, if nothing else, just for the finger friendliness.

3) I don't believe there is any app yet which will work as easily and hassle free as Wifi-Internet Sharing was on WM. Even PDANet can't match the ease of that program. That is the lone feature of my TP I am missing with the Hero.

4) I bought my hero new off contract on eBay for just over 350 after shipping and it has exceeded my expectations and has been worth every penny. I hated a lot about my touch pro, from the lag of WinMo to the piss poor build quality and the Hero has corrected every beef I had with my previous smartphone. The UI is zippy, the build quality is extremely solid, the capacitive touchscreen is a joy to use, the 3.5mm headphone jack and multimedia capabilities are surprisingly good, and did I mention - a seemingly limitless app store with mostly everything for free. The added value of the free apps alone is amazing. If you like your Diamond a lot (which I also owned prior to the TP and can say it was an infinitely better device) and don't have problems with WinMo, the Hero experience is roughly similar to the Diamond (as you don't have a physical keyboard), except everything is smoother, faster, more finger friendly, and just a bit sleeker. If you are close to upgrading and can wait it out, Sprint's bound to have a 2.0 Android device with a Snapdragon processor by Q1 of 2010, but if you are having a miserable experience with your WinMo device as I was and still have lots of time left in your contract (1 year+), I think the upgrade would be totally worth it.

I hope that helps.

[snowplow54]

Originally Posted by mrzieman

1) Flash is pretty good, but not infallible. I'd give it a 7.5/10 in terms of what it can load and the overall speed. It takes a while to load in some cases, but most of the stuff I've thrown at it can handle eventually. If I were to compare it to skyfire coming from WM, I'd say perhaps a little slower, about the same in supported content, but much better resolution.

2) NFL mobile app works great on the whole. It's about the same as the WM one in terms of functionality, but a bit more finger friendly and it includes a convenient widget for the desktop. I've found it can be a little flaky at times, as I've encountered a force close once or twice and sometimes it gets kind of choppy - but that's about the same experience I had with the WM version. Overall I like it more than WinMo's contribution, if nothing else, just for the finger friendliness.

3) I don't believe there is any app yet which will work as easily and hassle free as Wifi-Internet Sharing was on WM. Even PDANet can't match the ease of that program. That is the lone feature of my TP I am missing with the Hero.

4) I bought my hero new off contract on eBay for just over 350 after shipping and it has exceeded my expectations and has been worth every penny. I hated a lot about my touch pro, from the lag of WinMo to the piss poor build quality and the Hero has corrected every beef I had with my previous smartphone. The UI is zippy, the build quality is extremely solid, the capacitive touchscreen is a joy to use, the 3.5mm headphone jack and multimedia capabilities are surprisingly good, and did I mention - a seemingly limitless app store with mostly everything for free. The added value of the free apps alone is amazing. If you like your Diamond a lot (which I also owned prior to the TP and can say it was an infinitely better device) and don't have problems with WinMo, the Hero experience is roughly similar to the Diamond (as you don't have a physical keyboard), except everything is smoother, faster, more finger friendly, and just a bit sleeker. If you are close to upgrading and can wait it out, Sprint's bound to have a 2.0 Android device with a Snapdragon processor by Q1 of 2010, but if you are having a miserable experience with your WinMo device as I was and still have lots of time left in your contract (1 year+), I think the upgrade would be totally worth it.

I hope that helps.

Thanks for the response, I think based on this I might as well wait until my contract is up. It ends this April, so hopefully i'll be able to hold out. I really have no real gripes with my diamond. I am just having a case of phone envy. I guess by time my contract is up they'll have the snapdragon processors, wifi internet sharing, a slingplayer app, and maybe even a flash update as well.

[thacounty]

Originally Posted by snowplow54

great reviews guys, i have a couple questions about this phone before i commit to buy it though.
1) how is the flash on it? how does it perform, and what will it and won't it play? would i be able to watch the live feed of sunday night football on nfl.com?

2) along those same lines, how well does the NFL mobile app work? as compared to the WM one.

3) is there any way to use it as a wifi router yet? I think PDAnet works for this, but would that allow me to connect to something like and ipod touch or just the computer i have the program on.

4) I would be buying this while still under contract, so i would be paying about $300-350. do you think it is worth that price, or i should just stick with my diamond and wait it out?

Flash is not perfect, works on youtube and most embeds, but when it comes to higher end videos with I guess flash 9 and 10 it doesn't work.

I like NFL mobile app it is intuitive but I never tried it on WM. Sorry. It does have gameday radio and live action so it is good for me.

No wifi router until rooted. Once it is rooted this will be an option. Only can connect to computer with phone, but you could then set up PC as router if you wanted to with PDANet

I would give 300 for the phone because I love having the latest tech. See what you can sell Diamond from and you can subtract that from the price. So you'd probably be closer to 150-200. I upgraded and was in that price range, and I will not be looking back!

[pegs]

BB then new BB then HTC Touch pro. then went back to BB then got a HERO. Wife has a LG lotus.

This phone is more that I would have ever believed it could be. I had gotten accustomed to the hype and BS associated with the release of a new phone. But this thing freakin rocks. No one can really encompass what this phone is.... because it can be 1000 different phones depending on how you set it up. I have had it for 3 days and am still coming across "WOW" features.

The only problem I have had is the screen keyboard. I think it must be heat sensitive because you can't use a pencil or other inanimate object to click the keyboard.

The problem is... I have big fingers and you can't use landscape in every application... so for those I can't use landscape... I have a really difficult time trying to type on the much smaller portrait screen LOTS of mistakes.... buy I'm hoping there is a learning curve here and I'm at the beginning of it.

I would guess anyone with long fingernails would have a difficult time as well. I doubt finger nails will work either. But other than that.... this phone absolutely rocks.

[thacounty]

Originally Posted by pegs

BB then new BB then HTC Touch pro. then went back to BB then got a HERO. Wife has a LG lotus.

This phone is more that I would have ever believed it could be. I had gotten accustomed to the hype and BS associated with the release of a new phone. But this thing freakin rocks. No one can really encompass what this phone is.... because it can be 1000 different phones depending on how you set it up. I have had it for 3 days and am still coming across "WOW" features.

The only problem I have had is the screen keyboard. I think it must be heat sensitive because you can't use a pencil or other inanimate object to click the keyboard.

The problem is... I have big fingers and you can't use landscape in every application... so for those I can't use landscape... I have a really difficult time trying to type on the much smaller portrait screen LOTS of mistakes.... buy I'm hoping there is a learning curve here and I'm at the beginning of it.

I would guess anyone with long fingernails would have a difficult time as well. I doubt finger nails will work either. But other than that.... this phone absolutely rocks.

Screen is capacitive not resistive. You must make a ground which a pencil or stylus or your fingernail won't do. You can, however, buy a stylus that is compatible with capacitive screens. They are much more responsive, and this is the only drawback. I don't think its a big deal but some people do.