Review: HTC Hero Phone

So if you paid attention to an earlier post you know that I purchased my first Android phone, the HTC Hero for Sprint, back in January.  You may remember that before this phone I had a Windows Mobile phone.  After four plus months of use on the Hero, I'm ready to give an update.

Likes:

User Interface - While I still prefer the user interface of the iPhone (based on the limited time I've spent playing my my friends; phones), I do like the layout and options available on the Hero.  It's very customizable to say the least, and although I've just begun to make use of the Scenes option, I've experimented quite a bit with the seven app screens available.

Dislikes:

Speed - While it feels better than it did at first, the phone still struggles to keep up at times.  Sometimes this seems to be connected to download speeds, but other times I feel forced to shutdown and restart the phone.  There's no built in task-killer for the device although there are a number of apps available from the Android Market.  At some point I need to download one and give it a whirl.

Battery Life - Again, this seems better than at first, likely because I've been better at shutting down things like Bluetooth, GPS, and Wifi, unless I'm really using them.  I discovered some widgets HTC produced that allow me to easily toggle these functions from one of my app screens.  Nowadays, I can go all day without a charge unless I'm really spending a lot of time on the web.  I also increased my sync services to check email every 15 minutes instead of "as available".  However, I can never go multiple days without a charge making activities I enjoy, such as camping, a bit more complicated.  It also limits how much I can use the GPS for apps like My Tracks.

Niggles:

Corporate Email - There are things you don't think about when switching to a new phone or O/S, often because you take them for granted until they're no longer there.  One such thing for me was a feature availabel on my Windows Mobile device that allowed me to schedule when my phone synced with Exchange Server.  I was able to turn Sync off after 4PM each day and on the weekends.  I could always override it of course, but that small setting really helped me strike a balance between work and home.  My Android offers no such feature.  Just recently I've begun experimenting with the scenes feature, setting up a similar but slightly different  home screen layout that I can switch to when I leave work.  It takes apps like Mail, People, and Voicemail off the home screen and puts them a finger gesture or two away.  In their place I've chosen to put apps like Facebook, Seesmic (twitter), New Rob (a feed burner) and the Camera on the home screen.  In other words, stuff I'm happy to be using when not at work.  So far, so good.  The small change has helped me resist the temptation to see what new discussion started brewing since I left the office.

Disclosure - I paid for this product with my own money and was not paid to write this review.