HTC Hero

[TeaLeaf]

Cupcake is out for download.

...and after some last minute Q&As yesterday with SMilo I'm ordering my HTC Hero today.  Any recommendations for a nice case?  They all look a bit mangy at the moment.  Saw the silicone one, but think an all around case might be preferable maybe.

TL.

[TeaLeaf]

Decided in the end to go for a Vodaphoen package for Ã,£17.50 per month which includes unlimited data.  The sales advisor told me the fair useage policy kicks in after 500MB and thereafter is 50p per 50MB.  I found that last bit quite tricky to believe and found this one the web:

http://online.vodafone.co.uk/dispatch/Portal/appmanager/vodafone/wrp?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=template12&pageID=PTC_0068

Price Plan    Fair Usage Policy

5GB per month (UK only)
Mobile Broadband
Mobile Broadband Business
Mobile Broadband Euro Travel
Mobile Broadband Travel
Mobile Connect Unlimited
Data Unlimited
Mobile Internet 5GB
   
or
Mobile Broadband 30 day 1GB    1GB per month (UK only)
Mobile Broadband 30 day 3GB    3GB per month (UK only)
Mobile Broadband 24    500MB per 24 hour session (UK only)
Mobile Broadband 10GB    10GB per month (UK only)
Mobile Broadband 20GB    20GB per month (UK only)
Vodafone Connect Abroad    50MB per 24 hour session (in selected countries only)

The data volumes include both downloaded and uploaded data. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes (MB).

[delanvital]

Hm, the plan I will be getting over here is unlimited (well 10GB/month under their fair usage clause, above that they reserve the right to limit the speed but won't charge more) for Ã,£17. I will stick with that if it tethering works, otherwise I can pay half and get a 100MB monthly cap with a nasty price pr. MB after that.

[OldBloke]

Quick update, we have a patch or two coming as well.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/18/htc.confirms.hero.update/

A short demo of the new lag reduced ROM.

[delanvital]

A short demo of the new lag reduced ROM.

Wow. And that was even straight after a boot, it seems.

[TeaLeaf]

Looking forward to mine arriving tomorrow!

[smilodon]

Video of a pre release of the ROM update arriving soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYV9NNoI8Hc

[TeaLeaf]

Just got my PAC number, so should be catching a new connection this coming week.

Very impressed with the phone so far.

[TeaLeaf]

Grr, PAC number did not arrive, so I'm still doing things very very slowly over GPRS and limiting what I do.

Had my first 'oooh' moment today when the contacts I had plugged in online were 'pushed' out to my mobile.  Very nice synching.

Eventually ordered the SIM 10 contract from 3.

Sim 10

    * Free Skype-to-Skype calls and messages
    * Unlimited Texts
    * 100 Minutes
    * Unlimited 3-3 Minutes
    * Free Windows Live Messenger
    * Free voicemail
     plus the Unlimited Data addon which is Ã,£5 per month.

Total cost Ã,£15 per month.

Looked at Orange but they could not show me a map showing nationwide HSDPA coverage or even 3G coverage, they only do it by postcode (up to 3 at a time) and don;t give you a map, just a summary reply like "Good".  So Orange was not an option.

Vodaphone fell by the wayside when I looked at coverage and for my location on the coverage map I was sat on a small island of only "average" connectivity surrounded by a large sea of excellently connected area.  I want it to work well at home too!  

Looked at O2 and 3 coverage and both are pretty good, 3's in particular was good int he areas I might want to use it and they fall back to 2G like other networks in non-3G areas.  O2's coverage is less than 3's though.  

That pretty much put the choice as 3 when combined with the fact that it was the cheapest for what I wanted too.  What really swung it for me was the coverage though.  3 have the most HSDPA coverage of the networks and the increased areas covered over the next 2 years (shown in yearly increments) was immense.  And, at the end of the day it is a one month contract so if it is no good then I can always bail in 30 days to a different provider.

[Bob]

I've had my Hero for almost a week now, and I am in no way disappointed. I have intended to write a bit longer post about my thoughts and experiences this far - just havent' had the time yet. Expect this to come All-Of-A-Sudden(TM)

I've now had my Hero for two weeks and a half, so it's about time for that longer post I guess :flirty:

Let's start with the negative first. Yes there are some, but nothing will ever be perfect, so that shouldn't be a surprise.

