The first thing noticeable when picking up the HTC Hero was how well it felt in hand. The combination of its weight and soft-touch coating made handling it a genuinely comfortable experience, and the size seemed just right.
The 3.2-inch screen was smaller than expected, noticeably so compared to the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone. Not necessarily a problem, just an observation. The display itself was gorgeous regardless, crisp with colors that popped.
After about a week of daily use, the battery proved itself. Starting the day at 9 a.m. and using the phone heavily between tasks, it consistently lasted until around 10 p.m. The Palm Pre, by comparison, would be on empty by early afternoon.
The Hero stood apart from the G1 and myTouch 3G in a few clear ways. Build quality was the most obvious difference: the myTouch 3G felt cheap by comparison. The Hero’s soft-touch coating and oleophobic glass screen gave it a more premium feel. More importantly, it was the first Android device to natively support multi-touch, which made web browsing, typing, and photo viewing all noticeably better.
What Works Well
- Build quality is among the best on the market at launch.
- HTC Sense makes the OS more attractive and more functional.
- Wi-Fi included as standard.
- Soft-touch coating makes a case feel unnecessary.
- HTC’s custom keyboard is easier to use than the stock Android option.
- Multi-touch support remedies a clear disadvantage of the G1 and myTouch 3G.
- Extra space below the screen makes swipe gestures near the bottom more reliable.
What Needs Work
- Attempting to pull down the notification bar sometimes moves the clock widget instead.
- No native way to quit running applications without a third-party task manager.
- Deleting an email on the phone also deletes it from the Gmail account with no way to decouple that behavior.
- Occasional lag.
- The Home and Back buttons sit very low on the device, making one-handed use awkward.
- Sprint and HTC branding on both the front and back feels cluttered.
Final Thoughts
HTC Sense is the reason to buy the Hero. It makes the phone genuinely fun to use and practically eliminates the need to ever enter the app drawer once everything is set up across the seven home screens. For anyone who found stock Android too plain or the hardware too basic, the Hero was a compelling answer. It’s not for everyone, the learning curve is real, but for users who enjoy tinkering and customizing, it delivered something none of the previous Android phones had managed.
