First impression of HTC Hero from an iPhone user
The size of iPhone is a slightly bigger than HTC Hero and it is also a little bit heavier. But both of iPhone and HTC hero are comfortable to hold in my hand.
Trackball of HTC Hero is also a breathing light, which will start to flash when there is new email, incoming call or SMS. This is quite cool as iPhone only has a home button. The Trackball of HTC Hero is also easy to use though I am only used to navigate around the home menu.
The small LED on the right side of HTC Hero’s speaker will become orange during charging and turn green when battery is full.
The speaker of HTC Hero is very excellent and the volume of ringtone can be set pretty loud. On the other hand, it is difficult to hear the ringtone of iPhone, if I put it in my handbag. The speaker of HTC Hero is also much clear than iPhone so that I don’t need to put the handset to my ear as close as possible.
The new SMS will be scrolling on the status bar of HTC Hero and the its SMS widget is easy to use and looks wonderful.
The local weather displayed on HTC Hero is automatic retrieved according to the GPS data, which is convenient.
Applications for HTC Hero look a little bit unprofessional. Many software in Android Market have names like “aTextReader”, which sounds like just alpha versions. On the contrary, most software in iPhone app store seem to be much mature. Hope the Android Market will improve in the future.
The external memory management of HTC Hero looks quite similar to Symbian UIQ, but much user friendly. And iPhone users have to use iTunes to transfer files with PC.
The contact searching feature of iPhone is much better than HTC Hero. However, there was also long period of development for iPhone to has today’s new firmware.
Since iPhone has built-in 3D accelerator hardware, it is far more better for games than HTC Hero.
HTC has replaceable battery, which is more reasonable than iPhone.
The virtual keyboard of HTC Hero has no big difference comparing with iPhone. The change to make mistake during typing is pretty low. A real problem of HTC Hero is that edge of its touchscreen is not sensitive enough.
Thank you for that review, I found it really useful and have just ordered my upgrade to HTC Hero.
But I think there are better choices of Android smartphones on market now.
I just purchased the new HCT hero, and so far I love it. The only problem I have is.. that I can not use Skype on it. I try to download Skype for mobile and didn’t work.. I downloaded http://www.Fring.com and tried logging in to Skype through it but it didn’t work either.. I did a lot of research and nothing seems to work. But besides that the HTC is really nice.. loving it!
Hello, its me again.. It works! I installed Fring and at first I didn’t work.. then when I was about to uninstall it, I decided to try one more time and it worked!! I made some phone calls already from Skype through Fring!!
I have a HTC hero on three and my sister got it on Orange at the same time. My phone works mush better being on three. Skype is really easy for me to use, and my internet is much faster. Although both phones have a small technical hitches i would definatly advice going through three for this phone. They have the better netwrok to support it, and the dedicated skype app is worth it!!!!