Semi-official no longer, Sprint has now officially announced the
HTC Hero for its network. Here's the skinny: it's coming October 11th and will be $179.99 after assorted rebates. Also noteworthy? It's the
chinless model we just spied just days ago, but otherwise it looks like the same internals, Exchange Active Sync, and Sense UI we've
been toying with for months now, plus
Sprint TV. Pre-registration (note: not pre-order) is now available for those eager to already claim stake. We can't help but notice there's no mention of exclusivity here, but regardless, well played, Sprint, between this and the
Pre, you're amassing quite a nice collection, there.
Update: We spoke to Sprint, and the Hero is in fact an exclusive for the company.
Read - Press release
Read - Hero pre-registration
posted Sep 3rd 2009 9:39AM
Wow! Go Sprint. The pre, tour, touch pro 2 and now the hero.
ham, spam, leg o lamb............word up and godam!!!
nice don't forget about that samsung instinct hd with android too.
Verizon I hate you.
great way to start my day, when i got the tweet about it this earlier this morning =D
perfect timing...my contract expires at the end of october, best buy with their automatic rebates is assuredly where i'll be going
Looks like no to SERO users, following their practice of locking out exclusive phones to older plan owners (I don't have SERO, but an older plan) I'm indifferent to the practice but for the rest, flame on.
Chin, no chin I don't care. This is a damn good looking phone and I will be purchasing one on Oct 11. Then promptly placing my Pre on ebay the moment I get home.
Being a Pre owner myself, this is the 1st phone that I have really looked at since getting the Pre.
I am still holding out hope for the Pre to get better, but I see it taking a backseat to the Hero and the BB Tour in future Sprint ads.
I was thinking that too but since you just got the Pre, wouldn't you have to pay the full price for the HERO, not the subsidized price? I'm assuming the Hero, without subsidy, would cost in the range of $700-900.
@intodeep But you still qualify for the $50 instant savings and $100 mail in rebate. The only thing I will lose is the $150 upgrade credit, but the $300-$350 I can get for the Pre will be more than fine to cover that. Not that I'm rolling in money or anything, but I would be more than willing to shell out more than $200 for this phone anyway. The Pre is only $550 or so full price, so I don't feel the Hero is going to be in the $700-$900 price range... Only apple charges those inflated prices for products.
I bought the REAL Hero (the white one with the squared chin) two weeks ago, and I have two words for my american friends:
Buy it!
Im sorry for you that you can't get the much better looking squared chined model, but this thing is a real jewel.
I got it in exchange of an iPhone 3Gs because it sorely disappointed me, and even though I have also a Nokia N97 and my old and beloved HTC TouchHD , the Hero is now my favorite phone and the one I always carry with me.
To be absolutely perfect it misses only a flash for the (excellent) camera, and two simple apps (among the 1000s amazing free apps available for it): a voice dialing and a decent orizontal QWERTY K-board (like FingerKeyboard for win mob 6.1 which I use on my TouchHD); but I'm sure that as soon as Android dev. will stop concentrating on farting apps and strobo lights for cell phones , these 2 will come too.
So my dear fellow americans do not hestate : ditch your uncool, unpractical and and terribly passé iPhones and get yourselves a proper Hero.
You gonna love it.
Meh, give me a real keyboard over virtual any day. This phone looks like it'd be great if it had some physical buttons to type with.
@rob You actually will not qualify for any rebates, be they mail-in or otherwise if you buy the phone at retail, so if you're lookin at that price range that's super high. any sprint store will have it cheaper than the $700 range. maybe $500 range. also, unfortunately, from what I've been seeing, there aren't many people getting that much for their Pre's. I hope you do to be honest, because then shelling out $200 is a possibility for gettin your hero, but more than likely, you're lookin at 300+.
Sources for info:
Manager for 3 years+ at Best Buy
5+ years working for Sprint.
3.5mm jack?
Yes, you can see it on the leaked photos from the other day.
yes, 3.5mm jack, 5.0 MP camera. Sense UI.. com'on this is going to be a great phone.
YES IT HAS IT.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTQ0NTR8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1
this unit brings Magic, MyTouch, Hero to shame!
Great phone, but Sprint dragged their heels too long, while pretending they had nothing to do with the Instinct's issues. I'm glad I dropped them for T-Mobile.
And I just jizzed in my pants. Screw verizon, sprint here I come.
I think this should have had a slight chin. It would have looked nice.
Question, my wife and I just switched to Sprint from Verizon for the Pre and the Everything Plan (much cheaper than VZW). Our 30 day trial ends on Sept 26 and she is on the fence about the Pre and so far, I like the phone. Now with the Hero coming out on Oct 11, can I cancel my Sprint contract still within the 30 days, go back on to my VZW for a few weeks and then sign a new contract with Sprint or is there a restriction?
