Related Sections: Cellphones Reviews
Why you want a Sprint Hero instead of an iPhone
Sprint subscribers/Apple haters, rejoice. Your Hero, literally and figuratively, has — or will — arrive Oct. 11. It's not perfect, but, as modern interpretations of Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Wolverine, et al. have lately illustrated, what hero is? It's damned close.
I got my hands on a slightly flawed yet gallant Hero, and what follows are my somewhat worshipful opinions.
 |  |
|
Hero acts and feels like a slightly smaller multitasking version of the iPhone. Hero's sensitive touch and smooth finger scrolling is the best I've tried since the iPhone. It's got multi-touch capabilities, albeit a little herky-jerky ones, and it offers MS Outlook contact and calendar sync. It does most everything the iPhone does and more, even if Apple has 10 times the apps Android has… at the moment. And the Hero's looks are sophisticated: sleek and cool, admired by men, wanted by women.
Android, Plus
Like Motorola on the CLIQ, HTC has used Android as a jumping-off point for creating a broader, more flexible, functional and customizable user interface called HTC Sense. For one thing, you get seven sliding home screens that can display a lot of open apps. Loquaciousness on this topic is restricted by needed brevity, but suffice it to say you'll bask in the luxury of Hero's myriad customizable and operational abilities.
There are also a number of "duh" improvements in some basic apps. For instance, on the home screen is a huge digital clock along with the date and the current weather conditions. Tapping the time takes you to the clock/alarm settings; tapping the weather takes you to a full forecast.
HTC has cleverly combined the phone touch dial pad with your contact list. You can easily toggle from the scrollable list to the dialpad and back again on a single screen, handy when you mistakenly thought you had someone's number. Hero's music player improves, in some ways, on the iPhone's iPod. For instance, you can finger swipe though your music queue forward or back via album covers without leaving song info/touch control screen, while the current song plays on.
Web pages always seem to fit within the screen — and if you pinch-in to zoom, the text reflows again, even if you rotate the Hero from portrait to landscape. And obviously Sprint's superior and swift EV-DO 3G network leaves AT&T's sputtering in its supersonic wake.
The Bad News
Hero does have some feet of clay. It's often slow to snap into action — you touch a function and… you wait. Not long, a second, maybe, but longer than you're used to or you'd expect, long enough to think the touch didn't register, prompting you to impatiently touch again.
Its 5MP camera sounds copious, but pictures are often fuzzy in parts and, with no flash, indoor pictures are almost impossible to snap without shutter motion blur.
The thin keys on the portrait QWERTY, even with haptic feedback, result in recurrent typos.
Hero's vocal qualities are barely average, but then so are iPhone's.
It's got lousy battery life — rated at for hours talk. iPhone veterans know talk time is only a clue to how many times you'll have to recharge during the course of the day. Like the iPhone, which has five hours of talk time, your constant use of your Hero will drain its power much quicker.
For technophobes, Hero's Android-plus UI is a little unfinished around the edges. For instance, when you plug in the USB jack, you then have to tell the phone that you want to "mount" the SD card to transfer and sync instead of the so-called smartphone just knowing or at least prompting you.
Instead of hitting any front-panel control button to wake the sleeping Hero, only the "End" key will work. Smartphone novices will encounter a number of annoying little "How do I do this?" situations.
And Android really, really, REALLY needs an iTunes-like management/syncing program. Really.
But right now, this is Sprint's only Android Hero, and the sum of its abilities far outweigh its occasional encounters with Kryptonite.
By Neotyguy at 6:38 PM ON 09/30/09
Looks good, but an iPhone killer? This thing will kill the iPhone as much as the Zune will kill the iPod... Almost nothing...
By Captnzro at 8:09 PM ON 09/30/09
Not a killer by any means but at least some sort of competition for us people who dont use AT&T
By Theocrat at 8:43 PM ON 09/30/09
I'm interested in this phone. Does it have a slide out QWERTY Keyboard? I don't do a lot with my HTC Touch but with Sprints new data plan at $69 it might be worth while.
By MDR52 at 9:12 PM ON 09/30/09
No slide out QWERTY... InstictQ should fill that customer need soon with sprint.
By Edaze55 at 11:46 PM ON 09/30/09
Which version was the firmware? 1.5 or 1.6? 1.6 Should speed it up a bit.
Its believed the camera blur may be fixable with an update.
Battery life does suck with a 1500 mAh batttery, but at least one will have the option of larger capaicty batteries later. 2700 mAh would go a long way to improving battery life, if you dont mind the added bulk.
By Boomer at 12:48 AM ON 10/01/09
i was informed that the hero from sprint would
look like the G1 with better button placement
.and no qwerty keyboard.
i mean, the rectangular shape.
