They’re out for the general public today. I’m stuck in a Sprint contract for a while but want to upgrade my dying cell for a smartphone. The iPhone seems to be the most popular but I don’t want to pay $129/mo for service and I’d have to pay a contract termination fee anyway. The Pre looked interesting but it didn’t feel solidly built and the number of cracked screens popping up made me think twice.
So did anyone rush right out and pick up the HTC Hero for Sprint? Any opinions on this phone, or on Android phones in general?
I really like my G1 from T Mobile, it was the first Android phone. I like the real keyboard it has but not everyone needs that. I also like the fact that Android will run on many phones so I can switch phones and keep the OS. I read an article last week that says Android will be very popular soon now that multiple companies have Android phones.
Probably the best source for this question in particular will be the Sprint Users forum where the hot topic at the moment is the Hero. There’s a forum dedicated to the Android based phones and there’s a lot of people there who are phone addicts and really know their stuff. A good number of phone developers who have good information on what it’s like to develop for these phones(where the iPhone really shines is the apps) and have probably beat you to any question you can think of. I’ve used them as a resource when figuring out what phones to get for the past five years or so and it’s worked out great, assuming you want to stay with Sprint.
I’m in the Isle of Man. I got an HTC Hero the other day…
On the whole I like it. It’s easy to use (dismissing an alarm or answering a call requires a swipe of the screen). It has an app store. It has a compass and an accelerometer (for when someone decides to combine the two in an augmented-reality app). It’s pretty (both software and hardware).
But the downsides are…
It can be a tad slow doing certain things (like loading a web page)
You can’t install stuff on the SD card and the memory is very small.
Android is based on Linux so it’s multitasking - the iPhone is not. Some people “root” their phone which means they get access to the OS so they can make changes.
I looked at it at the store today.
Nice phone. BBC has a phone review and rated it second behind the iPhone. Said it had some features that are better than the iPhone. Given that the iPhone has a 2 yr head start, that seems like good news. I am seriously considering it. I already have a Pre-and I like it. It has held together well for me. The Hero would be for my wife. Whether she is interested in such a full-featured phone is the question. Hope so.
Unless you jailbreak your iPhone you can’t run more than one app at a time, aside from what Apple has already setup; checking for mail, etc.
What they did add was support for server applications sending notifications to the phone and the target application. So you can make the phone play a sound, display an alert, or change the badge of your app’s icon. You can also pass information along to the app if the user chooses to launch the app as a result of the notification.
A friend was just in my office showing off his new Hero, so far he likes it. Had the android phones been available when I was ready to buy, I probably would have gone for one instead of an iPhone.
my wife went by the Sprint store today to try it. No go. She wasn’t comfortable with the soft keyboard and isn’t patient with technology. We are going to wait for the Samsung Moment. It has both a hard and soft keyboard.
I have a G1. It both kinds of keyboards. I’ve learned the on screen keyboard but even after practice I flip open the hardware keyboard for anything longer than a word or two. It’s much easier.
Thanks for the input. I went to the Sprint store yesterday to play with one. They didn’t have it hooked up to wifi for some reason so I couldn’t test out internet capabilities but I liked the feel of it, the screen was bright and easily readable and the sound quality was good when I made a phone call. The trackball was a surprise – I’m used to taking my current flip phone and stuffing it into my pocket. I wonder how the trackball (and the screen for that matter) would handle that kind of abuse. Getting a case or a skin would make it a bit large for pocket storage, but that holds true for just about any smartphone out there I suppose.
So Android and the Hero are supposed to play nice with Google apps… Anybody got stories to tell about how well it works? Gmail and the Google calendar are good buddies of mine. I’ve read some reviews that say you can actually work with them in offline mode on Android. Any personal anecdotes about how well it works?
I’ve had two phones with hardware keyboards, and I currently have two devices (one phone one mp3 player) with ‘soft’ keyboards.
The two hard-keyboard phones were fat and a bit less ‘robust’ thanks to the keyboards. I ended up hardly ever using the keyboards. When I did I found them difficult to use because the keys are comparatively tiny and the potential to press the wrong key is quite large. Also the fact they are physical keys that require some pressure to press - my fingers would spread out a bit and thus press the keys either side.
The soft keyboards on the other hand require almost no pressure. The keys are bigger. you get a very useful offset graphic showing you that you’ve successfully pressed the right key. They don’t require any extra mechanics or hardware to make the phone bulky.
Yes I much prefer soft-keyboards (now that I don’t need a stylus to use them!!!)
Hard - XDA Exec (HTC), HTC Touch Pro.
Soft - ipod touch 32gb (2nd gen), HTC Hero.
ETA: The Hero vibrates when a key is pressed - which is a very nice and useful bit of feedback to let you know you’ve pressed a key.
My only (slight) criticism of the hero - is that navigation requires a combination of screen and hard-key pressing. For example to switch emails accounts or refresh the current account I need to press the ‘menu’ key which is a hard key. But that’s hardly worth complaining about.