HTC Hero hands-on: Flash, keyboard and ruminations (updated!)

We're going to need some real time with the device to make a final opinion, but we're cautiously optimistic that HTC has a winner with its new Hero. Here's what we've got from our first looks at the phone in London and NY:

• The beveled edges along the back makes the handset sit comfortably in the hand, and while the teflon coat doesn't necessarily feel revolutionary, it's going to make a world of difference after a couple of months riding in our grubby pockets. It's certainly solid, but much more so than other "brick" phones.
• The Sense UI (or as HTC terms it, "user experience") riding a capacitive touchscreen offers a people-centric approach to managing your information that is absolutely dreamy at first blush -- though it shares a lot of TouchFLO heritage. In fact, HTC promises to have a very similar Sense-branded experience for Windows Mobile.
  
• The on-screen keyboard also seems quite useable with a nice simulated haptic forced-feedback bounce when you strike each key in either landscape or portrait mode (which can naturally be deactivated). HTC has built its own touch keyboard from the ground up, and in our brief couple of tests we'd say it's probably the best touchscreen typing experience we've ever felt. It never lags behind, and has great colorful visual cues for its auto-corrected words -- green means it's suggesting a correctly spelled word, red means we've gone off the beaten path, and the T9-style multiple suggestions are heavenly.
• This intuitive one-hander isn't shy with the specs either as we've already seen in the official press release. Our only concern is possible sluggishness from the Qualcomm processor that cause the graphic transitions to stutter a bit and results in screen rotations that feel dangerously uncomfortable.
• We were told that the device we saw was running pre-production firmware so there's still time to tweak -- though not much with a July European launch.
• The Hero is not a "Google Experience" device. As such, you won't find the Google logo anywhere (no big deal) but you also won't be downloading any firmware updates over the air -- sideloading only kids. Not a deal breaker but an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation nonetheless. There's still a small lack of clarity of how updates will work with HTC's "mods" living on top of basic Android -- even if they're able to port in new Android versions seamlessly, we imagine there will be some breakage.
• For a device without a physical keyboard, the Hero seems a little thick up against its HTC Magic, Nokia N97, and iPhone 3G counterparts, but not overly so.
• HTC has confirmed that whichever (unspecified) carrier gets the phone in the US will have a modified version, both in software (carrier-specific services) and in hardware chassis tweaks. Just don't take our teflon away, ok HTC?
• Battery is the same larger slab that's in the myTouch, and HTC also claims to have done some vague, unspecified things OS-side to improve battery life as well. "Heavy users will be able to get through a day."
• The camera is responsive and seems to do a fine job at autofocus, but wasn't astonishingly great at first glance.
• The phone will be available for free on T-Mobile UK -- if only we could be so subsidy lucky in the US.
  

There are four videos for you after the break. The first shows Flash running at full screen on the HTC Hero courtesy of YouTube. The second, however, shows it failing when running a trailer from Yahoo Movies, just like Adobe did -- in fact, it crashed all four times that we tried it on what we were told was a Hero running the final build of the OS. Third one is a quickie showing the on-screen keyboard rotating from portrait to landscape and back. Lastly, we demonstrate the hardware a little bit and show off our lightning speed at typing. For the real completists, there's also a new gallery of hands-on shots from the NY launch event right below.

Flash win



Flash fail



Keyboard rotation



Hardware hands-on, typing test

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 1:14PM]

telus will be launching this on their new hspa network

http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=12737944&postcount=83

im too lazy to email u guys this stuff sometimes lol

iphone also coming to telus

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 1:26PM]

That is a slick-ass GUI, though - For how long are Android devices (HTC only?) going to be limited to a 3.2" screen? With all these widgets, and micro sized details, a larger screen (and definitely) higher resolution is surely something that we will need soon.