From time to time I do experience some interface lag. This is however not even close to how bad some reviews has made it look. It is there is you look hard for it, but it hasn't bothered me at all, so it's a minor issue. And also, this is something that will be fixed in the upgrade that is just around the corner, so even less reason to worry about it.

Multitasking is for most parts a major advantage, and I wouldn't be without it for the world. However, it does also come with a couple of down sides: as more applications are left open in the background, more memory is occupied (which I guess in some way also contributes to the first issue about lag). Of course, keeping applications open in the background is the whole point with multitasking, so this issue I actually think is more of a developer issue: more people that create Android applications should include an exit button!

The way it works today, when you click the home button or back button, you leave the program but it keeps living in the background. In many cases this is what you want, but there are also lots of apps where this isn't needed. Of course there are also apps that fix this for you (I highly recommend Task Panel, a brilliant task manager that lets you kill anything you need (just be sure not to kill the Alarm application if you want to wake up the next morning, I learned that the hard way :narnar:), you can set up scheduled clean-ups, and it's brilliantly easy to use). However, if more of the developers added a real exit button to their menu, this would make things much easier. However, as the already mentioned upgrade is to fix the lag issue, I wouldn't be surprised if something also is done in general with memory management and garbage collection.


That was really all of the "negative" I had to add, so now on to all the good stuff. I think I'll try to stick to bullet points, to avoid making it too long :flirty:

• HTC's revamp of the Android UI is just beautiful. The Touch Flo, together with some really nice widgets makes it a pleasant view.
• The ability you have to customize all the screens (not to mention different scene setups, although I haven't found the need for that yet) to fit your particular needs and desires feels really liberating.


• The way both Gmail and Google calendar works out of the box is simply genius (but anything else would be kinda ridiculous, as Android is a Google product).
• The nice program (MyPhoneExplorer) I've been using my old Sony Ericsson supports synchronizing of contacts with Google contacts so getting all my existing contacts over there - which also makes 'em available on the Hero (you can choose this by the way, if you do not want to) - was easy as pie.
  
• Using all the free available calendars for Google calendar, such as Norwegian Holidays and Contact's birthdays, I've got everything I need added to my standard calendar
  
• I have always had phones with a physical keyboard, so I was not 100% sure how it would work without one. But the on-screen key-board that shipps with the Hero is just brilliant, nothing less. With a smart word prediction/suggestion system typing on the full QWERTY-keyboard goes really fast, and the tactile feedback you get from every key stroke makes it even better. And if you for instance is walking hand have to write in portrait mode with just one hand, the standard mobile phone keyboard with T9 is not far away.
• The included browser works really nice (and with the included Flash support on the Hero, it is really smooth), especially with the way it utilizes multi-touch zoom for browsing, as well as the support for multiple windows. I have however found Opera Mini to work better when I'm not on a WiFi network
• Google maps together with the built-in GPS and compass is just sweet!
• Android Market is a place full of lots of exiting applications. However, as with the iPhone, you are not forced to stick to what Android offers if you do not want to. Simply enable applications from "unofficial" sources, and you can put anything on it. I have never used an iPhone or AppStore so I cannot tell how the applications are compared to there, but I have yet to think of an application I could find useful and not find it! Here's a short list of some of the ones I've really found enjoyable:
• Task Panel: already mentioned, but a great tool for gaining full control over what is running on your phone.
• Wikitude: an extremely cool application using Augmented Reality to help you find what you're looking for when you're out in the real world.
  
• Geobeagle: a very nice app to use if you fancy [thread=28659]Geocaching[/thread].
  
• Google's Sky Map: have you ever wondered what planet or star constellation you're looking at, or do you just enjoy looking out on the universe? Well, then this is the answer for you.
• Wifi Analyzer: great tool for helping you get the optimal configuration of your own wireless network.
• gStrings: you playing any kind of string instrument? Here is the tuner for you!
• And of course there is plenty of the other "standard" applications like notes, classical games, shopping list, conversion, budget, flash light, etc etc. And of course, for those that find fart applications important, you get those as well...

I've probably also forgotten quite some things, but as you most likely can understand, I am more than happy about this purchase! And when my work covers my phone bill, I don't have to worry about the subscription fees and data rates either :flirty:

[suicidal_monkey]

Thanks for the review! Quite tempted :-) just one or two questions...

