Going Android: HTC Hero
It's been two weeks now since my anxiously awaited new toy arrived: the HTC Hero, the newest addition to the Android family on the market. I'd been circling around the thought of ditching my Nokia E70 for an Android powered phone for quite some time now, and finally decided on actually doing so after the first pre-release reviews of the Hero came in.
After the first two weeks between myself and my silver grey1) Hero I can say that spending my money on that device was one of my best ideas for quite some time now. Despite the claims of many online reviews that the interface feels sluggish, I have had a very pleasant and responsive experience so far2). Hardwarewise, the device feels solid and lies really good in the hand. The only thing that bothers me a bit about it is the location of the (frequently used) back button in the lower right section, which makes it hard to reach if one's holding the device in the right hand. But after some time I even got the hang of that. I traded in the hardware keyboard on my E70 for an onscreen keyboard on the Hero, but also got a nice hardware trackball with it, so that's a fair deal 
The multitouch screen which makes up for most of the Hero's front has a sharp display, great reaction and is even readable in direct sunlight (HAR2009 approved). No complaints about reception of both GSM and WiFi as well. GPS fix is fast and quite accurate. One of the largest complaints about the Hero's predecessors – battery life – so far has been a non issue for me as well: the battery lasts through the day even under heavy use (lots of WiFi and UMTS activity), and gets only down to about 50% on normal use (some WiFi and UMTS here and there, some gaming during breaks at work). As the Hero is charged using a simple micro USB cable, I hooked up one of my spare micro USB chargers besides my nightstand and use that for charging up the thing overnight.
On the software side, the Hero comes with a modified Android version. HTC added its own UI called “HTC Sense”, which must have been a lovechild of HTC's TouchFLO for its Windows Mobile handsets and the Android UI. Personally, I find it to be very nice looking. It also comes with seven instead of the three homescreens of devices with the default Android UI, and a nice onscreen keyboard with haptic feedback (the phone gives a short vibration as acknowledgement for hitting a key) and auto-correction. After some initial getting-used-to, I found the keyboard to be very usable, and am now at a point were I type a lot faster on it than I ever did on the hardware keyboard of my E70, thanks to the superb auto-correction which allows me to hit the wrong key from time to time3).
The HTC Hero in “silver grey”
HTC also added in some custom widgets and application, including a quite nice mail client and a not so nice Twitter client: Honestly, I demand this thing to be fixed in the way that it uses SSL for communicating with the Twitter servers instead of sending my credentials over the air in plaintext. But all in all, I like what HTC has done to improve Android.
Besides the stuff already “on board”, I found a rather large number of very cool apps and games in the Android market. As a todo list manager, I use Astrid 4), which combined with its RTM synching capabilities simply rocks5). For my microblogging needs, I use Twidroid in combination with my identi.ca account (a pro version with multi-account-support – among other things – is on its way according to the devel blog). For managing notes of all kind (text, audio, pictures, checklists and the like), I bought myself Note Everything Pro (after playing around with the free Note Everything for a couple of days). Gamingwise, I got hooked on Abduction6) and Solitaire 7). There's also a large number of other great apps installed on the phone right now, but I guess I'll present these in a separate blog post. Suffice to say: there even is a port of the ScummVM available
So all in all, I'm a very very happy camper with the HTC Hero. If you think you can't live without a hardware keyboard, your best bet regarding an Android device will probably be the HTC Dream aka T-Mobile G1. If money is an issue, the still quite expensive Hero8) might also be not the best of ideas and getting a HTC Dream or HTC Magic might be a better idea. Besides that I can full heartily recommend the Hero, so if you want an Android device, get that one
PS: Here are some reviews that helped me in my decision:
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