Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1854 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: HTC
• Model: A6262WHEU
• Released on: 2009-08-15
• Dimensions: .57" h x 2.21" w x 4.41" l, .30 pounds
• Display size: 3.2

Manufacturer's Description

HTC Hero is our first phone to embody HTC Sense™ - an intuitive, seamless experience built upon three fundamental principles - make it mine, stay close, and discover the unexpected.

With HTC Hero, personalization reaches a level never before possible. Rather than burying important content under layers of menus, the HTC Hero lets you put it at glance view, with a selection of widgets that can be placed right on the home screen. The widgets themselves can be personalized with a variety of designs and sizes that best match your personality.

With Scenes, a new profile feature, HTC Hero becomes multiple phones in one. Create and switch between Scenes that reflect different moments in your life. Your Hero becomes a weekend phone that helps you relax with your choice of tunes, catch up with your favorite friends and capture some memories with HTC Footprints™. And when you go on a trip, your phone becomes your personal guide and gives you instant access to local time, weather and maps.

Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls and emails to Facebook updates. HTC Hero makes staying close as simple as turning to your friend and saying hello. When you view people, you see the different ways to get in touch, you also see all your interactions like emails sent to your personal and work accounts. You can even check for social network updates and event notices as well as see the latest pictures your friends uploaded to popular photo sharing sites.

Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. Even basic functions like the dialer will pleasantly surprise you on the HTC Hero. You can find a person by dialing their phone number or simply by dialing the first few letters of their name.

With HTC Hero, you can look at things through different perspectives. Your inbox is not just a list of emails, but a catalog of conversations, a collection of notes flagged as important, and a document library of all your emails with attachments. Your Album is not just the photos saved on your phone. It is also a gateway to online collections of you and your friends on Facebook or Flickr.

Search just about anything, anywhere on your HTC Hero. The dedicated Search button combs through tweets in Twitter™, locates people in your contact list, finds emails in your inbox, searches through appointments in the calendar and very nearly finds needles in haystacks.

Box Contains

• HTC Hero 3G Android Sim Free mobile phone
• Quick start guide
• Screen protector
• Travel charger
• Mini-USB data cable
• Standard battery
• Wired stereo headset with 3.5 mm connector
• Accessory leaflet
• 2 GB microSD card

Customer Reviews

It is as good as people say!
I have had my Hero for about two weeks now and I can honestly say that it is the best phone I have ever had! I should temper this statement with the fact that I have been a regular Nokia N series user, but this has ended forever now that I have come to terms with the android operating system and fallen in love with the crisp and vibrant screen that comes with the Hero.

If your a little worried about on-screen keyboards, don't be. They are particularly good on this phone. Even the full qwerty in portrait mode is useable as there is a very active predictive text type of thing going on as you type, so half the time you only need type half the word and select the suggestion. There are 2 other keyboards other than the full qwerty, including a t9 phone keypad type thing (that I don't bother with) and a cut down qwerty, that has two letters per key (don't bother with that one either). The full qwerty in landscape mode is a dream and I can type fast with it.

Internet browsing is fast. Sadly I have an Orange branded phone (which essentially means that Orange UK has put their own settings on and as usual made a pigs ear of it). Wifi connection is good and fast too. The standard browser in the phone is all you need (though there was some talk of firefox coming over to android in some form).

I use the HTC Peep twitter client a lot, I have tried other twitter clients from the android market, but HTC have done a nice job with the built in program. Accessing the android market could not be easier. There is no guarantee of quality of programs on the android market, but there are plenty, and I am sure others will give you long lists of their favourites, but I wont bore you with that.

HTC Sense is very very good, there is very little lag, the graphics are smoothe and choices wide and varied. You might think (for example) that 12 different clock types would be enough for anyone, but I would love them to come out with more as I am a little fussy that way! Pity that the music player does not immediately grab cover art, but there are programs on the android market that will!

If you are thinking about getting this phone, but are a little hesitant, don't be! It is worth every penny. I have not found anything I do not like about the phone. Email integration, web browsing, twittering, updating photo's to flickr - its all good and all easy thanks to this phone. Get it, you wont regret it!

