20 Oct 09 The HTC Hero Experience

The past few days of my HTC Hero experience was quite good. It was only good (and not perfect yet) because partly I was a newbie still trying to adapt to the use of a smartphone.
As I have mentioned earlier that I was having a fun experience with the HTC Hero, I have also compile a non-exhaustive list of the good and bad of the HTC Hero.

Allow me to set things clear that I own and still own a Sony Ericsson K800 Cybershot phone, so my comments probably is a bit biased or the comparison is done with the Cybershot phone in mind. I have also read some reviews on the phone prior to this, so my review might not include those that have been spoken by everyone.

The Good
The best thing with HTC Hero is probably the HTC Sense which allows user to have seven home screens instead of the usual three.

Home Screen 1

Home Screen 2

Home Screen 3

Home Screen 4

Home Screen 5

Home Screen 6

Home Screen 7

I’m not using the HTC Scenes so much, which is a feature to switch into saved profiles. It allows you to change into a selected profile so that you can change between social, work, play and travel arrangement of widgets and themes.

Footprint

Footprints is a nice feature on the HTC Hero, which allows you to geotag your photos. When you visit a new place, you can snap a photo of the location, add the GPS position using satellite or communication towers location and save it. It is also possible to export and import the footprints so I hope to see if someone could create a footprints sharing tool which would be extremely useful.

Twidroid – Twitter Client for Android

Facebook App for Android

Social networking is extremely easy on the Hero, where during the first setup, you would have been asked to setup accounts for Gmail, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Google contacts are automatically obtained here, although I’m slightly annoyed without having the choice to choose addresses. I was a bit amazed on the People app or contact list which alerted me that I can join profiles, linking those with same name between Gmail and Facebook.

It looks like most of the good features I found, tend to be HTC proprietary, but the Android OS is also fun and easy to use.

Browser – Bookmarks

Internet browsing experience would depend on the data connection you are on. I wasn’t particularly satisfied with Celcom’s coverage and speed but if I’m using wifi, it is way better. Downloading apps are much quicker using wifi than mobile data connection (which the Hero tells you so too)

I use the Exchange ActiveSync and it’s a breeze getting mail and calendar sync from the server. It works perfectly with wifi, although sometimes it a bit slow with mobile network, it’s always down to your data connection.

For South East Asia Hero devices (not quite sure about the other regions), you have the option of Chinese input and the Chinese input on this phone is quite powerful in my opinion. Not only it supports recognizing your handwriting, allow input in pinyin and stroke, you can choose your Chinese mode as in simplified or traditional Chinese. Let’s say your selection is traditional Chinese, and you if you input the simplified version of the character, it will automatically change it to traditional Chinese. The same goes for the other way around.

Hardware wise, I selected the while colour Hero. It was running out of stock in most places, and where I found one at The Curve which still has stock, I made my purchase. It has been more than a week and the Hero has been through few hands, and like most other reviews found online, any dirt on the cover can be easily wiped off. Of course, I wouldn’t expect it to stay pure white forever.

The Hero package comes with USB connector and a battery charger, but when you need to charge your phone, you actually need to connect the USB connector to the charger adaptor. You cannot use the battery charger adaptor exclusively. So the USB connector here actually functions as two.
The USB connectors are one you can easily get extra as spare, where one end is the typical USB port and another is the mini USB for plugging to the phone.

The Bad
I’m a good complainer if I want to, and there can be a long list of the bad items to get you bored with which probably isn’t that bad at all.

Keyboard – Vertical

First off, I wasn’t really used to the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. I had a PDA with stylus before but this touch screen isn’t a stylus screen and my finger tips are a bit fat, so I’m very prone to mistype. I might be better off with a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard.

Keyboard – Horizontal

However, I’m starting to get used to it and up to speed with the typing (must use it horizontally) and able to use it fairly well on a couple of Meebo conversations.

The problem with input is also due to the fact that there is no arrow key. So when you found out you had a typo in the middle of your sentence, you can either use your most accurate finger tip to position the cursor there, or use your trackball to scroll to it.

The first problem I encountered while setting up the phone is that it wasn’t able to connect to my wifi router, as I had the key index not set to 1. This is a known issue and somebody else have raised it to Google. So do bear in mind, although the current version of Android is 1.6, there are still issues with it, just like any other software. It is not a show stopper, I just have to change my wifi key index to 1.

The camera that comes with the phone is 5.0 Megapixel and in my opinion, it sucks a lot. Coming from my 3.5 MP Cybershot standpoint, the Hero camera had problem to focus and you better make sure you can take photo standing like a tripod. A camera that doesn’t come with a flash is also a turn off, especially where lighting is not good, you better forget that your Hero part time job is a camera.

The video recorder is also somewhat lag, like the image goes for some processing first before getting displayed on the screen that you see. There is also sound which I think is the shutter opening and closing, when the camera is turned on, of which is a bit scary for me.

I mentioned that it is easy to use the Hero for social networking especially on sites like twitter, facebook, flickr, but if you would like to post your video, bear in mind to not record for too long as the file size might have exceed the allowed limit for the sites. You might be able to use apps like Qik to edit before upload though.

Another disappointment that many reviews missed is the Bluetooth connectivity. Apparently the bluetooth on Hero doesn’t support file transfer! I’m not sure if this is a localized problem to the Hero only or HTC only or the Android but based on this, it should be on Android’s turf.

And here I’m saving the best for the last, or is it worst for the last : Android Market!
No, I’m not hating Android Market, the problem with the Hero I have is it doesn’t come with the Market app at all and that is a real-life problem, a pain in the a$$. You pay for a very expensive phone, and it doesn’t allow you to get applications.
My guess is nobody will get an iPhone barred from Apple’s App Store, no?
This no-android-market thing happens to South East Asia HTC’s Android and to workaround it, there are many resources you can find online which they called flashing a custom ROM, but I’m not too sure if they will break your phones’ warranty.

Android Market main menu

Apps I have successfully downloaded

I have flashed mine though and let me tell you this, the Hero with Android Market is only a true blue white Hero for me.

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Tags: Celcom, HTC, HTC Hero, HTC Scenes, HTC Sense