HTC Hero with Google from Sprint.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to email, video, Web, GPS, Many free apps, long battery life. Keyboard

Cons: Some lag, iTunes difficult, Track ball for camera shots difficult

The Bottom Line: 
I love this device. Everytime I pull it out people cant help but look and comment on it. Its sylish, easy to use and very reliable.

Author's Review
I have had the HTC Hero for about 3 weeks now.  I chose the HTC over the iPhone. I will break this review down into several short categories so lets get started.

Feel and build: The device looks to be about 3/8" thick about 2" wide and 4 1/4" long. Good even if you have a large hand like me. It has manual keys on the bottom front like MENU, GREEN PHONE (pick up call) RED PHONE (hang up or power) SEARCH, BACK and HOME and a NAVIGATION TRACK BALL. The back and sides of the phone are rubberized and also in the back you have the 5.0 MP Camera lens and speaker. There is a 3.5 audio jack on top left. Manual volume controls are on the left side.

Call use: Operates to my expectations and does what I want it to. Thats no surprise. What is delightful about what HTC has done is when you bring up the key pad on the screen you also get ,in the background, your most recent calls which you can just one touch on the person you choose and it initiates a call to that person.

Email & Staying in touch: This is the best part of the HTC Hero. I can access my AOL and Gmail with one simple touch. The set up is easy to complete. The Hero notifies you when new messages arrive with hatever ring tone you choose. What is also interesting about the Hero is its ability to incorporate Facebook and Twitter to your contacts and updates. I personally have Facebook but do not have time to log into the website and check all my friends and families updates. With the Hero I can just touch the information tab of for example my sister Laura in Boston and touch on "updates & events" at that point I can access my Facebook contacts and choose my sister's profile from that list. I then marry it to my HTC Hero contact info for her. Her profile picture @ Facebook will now appear on the Hero Contact tab and whatever update she may have will be displayed daily on her contact tab. I can respond to her updates and comments without having to log in all the time with usernames and passwords.



QWERT Keyboard: This is where HTC leaves the iPhone in it wake. The keyboard is well thought out for Power Users and Super Geeks alike. The reason I say this is because as you are typing not only does it give you, in advance, a selection for the word you are possibly trying to type but it also:
A. Gives you several options of words that you can touch on to insert. So if Im typing and lets say I want to type the word "technology" as soon as i hit "tec" a small bar will pop up under neath the sentence line with options like "Tech, Technical, technology" So I would just click the word I want and avoid having to type all the letters.
 B. Lets you actually add the word you are typing to the dictionary if in fact it is a word not found. So if I want to add "Technofreak" I can do so because the Hero will give me that option so in the future I can just short type and find Technofreak and not waste time typing that whole word. iPhone does not do this little trick.
C. Also power users will be delighted to see for example if you touch & hold a particular key down for a second you can access the symbols and other numerical value of that key with out having to switch to a numeric or symbol type keyboard all together which is something that I really enjoy using obviously for saving time.

Music Player. Now here the HTC Hero begins to struggle just a tad but does manage to meet my expectation despite its Achilles heal. For example if you have your music library on your PC under iTunes then you will find iTunes does not recognize the device. To remedy this you will have to use a Large mass storage device File Transfer program like Double Twist or Salling Media. Personally I use Double Twist because its a very familiar easy to use drag and drop operation. Another small negative is since this device uses primarily a SD card to store its media you will sometimes incur a 2 second lag time accessing a play list or a track. A device like a iPhone uses internal flash memory which makes its music player much quicker. But again the HTC is able to play all my music from my iTunes and does have ability to create play lists and shuffle and scroll thru all your favorite artists and you can download direct (if you choose) from the HTC using a WiFi connection with a preloaded short cut to Amazon MP3's.

Customization: The HTC Hero has 7 home screens for whatever way you want to build them. You can choose different short cuts and Android or HTC widgets to add to them, backgrounds. For example you can set a home screen for work where as maybe you want to have one touch access to email, stocks, your bank, address book etc. IF you are in weekend mode or play mode then make a screen with the music player widget, Facebook, and games and your favorite people to call. It just depends on how you wish to group each one for your particular time or event you are in. Another plus is Hero can run multiple applications and tasks simultaneously while switching back and forth thru them.

Camera & Video: Hero has a camera and video which is great. Its sporting a 5.0 mega pixel where iPhone has 3.7 mega pixel. The Palm Pre has no video. All 3 phones offer good picture quality if you are just emailing and stuff but if your are printing pics then the HTC has an advantage because of its higher Mp. A negative I have noticed is you have to push the track ball in to snap a photo. Call me clumsy or whatever but sometimes I move the device a little when trying to press the rotating track ball down causing a slightly blurred photo. So you have to be very careful taking photos or I need more practice to get used to it? I like the Hero so I will have to get used to the track ball trigger I guess.

Applications: HTC has a short cut to "Market" which offers 1000's of apps like tools, financial apps, games, themes, wall papers and most of them are free. The apps data base is getting bigger as Androids become more popular. Plus the Hero is preloaded already with Google maps, calculator, Stocks, You Tube, Facebook, Twitter (Peep) and Sprint Navigation. I downloaded a few like Bank of America one touch access, Scientific Calculator and a Metal detector.

I got to say HTC has raised the game with this technology. It runs on Android 2.0 platform and would be perfect 5 stars from me if it didnt have the slight lag you encounter using its Music Player and accessing album of media like pictures. Otherwise, outstanding device, and for me a must have.