I’ve been with VZW for 8 years, so I’m not used to the process of switching carriers constantly. Thanks
Yeah...that's the nice thing about the 30 day trial period. The only thing is, you'll be charged for the activation fee again once you switch back to Sprint.
or swap for another phone in the meantime, I believe you get 30 days to return any phone.
If he swaps to another phone, he'll still would have used his contract discount...cancel now!!
Are the guts of the phone the same? Or did they get a boost with the face-lift? From what I heard, Sense looked great but was a little laggy. I'd love to see bumped up internal specs. Has anyone heard?
the internals are all the same. the usdm hero just doesnt have the chin. sense ui is a little slow but htc has been working on the firmware update. to be honest some people already have the update. i think sprints hero is going to have the update from factory.
does anyone know whats going on with at&t or rogers version of the hero? i have at&t and ready to switch to sprint if at&t isnt going to release the hero. cheaper plan and better phone but at&t has better coverage in my area. head spinning in circles.
Wow i might have to jump ship to sprint !!
...and at verizon....(crickets chirping).
Looks like this phone actually has a larger battery than the original Hero..maybe some other internals were changed as well?
Finally a HTS Android phone that doesn't look like it came from toy section of an Dollar store
"Finally a HTS Android phone that doesn't look like it came from toy section of an Dollar store"
lol. When you said that, I was looking at photos for where the candy comes out.
For the enlightened one who are their usual self and complaining about Verizon, They will have their first Android phone right around the same time. T-Mobile should have at least one more Android phone in their lineup as well.
Go Android.
Nice, but still waiting for an Android phone that has better than HVGA (half VGA) resolution. (on Sprint) What's with all the lower-resolution Android phones? Touch Pro2 and Diamond2 both have WVGA, and even the regular Pro and Diamond have VGA.
I am glad to see that they have Full Exchange Sync for Calendar, Contacts and Email as well as visual voice mail and 5mp camera. SenseUI will also be a nice player giving it messaging features similar to the Palm PRE where you can see multiple email, text, IM and social network sites for a contact on a single page. More comparisons I found on this link.
http://mms.businesswire.com/bwapps/mediaserver/ViewMedia?mgid=195666&vid=1&download=1
can we please see its ass?
ugh so disappointed in sprint for this pos. I guess I'm keeping my white teflon... until the N900 =)
And let the continuation of Android taking over resume...
Love my HTC Magic
Nice. Now I just need confirmation that the slowness issues have been fixed (either by firmware or by me putting in a fast SD card) and that Sprint hasn't gimped the phone in anyway and then AT&T and the iPhone can die in a fire.
I am sure Sprint got this one right with the laggyness issue, but I guess it will be another week or more before someone gets their hands on one for confirmation. A faster SD I don't think will help as this is software installed in the fast onboard memory. The other issue they had was slow video capture, which hopefully was improved as well. My biggest issue was the full exchange sync support & laggy ROM.
Also something else I think will happen. Anyone on Sprint SERO old plan might have to upgrade going forward. I saw a review of the HTC Touch Pro2 and they have integrated a tab for Sprint NAV, which leads me to believe they will force all the new features on you to make you upgrade. Last phone I got I paid full price to keep my contract was the older Touch Pro. Think that may be the last of it's kind.
Looks like the lag might be fixed!! Check out the video form Sprint rep on the device here!
http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/sprintblogs/buzz-by-sprint/announcements/blog/2009/09/03/sprint-to-launch-its-first-android-device
this phone looks good but one thing they should had never put on this device is that famus blackberry trackball…that trackball has had soooo many issue with it sticking and not able to move right/left…trackball gets dirty very quick…the att bold 9000 has that issue and thats way that phone its a 5 out of 10…they need to remove the trackball and replace it with a touch pad like the samsung epics..i think thats the name lol…i know a lot about the trackball issue because i hear so many issue about the blackberry where i work and i do tech support work and people always crying about their blackberry and people with the bold if the trackball went bad you have to get the device replace but the blackberry 8300-8310 you can just replace the trackball with no problem…fyi REPLACE THE TRACKBALL BEFORE ITS TOOOO LATE…IF YOU DON’T THE HTC HERO WILL FAIL!!!
Is the screen still just LCD, not AMOLED?
Will the Sprint Hero have flash is the big question?
Does anyone know whether this phone has the apps stored on the internal memory rather than the SD card? I saw that the G1 BARELY could accommodate the 1.5 update to Android so I'm wondering what kind of room the Hero has to expand for future releases..
How about changing the 528Mhz processor?