Do you use it as an mp3 player much and does it have a decent sorting, playback, 3.5mm socket?

Is the usb transfer speed any good (ipod like for example?) - takes AGES to put music on my n95's 8gb mem... At least i could remove the flash card and use a reader with my old sony!

Weird one: if it's in 'silent' mode and you're listening to music on the headphones and someone rings does it ring in the headphones. My n95 just fades the music out then in again with silence inbetween.

...Think i'm somewhere between the hero, iphone, and the new sony which has some sort of ps3 compatibility :-D thanks again for the review!

[smilodon]

Do you use it as an mp3 player much and does it have a decent sorting, playback, 3.5mm socket?

Yes I use it all the time to play music. It has the same functions as the ipod i.e. shuffle, playlists, albums, artists, composers, songs etc and does have a 3.5mm headphone jack. You can also delete a song directly from the phone.

Is the usb transfer speed any good (ipod like for example?) - takes AGES to put music on my n95's 8gb mem... At least i could remove the flash card and use a reader with my old sony!

It uses USB 2.0 which seems fast enough. It's hard to compare with Apple but I've not noticed one being any slower than the other. The Hero uses a simple drag and drop process for adding music. You mount the SD card and simply drag over the mp3's to the card in Windows. I only did this once when I added all my music and so it took quite a long time. You can always remove the SD card and shove it in a USB reader if you want. However the SD card slot is under the battery cover so I'd not make a habit of doing it as you might wear out the battery cover lugs? The nice thing is that it doesn't enforce any DRM. The bad thing is that anything you bought through iTunes won't play on it.

Weird one: if it's in 'silent' mode and you're listening to music on the headphones and someone rings does it ring in the headphones. My n95 just fades the music out then in again with silence inbetween.

Yes it fades the track, flashes the trackball, vibrates (i you have that on) and you get a ring tone in the headphones. The Hero also wakes up the screen and shows you the incoming call with accept or reject buttons. As soon as the call is over or you reject it the screen fades out and the music track picks up from where ever you were interrupted. If the music screen was active when the call came in i.e. you were seeing the album art, it works the same by going to the call and then back to the album screen when you're done.

...Think i'm somewhere between the hero, iphone, and the new sony which has some sort of ps3 compatibility :-D thanks again for the review!

Give me a chance and I'm going to write a waffle about the Hero now I've been using it for a month or two. I'll try to do that tonight.

[suicidal_monkey]

Thanks for the reply! All sounding about right! :-) My better half won an ipod nano and it's perhaps 10x faster, maybe 20x or more, than my n95 8gb transfer over usb!

Have you used something to sync music/playlists between hero-pc aka ipod and itunes? I have somewhere over 80gb of mp3 now :-S

I think i'm going to wait and see how the sony anio looks as it might justify my ps3 purchase further until gt5 comes out ;-) plus i have lots of bits from other sonyE phones. Of course having the hero might be better for making me try out some app development, ...which could be good if I do apply for a job with google! :-D

[Bob]

Of course having the hero might be better for making me try out some app development

Definitely a very good point if you are the slightest interested in programming.

I've just installed the Android SDK and Eclipse plug-in, and have run through the first basic tutorials. I haven't totally grasped the whole philosophy and workings of the Android "way", but I've got the basic concepts - and I must say it at first glance looks very smart and well made. And it is really easy setting up what you need and getting started.

I'm on a couple weeks vacation right now, but I'm really looking forward to when I get back home and can spend some more time diving into the details. Already have a couple of ideas for my first Android apps ready

[delanvital]

Definitely a very good point if you are the slightest interested in programming.

I've just installed the Android SDK and Eclipse plug-in, and have run through the first basic tutorials. I haven't totally grasped the whole philosophy and workings of the Android "way", but I've got the basic concepts - and I must say it at first glance looks very smart and well made. And it is really easy setting up what you need and getting started.

Exactly the same thing I have done, I to feel I have not quite grasped the overall layout of the various elements and layers. I have also done the tutorials and done a couple of programs (which I just ran in the emulator with same Android version).

Amazing how quickly you can make a program for the phone!

Edit: Have some nice hols mate!

Edit2: Btw, this is a great application