I have had my HTC Hero since July 28th, at first I was happy and giddy about it, spent a while playing with it and learning how the phone works. I have always been a Nokia brat for the last 10 years, so it was very different. The OS is simple enough and navigation is ok, I love most of the features.
I do have a few problems with the phone tho, these are:
Camera is terrible, being 5mp I expectead a lot better, no flash, no backlight, unless its very light, your not getting a picture!! (Nokia beats this hands down)
Battery Life is terrible, especially if you use wifi, I have killed my battery in less than 90 minutes uploading pics to Fbook using the orange internet connection. Even on standbye I have yet had it last over 24 hours with minor useage. HTC Claim 750 hours???? I think not.
Signal strength seems to be another issue with a much lower signal than any Nokia I have had, even no service yet put my sim card into the N95 or 96 I have and it shows nearly 4 bars...
Ringer volume is terrible as well, and it keeps turning itself off and getting louder and quieter because of the position of the volume control button o the phone. Music player is rubbish if you want to use the phones speaker, although not too bad if you use headphones, again every Nokia I have ever had is better, and my mates iPhone kicks the Hero here.
I have spent some time searching apps etc on the internet for this phone, and there is a few, however, most of the stuff I would like for social media and multimedia is not available, I would have expectead a lot more of the social and multimedia items to be part of the OS and tied into the phone much tighter, at the moment the only IM tied into the phone is google talk.
In Short, if you want a different looking stylish very clean touch screen smart phone for business then the HTC hero is fine (as long as you carry your charger with you) If you want a decent camera multi media phone, then leave this phone well alone, you will be very dissapointed.
Just for the record I am sending this one back to Orange as I am within the 14 days!!!
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Saying you are a nokia brat how can you ever be able to revew this phone without comparing them to all other nokia's?
I had all kinds of phones and this one really rocks
Nokia's symbian is totally useless, android is a much better platform, battery life and such I don't know where you get them from. 4 hours non stop wifi still 25% battery, okay the camera isn't great. But that's always been like this with htc. Not every company thinks a carl zeis lens is neccesary in a phone.
All apps are allmost available on android, I'm still amazed by the amount of programs offerd, also it's much more responsive then the prvious winmo devices from htc.
Also the sound buttons are fine, can't imagine someone holding the phone correctly and then pushing de sound buttons accidently. Sounds quality is pretty nice for a single speaker (remember nokia's often have double stereo speakers bit hard to compare)
And also nothing in your review about the HTC-sense skin... the most powerfull app on your phone and you forget it. It's great, 10x more responsive then previous Touchflo 3d
Htc is going the right way with this phone.
Hello, yes a lot of valid points in this comment....
However, maybe the battery on mine was faulty? apparently your battery life was much much better...
I agree there are more apps out there for android.. and I believe the next gen androids will be unbelievable, however at the moment I found mine to buggy, very buggy and slow to respond, with a lot of apps for the android crashing out...
Fair enough point about the sense skin it was very cool and allowed for so much customisation where do you begin?...
I stand by my review of the phone tho... and although I stated I am a nokia brat, perhaps I should have pointed out I am also an IT engineer, and have had lots of phones including blackberrys, an i phone (the orriginal one) and many ericcsons and motorola's...
I just prefer the nokias... I am going to get the new N97 next month, and will be just as critical when I review that, especially as symbian OS has been around for a while now it should be almost perfect... If not I want to know why!!!
I have this Hero for a month now and I agree that it is a ... ZERO !
Problem issues:
1) Camera is to slow. Has no shutter button.
2) No info about open applications (running in the background)
3) No connection manager. (not 1 click access to which programs are using the internet connection).
4) Very short battery live, if you use programs that auto sync. I speak about 4 to 5 hours and the telephone has an empty bat.
5) Inconsistent menus. Sometimes you can leave without saving, sometimes save is hidden somewhere down so you have to scroll to find it etc.
6) The ringer volume button problem. Phone is often in silent mode because unintentional pushing of ringer volume button. So you can not trust on this devise to be accessible because you can't hear the phone all the time.
7) Don't forget to push the "end call" button before you put the phone in your pocket or your home screen can be messed up !
8) Google search has no predictive text input. So it is a game of trial and error if you want to write.
9) The "TO" function in the SMS input screen replies with TELEPHONE NUMBERS !!!! instead of contact names if you start to fill in the name of your SMS destination . This is really amazing !
10) you can't save a web page for offline reading and you can't call with Skype out via Nimbuzz only typing chat.
So after I had a simple E71 Nokia this HTC Zero is a consumer fraud. HTC don't bring a phone on the market that is only half finished !!!
The simple fact here is that no phone is perfect and interestingly enough, would I know what "perfect" was whether I was presented with it or not?
The question will remain unanswered but what cannot be denied is that in an iPhone dominated world the plucky little HTC Hero has managed to turn many heads because it offers iPhone like usability at a fraction of the cost.
Just look at the amazing user interface, the fully stocked app store with many quality, free apps plus the fact that its a well equipped, easy to use smartphone and the 5 star "Editor's Choice" review from "Mobile Choice" magazine and the "Gadget of the year" award from Stuff.tv seems to strengthen its standpoint.
A multi-purpose smartphone is like a swiss army knife, its not that the tools on it are the best quality they were never meant to be, but in an emergency situation it's better to have one device with many attachments than a whole toolbox.
I've had my Hero for two months now and there isn't a single day that I haven't found a different way to customise or use its features.
I could happily use this phone for 2, maybe 3 years and not be pressured into getting another, coincidently; I was so fustrated with my 1 month old Nokia N96 that I gave it away to a family member - its like the old Soylent Cola joke, the taste varies from person to person but I can't get on with Nokia phones.