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Sprint Hero Sense 2.1 Update Coming Early May

Kyle — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:00:03 +0000

Sprint has been toying with its customers for months now. They promised a 2.1 update for the Samsung Moment and HTC Hero in “early Q2.”

Android update! Upgrades to 2.1 for Hero/Moment now expected early 2Q10. Currently working through options for upgrades w/ HTC and Samsung.
-10:42 AM Feb 16th via CoTweet

Now Q2 is April, May, and June, so logically early implies April. Waiting an extra month is torture for some Android users watching other phones like the Motorola Droid and Nexus One touting their brand new 2.1 Operating Systems.

So when will the wait finally be over? Mobile Crunch published a post about a week ago citing a Sprint memo. The visible part of the memo states, “Android 2.1 software update is coming early May!” There is not any mention of either the Hero or the Moment, but MC only writes about the Hero receiving the over the air update.

Samsung’s device has a (pretty much) stock version of Android 1.5, so I cannot understand why it has taken this long to upgrade, since the first 2.0 device (Motorola Droid) launched November 6, 2009.

I can wrap my head around the delay of the HTC Hero though. First, the Hero runs SenseUI, which is a very customized version of Android which naturally would take some time to implement the new version of Android. I am positive that it took them no time at all to do this though. The real reason that the update has not arrived is that the first US SenseUI 2.1 phone is launching April 29th on Verizon. HTC would not like their older models to upgrade right before the next great smartphone launches.

Several video walkthroughs have emerged on the internet of SenseUI 2.1, and it comes with a few notable upgrades:

Live Wallpapers (Android 2.1)
Friend Stream – A widget aggregating your social network feeds (SenseUI 2.1)
Leap – A quick way to navigate through the seven homescreens (SenseUI 2.1)

Those are the only notable upgrades. It may not seem like much, but the minor tweaks like an improved Android Market (With Screenshots!). Many applications require 2.0+ and Hero users will now be able to download these apps.

Will the long wait have been worth it? That has yet to be seen, but what do you think?

Sprint HTC Hero Review

Kaitlin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:41:24 +0000

I have mixed opinions about the HTC Hero. In theory, it’s amazing. In practice, it can use a little work.

The phone, of course, comes without a physical keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is decent, though a little more cramped than that of the iPhone. Basically, it would be disastrous without the predictive text. With the predictive text, it’s actually pretty good. With one word, I typed every letter wrong and it still knew what I meant. Impressive, right?

Then there’s the messaging. To me, messaging is the most important function of any phone. It’s all I do every day. It’s somewhat of an improvement over my last phone, as the messages are grouped together into conversations where instead of viewing one message at a time, you can see a whole thread of them. It also allows you to send messages that are more than 160 characters. There is also this really cool feature where the phone tries to guess when messages you received were sent, and insert them in the correct place on the timeline. For example, if someone sends a message a minute before you but you don’t receive it until after send yours, the phone will insert it before your message. Unfortunately, sometimes this messes up and it can be confusing because the phone will show someone answering your question before you actually asked it.

The phone includes a 5 Megapixel camera. Although it does not have a flash, it takes beautiful pictures outdoors and indoors, as long as there is enough light. This camera has autofocus, which helps eliminate blur. Sometimes the camera will bring up an error and refuse to open, but usually all you have to do is restart the phone and it will start working again.

The Hero has multitask capabilities. You can have many different programs open at once, though as other reviewers will tell you, it will start to lag if you have too many programs open.

Lag is a major problem with this phone. Even when you only have messaging and mail open, it will sometimes start to lag. Generally turning it off for a few minutes will fix this too. Most problems on this phone can be fixed with a restart.

Battery life is about as to be expected for a smartphone. If you use it heavily (such browsing YouTube for six hours straight), you might have to recharge it when you get home from work or school. Otherwise, you should be fine if you plug it in to the charger nightly.

Overall, it’s a pretty good phone. It’s multitouch and multitasking, with a beautiful camera and a fairly intuitive interface. Unfortunately, it likes to lag to the point where it takes 10 seconds for the text message to catch up to your typing. I’ve yet to decide if the delay is worth all the things it can do.

Camera Test

HTC Hero Preview

Kyle — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:55:58 +0000

The HTC Hero is essentially an Android phone with some UI and OS features changed. Also this phone drops the Google branding so they can offer Microsoft Exchange support. They are calling this HTC Sense.

Your pages on the device are full of widgets that lock into place and look gorgeous. There are many HTC only widgets available as well as all the apps and widgets you can find on the Android Market.

HTC is determined to keep their chin on their Android devices. Who knows, maybe it will eventually catch on.

The 3.2 inch touch screen has anti-fingerprint screen coating. Horace Luke, HTC’s design visionary, compares the screen coating to water-resistant versus waterproof. He then demonstrated that by putting the phone in his pocket and taking it back out all the smudges were wiped off.

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