HTC Hero review
Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Reception and call quality No comments
- Display No comments
- Battery life No comments
- Ease of use No comments
- Design and form factor No comments
- Portability (size / weight) No comments
- Media support No comments
- Durability No comments
- Ecosystem (apps, accessories, etc.) No comments
Detailed review
On the whole the Hero is good value hardware. New in a box, it can be had for at least half the price of an iPhone - pretty much the reason I bought it.
Having widgets, Gmail, a decent browser, Google synced contacts, calendar and facebook is all great. However, it's not an iPhone killer in important areas.
-The market lacks the quality of the app store.
- The video and audio player are basic (although can be replaced by 3rd party apps). However, the volume level is good enough to drive large headphones, which is pretty impressive.
- Multitasking handling is inconsistent (when is a app quit or not?) and sucks the battery. Until apps can be used together - the point of running more than one - what's the point?. Widgets are relatively well implemented, but can't be re-sized to make them more flexible.
- Apps can't be installed on an SD card out of the box. Hence you're stuck with the phone's internal storage if you don't want to get technical and 'root'.
- There are too many hidden settings which make for a fragmented UI. I still get notification sounds which I have no idea where they come from. Unlike the iPhone OS there's no central place to disable such notifications.
- Sloppy and basic implementation of cut-and-paste is less useful than it should be. Often it's fiddly with a finger to select text and worse with the joystick.
- no Mac sync support or bluetooth sync/remote connection.The SD card mounts by USB and Google and DoubleTwist is your way around other limitations however.
-No native way to back up the phone apps and settings before ROM updates is really a bit of a crime.
Otherwise:
-The ability to make ringtones from songs in-phone and the alarm clock are excellent.
- Turning down the brightness and turning auto-sync on apps off, the batter life is very good and can of course be increased with a larger battery!
-tactile (vibration) based feedback is superb.
-one touch access to apps via a launcher is better than lots of 'home' screens.
-look and feel of apps can be customised a lot. However, there's no replacement for good design in the beginning! Still, I'm sure boys that like to fiddle will love that aspect...
Having widgets, Gmail, a decent browser, Google synced contacts, calendar and facebook is all great. However, it's not an iPhone killer in important areas.
-The market lacks the quality of the app store.
- The video and audio player are basic (although can be replaced by 3rd party apps). However, the volume level is good enough to drive large headphones, which is pretty impressive.
- Multitasking handling is inconsistent (when is a app quit or not?) and sucks the battery. Until apps can be used together - the point of running more than one - what's the point?. Widgets are relatively well implemented, but can't be re-sized to make them more flexible.
- Apps can't be installed on an SD card out of the box. Hence you're stuck with the phone's internal storage if you don't want to get technical and 'root'.
- There are too many hidden settings which make for a fragmented UI. I still get notification sounds which I have no idea where they come from. Unlike the iPhone OS there's no central place to disable such notifications.
- Sloppy and basic implementation of cut-and-paste is less useful than it should be. Often it's fiddly with a finger to select text and worse with the joystick.
- no Mac sync support or bluetooth sync/remote connection.The SD card mounts by USB and Google and DoubleTwist is your way around other limitations however.
-No native way to back up the phone apps and settings before ROM updates is really a bit of a crime.
Otherwise:
-The ability to make ringtones from songs in-phone and the alarm clock are excellent.
- Turning down the brightness and turning auto-sync on apps off, the batter life is very good and can of course be increased with a larger battery!
-tactile (vibration) based feedback is superb.
-one touch access to apps via a launcher is better than lots of 'home' screens.
-look and feel of apps can be customised a lot. However, there's no replacement for good design in the beginning! Still, I'm sure boys that like to fiddle will love that aspect...
good review!
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