Has the Hero lived up to the hype?

[samuraiBSD]

I think the Hero has lived up...it's noticeably faster with the OS than my G1 was with even vanilla Android, the hardware feels sleeker, the camera (IMO) is legitimately better...and I'm really enjoying the People integration and stuff...I think that even though vanilla Android is a good enough for daily use, the Sense UI just pulls it all together into a sexy, functional and unique package that makes iPhoneOS look antiquated by comparison...I honestly think the Hero is where it's at right now. Let's hope some of the other phones coming out implement Android quite as well.

[streetdaddy]

I'm reserving my final judgement until I've had time to root it and try out some of the performance improvements, because at the moment I have to Taskiller everything every few hours because apps running in the background make it lag terribly...

But lag aside, functionally it's fkg fantastic imho... The integration with social networks, fast browser and notification system blows my mind, i've never had a phone that pulls everything together so well. It is my first touch phone tho...

That said, for the average user the lag issue is a major FAIL - 99.9% of android device consumers are not going to, let alone want to, understand the why's and how's of rooting the phone to improve performance...

[emotionalsense]

Thanks for the reply.

I agree that once donut and beyond start rolling out, the usefulness of hero will diminish. I just wished that this is how stock android looked and felt.


The sms widget is cool. I wish that mail widget would work with gmail, it sucks that its only for pop/imap/exhange accounts.

Are there no widgets in the market that replicate that functionality? Have you tried running a hero build lately?

I think that if you upgraded from the G1, it is a great choice.
I have read somewhere that the G1's final big OTA update was (1.5 aka cupcake) Unfortunately, the other updates coming soon to android specific phones such as Donut (or 2.0) will require a lot of internal flash memory which the G1 lacks a lot of.

The magic on the other hand...I seriously believe there is not much of a difference, except the hero has a better camera and a 3.5 mill jack. I even heard that HTC will offer an upgrade to the Magic users to have the HTC Sense run on them. Of course however, In the US it wouldn't matter since the Mytouch 3G is a "With google" brand and will not get the upgrade at all. Though it wouldn't matter if you rooted it and ran the a Sense ROM to it.

At this point I honestly believe that the Hero is good to the point where I do not have to root it just to make it a better phone than itself. Im completely fine with it and find most of its widgets useful.

[bjb_nyj101]

I have read somewhere that the G1's final big OTA update was (1.5 aka cupcake) Unfortunately, the other updates coming soon to android specific phones such as Donut (or 2.0) will require a lot of internal flash memory which the G1 lacks a lot of.

An official donut release is pretty far away from being finished, and even further away is an OTA release by the carriers.

Also, according to T-Mobile,

"We plan to continue working with Google to introduce future software updates to the T-Mobile G1. Reports to the contrary are inaccurate."

Who knows, only time will tell. I can only speak for myself, and as I have said, I have gotten no more productive using Hero, nor have I enjoyed using my phone any more than I already did.

[emotionalsense]

An official donut release is pretty far away from being finished, and even further away is an OTA release by the carriers.

Also, according to T-Mobile,


Who knows, only time will tell. I can only speak for myself, and as I have said, I have gotten no more productive using Hero, nor have I enjoyed using my phone any more than I already did.

Opinion respected. You know the G1 is an awesome device and I sometimes question myself, "Was this upgrade really worth it". But one of the main reasons I chose to buy the Hero was of the design and looks. I wanted a slimmer device and such, but to some others, looks don't really matter its about the hardware and what not. I also thought that the 3.5 jack was needed since I am a heavy user of my phone and I love to use earphones when watching youtube or listening to music. Since I am a heavy user, the battery dies fairly quick and I find it annoying that I cant recharge and listen to music through earphones at the same time. I know this isn't really worth to bitch about, but to me, I think its a necessity. The battery actually is decent which is also a reason why I intended to upgrade. With endless listening to music the phone lived up for 8 hours while my G1 would live for 7 hours. Not much, but an hour is still a lot of time.