By intheory at 3:00 AM ON 10/01/09
Great review and spot-on with my experience with the Hero during recent testing. After owning an iPhone for quite some time, SenseUI is noticeably less smooth/responsive than the iPhone. However, for most people coming from a BlackBerry, Palm or Windows Mobile-based device this will be a significant improvement.
The apps are similarly less polished than Apple's, but they are more practical IMHO.
iPhoneOS is a great gaming platform but Android's location-based services and super-sweet integration with Facebook/Twitter/Qik/Footprints etc. seems to deliver more useful stuff.
The device I had was running 1.5 and that was apparently the latest firmware available.
Updates should be relatively easy though and agree that things like keyboard responsiveness, battery life and UI quirks should be cleaned up. Sprint has already released what, 3 updates for the Pre's webOS? That's an encouraging sign.
By Toothpick at 6:58 AM ON 10/01/09
well just to let every one know 1.6 is going to be on the new Heros from sprint and it is way faster then this thing states
By Radia7ion at 8:07 AM ON 10/01/09
The feature which does not automatically mount your phone to your computer is BETTER, not worse. Android in general does this so that people who just want to charge their phone not access its storage from their computer, can do so without losing access to their storage from their phone.
Example. I'm running and app or game that uses SD card storage, and I plug my phone into my PC to charge...then BAM!, app or game freezes because it auto mounted to the PC.
When you plug an android phone into a Computer/device via USB, it notifies you in the notification bar, and gives you the option right up front to mount it. Its simple.
Also, it(after mounting) gives you the option to turn off USB access, so you can properly remove it from the USB connection without having to "eject" if from the computer. My car stereo has USB port and does not have an option to eject removable storage once plugged in, so it is a great option for when I want to unplug it safely.
By Mr. Gerlo at 10:25 AM ON 10/01/09
Well, looks interesting. The initial features mentioned actually are not that new. The SPB Mobile Shell for Windows Mobile actually does that!, click on the clock to see the alarm settings, even another cities time. Click on the weather widget to get a full forecast. Minus 1 point to HTC for copying that. Google android is pretty cool though, and only for test purposes I've tried it and so far looking good, so no hard feelings ;)
By virginia at 1:08 PM ON 10/01/09
this update on the android site says nothing about 1.6 improving speed of the device. get your facts straight, Toothpick.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.6-highlights.html
By tdk650 at 2:59 PM ON 10/01/09
"Why you want a Sprint Hero instead of an iPhone"
....cause its not made by apple
By bittermormon at 4:25 PM ON 10/01/09
"It's got lousy battery life — rated at for hours talk." looks like you typed that on teh hero's keyboard too.
By MM at 10:15 AM ON 10/02/09
Possibly stupid question: Is it Mac compatible? I mean, for syncing music and photos? Or can it only be plugged into a Windows machine?
By Brink at 11:10 AM ON 10/02/09
"It's got lousy battery life — rated at for hours talk." looks like you typed that on teh hero's keyboard too.
You mean "the"?
By dcomdude at 12:49 PM ON 10/02/09
@virginia: Toothpick is probably correct. There have been numerous reports of a firmware update significantly improving UI responsiveness. See this article for instance. http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/09/08/htc-hero-firmware-rescue-mission-arrives-plucks-device-from-mur/
By fola1015 at 10:47 AM ON 10/06/09
Well it was about time that Sprint gets something "better" I had Sprint for a long time and every time I want to upgrade my cell I find nothing good, all the cell with qwerty slide out KB are not compatible with Internet, meaning that you can not sign on to see your bank statement etc, and the Palmpree KB it's like the Iphone integrated (no good)
Now were's the KB in this one? no comments about that nor pics?
Oh well still waiting for At&t to finish the contract with Mac in 2010 (hate the expensive At&t)
By eaux at 8:38 PM ON 10/14/09
Killer Phone, Does everything an I phone does, and a little more. I am very pleased with this phone...
Personally I believe this is what android indended with its origional launch.
By Alizzle at 4:25 AM ON 10/21/09
"Instead of hitting any front-panel control button to wake the sleeping Hero, only the "End" key will work. Smartphone novices will encounter a number of annoying little "How do I do this?" situations."
Wrong...you can also hit the menu button to wake the phone from sleep mode. Also, the phone is very very easy user friendly.
By THE REALIST at 7:28 PM ON 01/15/10
See you have a lot of iPhone lovers, but the heroes battery isn't that bad, especially with the recent update. I've gotten at least 13 hrs of normal use a day with the hero. The iPhone isn't that great, or at least not running on the at&t network. It lacks and could use improvement where The hero doesn't and vise versa, but If you would take the qualities of both of these phones and put it Into one then you would have an unstoppable force, but as of right now the Iphone is all that at&t has holding them together. So it really boils down to what type of phone person are you.
on your cellphone!
Text DVICE to 72434
editor@dvice.com
THE REALIST:
See you have a lot of iPhone lovers, but the heroes battery isn't that bad, especially with the recent update. I've...More »