Not to mention dedicated graphics accelleration AND a faster CPU.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 1:41PM]

Sadly Android is practically limited to 3.2" and HVGA until Android OS 2.0.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 2:43PM]

@ mike11

this is interesting, why is there a 3,2" screen size limit ?
will apps developped for hvga be compatible or broken with higher resolutions ?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 1:23PM]

lol this is exactly how I use my phone day to day! Thanks!

http://www.beabetterproducer.com

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 2:08PM]

Will it have turn by turn sat nav?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 2:38PM]

Will this interface be released for the My touch 3g cause Im planning on getting that

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 2:40PM]

+1

3,2" is slightly too small !

i need to buy a new phone (all touchscreen mobile phone or smartbook with keyboard, whatever you wanna call it....) before christmas and would love to spend my cash on a tegra device with 4" capacitive (and precise) screen.

with an outside sd card slot please.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 3:28PM]

Hi,

What was the site you were testing for Terminator 2? It would be interesting for us to test this out.

thanks,

Mark
Adobe

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 3:26PM]

Oooooh... that's what I love about reading these articles... sometimes the commenters know more specific info that I really want to know... I compared the specs of the touch hd to this phone and its almost practically the same exept for the screen size and resolution... so if I could wait fot touch hd with android i'd buy this phone to replace my g1... but what keeps me from diving in... is the fact that they already have touch hd with android on it at a show in january... but because of the hardware not being updated to android specifications and as you mentioned earlier 2.0 not released yet so it would not run aswell... I think htc will make a touch hd 2 (or pro) and put android on it... and that will be my personal official iphone killer... (sorry I have many iphone friends with pompous atitudes toward the supremeness of their phone, and i'd love nothing more but to shut them down with proper hardware the highlight the true capacity of the android os) but if nothing else comes by the time my contract is up... I'm getting the hero. ^^

[S4Rs Posted Jun 24th 2009 3:41PM]

Is there any word if HTC will update the OS on this device as Android grows and matures? Since they are trying do differentiate from the "Google Experience" I wouldn't be surprised if they went all Windows Mobile when it comes to OS upgrades.

I cant believe its Free! Thats awesome.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 4:08PM]

When rotated the screen actualy transitions pretty quickly. Its just the fade out, fade in that makes it seem clunky.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 5:55PM]

Poll time:

HTC Magic or HTC Hero

I like the look of the magic
but the exchange, 3.5 jack are making this a no brainer

although the galaxy goes have the 8gb of ram

I am tired of having to pick and choose my features across devices...

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 24th 2009 6:14PM]

"I am tired of having to pick and choose my features across devices..."
+1

i kinda hope the i7500 galaxy has a powerful enough processor as i foresee a tidewave of microsoft zune / mobile devices with tegra in september.
The mobile phone manufacturers should really quit being so secretive and announce if they will release tegra on android soon or not !

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 25th 2009 8:40AM]

"The Hero is not a "Google Experience" device. As such, you won't find the Google logo anywhere (no big deal) but you also won't be downloading any firmware updates over the air -- sideloading only kids. Not a deal breaker but an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation nonetheless."

The limitation is because firmware updates for "Google Experience" devices come from servers owned, run and managed by Google.

The last thing they would want to do is be managing firmware upgrades for devices where they haven't strictly controlled the features and functionality.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 25th 2009 2:40PM]

Hero comes with 65nm slow cpu and 288mb RAM, and the galaxy has only 128mb RAM. And a 90nm cpu, which throws out the window the energy economy of the splendid amoled screen. sigh.
http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/gsmgpspda/GSM/unique-samsung-galaxy-sujet_19938_4.htm#t376606

Google should either impose for android 2.0 a standard like apple or minimum required specs like microsoft for the zune hd. Which could be released on september 8 with tegra...
http://gizmodo.com/5302077/rumor-zune-hd-comes-in-1632gb-sizes-launches-september-8

This would provide a stable platform with enough cpu power and ram for developers and help nice 3D apps or games to appear on the android market.