HTC Hero

So yesterday, I dragged myself to the nearest Telus store and picked myself up a shiny, new HTC Desire. And in the process I ended weeks of fence sitting and navel gazing. After much thought, reading and reflection, I decided that going back to Android after a not so enjoyable time with the HTC Hero was worth the risk. Here’s a quick breakdown of the what when where and why!

• I bought the Hero at the beginning of 6 months of sheer hell, beginning with my Mom’s passing and ending with my Dad having a massive stroke, prior to embarking upon a significant period of travel for work. Having a new phone, and learning its quirks with all of that stress was a giant pain in the ass. Email on the phone was problematic to say the least, and I just never felt secure that I could be reached in case of emergency.
• Suffice it to say, I fell back into the arms of RIM and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A phone I still love, and have 2 weeks to go back to, coincidentatlly, if the Desire doesn’t pan out. The Bold gave me the comfort level I needed to deal with any further family emergencies. And I paid heavily for it, as I had gotten the Hero on a new three-year contract, and was nowhere near any kind of upgrade!
• The Bold is a workhorse, but over time the reasons I had wanted to move on from BlackBerry started to rear their ugly head. The menus, and the 8000 steps to do things was getting annoying. Despite all that I finally fell in love with BlackBerry Messenger as a few folks in the office picked up BBerrys at the same time. But it’s not enough to keep me in the family.
• I had pinned my hopes on BlackBerry 6 and the Torch. As we’ve seen, the new operating system is at best an attempt to catch up with Android and iOS, and it’s debatable from every review I’ve read that they have even achieved that. The Torch is a generation out of date.
• So here I am, considering yet another phone, what am I gonna get, the already out of date phone, running the old, legacy laden operating system, or am I gonna get the cutting edge phone that it ranked among the best in the world and is considered a better long-term investment?
• I had my concerns about the Desire, mainly email (specifically how Gmail handles non-Gmail, pop3 mail accounts (it only update about once an hour, and more often if you receive LOTS of mail) and a shitty pop3 email alternate app on the phone that used to NOT get my mail, like never!), replacing BBM, lack of a keyboard and battery life.
• I decided that the Desire was worth the risk. The Hero was running Android 1.5, and we now find ourselves at Android 2.1 on the Desire, which hopefully will resolve many of the issues I had with the Hero. Hopefully a 2.2 upgrade will be out shortly (or I can do it myself!). All in all between hardware and software, the Desire seems like the better bet.

I’ll post a review in time, but for now here are some very preliminary impressions.

• The phone is fast! Very fast. Everything is snappy, and gone are the lags and waiting of the Hero and the 9700 (though a relatively fast phone the 9700 was starting to bog down).
• The screen is sharp, but so to was the screen on the 9700. What’s striking is how big it is!! After 6 months with the Bold and it’s tiny screen the Desire is a revalation! So clear and crisp, and so far easy to read even in the sun. Can’t wait to read some eBooks on Kobo on this phone!
• The non-Gmail email app seems to be greatly improved over what the Hero offered. Time will tell of course, thought at first blush it looks nice. You can set peak times and off peak times for email checking, which means I can program the phone to stop getting work email at the end of the day and on weekends! Something that for this workaholic is quite important for his sanity! I haven’t installed work email yet, will do that tomorrow and that will be a better test. I don’t get much home email on weekends.
• I’m really curious to find a way to make Gmail work, as it does offer push email. So I’m gonna do some research to see if there’s anything I can do to to mak pop3 work better in Gmail.
• Google integration. We use Google Calendar at work, and I’ve used Google Contacts every since I got my first BlackBerry and used the Google Sync App on it. But now, it’s all there. The BBerry and Google Calendar syncing was adequate at best. Here I see all my calendars, they are clearly separate from one another. It just works!
• Virtual keyboard seems a bit better than I remember it. Again the larger screen size helps here. I’m finding that trying to be dainty and precise is actually the worst way to do things. The more I just blindly go at it, the better it works and the sensitivity of the keyboard kicks in.
• The device is so thin! But it’s also longer than the Bold. It will take some getting used, but it does fit nicely in the hand and the rubberized back does help at lot.
• Google Talk instead of BBM. Now I just have to convince friends to download and use the app. Frankly, this would be great if I could because we all use different smartphones anyways, but we all have Google Accounts. So we’ll see how far that goes!

I’m gonna leave it there. I think that’s enough to get us started. Like I said I’ll post a more detailed review once I’ve had the phone awhile. One last thing I’ll add is that I made absolutely sure that I can take this phone back if it doesn’t work. I was very clear with myself that I needed a phone that was great at messaging, that this was my ultimate need. The BlackBerry clearly offers that. If the Desire is not up to snuff, back it will go!!

Here are a few initial pics.