HTC Hero - Initial Thoughts
Picked the HTC up at Orange's store last Saturday - 25th July.
I've been eagerly anticipating this handset and couldn't wait to get my hands on it.....
So, first things first, the Orange one is in the Graphite colour, which is my personal preference to white. The Orange logo is not too intrusive, as there is just 1 small (0.5 cm2) logo on the battery cover.
Boot up takes approx 1 - 1 1/2 minutes, this is understandable with such a technically impressive phone.
After that, you are greeted with the best interface I have ever used. Very intuitive and infinitely configurable.
The size and weight are great, the touchscreen is great, it's a beautiful device, the Android Market of Applications is very comprehensive, I downloaded one which had a timer and then produced a flatulence noise yesterday, which was fun (for about a minute).
Another big plus point is that you can crop a section of the MP3 file you wish to use as your ringtone, great idea as most songs have an intro of some sort.
The downsides I have noticed so far are: -
Battery life - I am a minimal user and i'm charging it daily.
Camera - no stabilization whatsoever, so you need to keep a steady hand.
PC Sync - Did not connect to my XP Desktop, but worked first time with my Vista Laptop!!
I think it's a great idea to have the Sync Installation file on the Phone's card, as I have about 10 CD-ROMs at home with install files for various mobiles, installed them once and then never look at them again!
The USB cable is also for charging and this is too short.
Bluetooth is only for Headset Pairing (like the iPhone), not sending and receiving data.

Owner of Both: HTC HERO & iPhone 3G
Last year I bought the iPhone 3G in December 2008, at the time I loved it, however on O2 my service provider could only give a 2G signal in my area in Edinburgh, which was a big minus... O2 Customer service, saying I'm within an O2 signal tower 1000m away. (after a few months because of just using it for 2G calls and SMS was ok, until the whole smartphone thing novelty, just wore off.!

Until there was a huge buzz going around the internet about the HTC HERO In July 2009, I read up on the even increasing popularity of the Android OS, and also the fact I could buy one SIM FREE which meant I could use what ever provider was best in my area for 3G Reception, which turned out to be Vodafone.

I received my HTC HERO, just one week ago, charged it up and turned it on, played around with it all evening, I just could not put it down. I could not understand why so many complained about Lag? however, it wasn't until 3 days latter after setting everything up on my 7 screens, did I begin to notice some minor Lag, (now when I use the term Lag), we are only talking about a split second, nothing to make you regret YOUR purchase. Latter in Sept or Early Oct 2009, HTC have WILL BE RELEASING a software optimization FIX Which has passed all beta testing, and NO MORE LAG.! its all over YOUTUBE.

The new Cupcake 1.5 with sense UI, has proven such a success even hackers with the old HTC T-MOBILE G1's; Have upgraded their Phones with all the new Hero software with their inferior hardware, compared to the G3 HTC HERO 528Mhz CPU, 512 ROM, 288 RAM. - Hackers or Dev teams have even optimized the software With minimal lag to run on the T-mobile G1 & found it on YOUTUBE. (what an acheivement considering the G1 is over 2 years old).

Anywayz, the Hero's touch screen in my humble opinion is better than my iPhone 3G (2008 version), I now for the first time on Vodafone have an "H" Sign on top of my screen which means "high speed broadband", something I could never get on my iPhone without using WIFI.

1. Heptic feedback that tingles your finger tips with the very lightest touch of keyboard, portrait or landscape, (FAB)
2. The Android store has well enough FREE APPS to keep anyone busy upgrading their Phone (very happy)
3. Full compatibility with New "Google talk and Skype". (Unlike iPhone)
4. SIM FREE and upgradable memory to 4GB, 8GB, 16GB Micro SDHC Cards.
5. Beautiful smooth, sharp and clean screen. (in my opinion better than the iPhone 3G).
6. The whole experience is very intuitive and after a week or two, you will understand the device without the need for PDF Manual.
7. The Phone is very well build to a High standard, together with 5 megapixel Auto-Focus Camera & video-camera.
8. The White one I own is Teflon coated.
9. Adobe FLASH compatible (iPhone isn't)
10. From "Flat to Fully Charged" in just less than 2 hours, which is very convenient.

I could go on and on... I'm just happy I took the plunge and bought the phone. I have no regrets.

Highly recommend you buy a decent case to protect it, one made by "tuf-luv" here on Amazon.
Amazon also have the best price. (with next day delivery if chosen at checkout).