HTC Hero is the top smart phone for 2009, beating the iphone at the T3 awards not to only be the “Phone of the year”, but also awarded “Gadget of the year”. Why? Well just think of an iphone but next year there was an iphone v2. Then you would understand where the HTC Hero phone is placed.
This phone has got all other phone manufactures a new target to reach. Web browsing and multifunctional portable device has never looked so good!
Specifications
- Quad band. Works in any country! GSM and GPRS networks as well as EDGE. Supporting frequencies 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz. Personally getting 7.2mb internet speeds via phone network.
- Built-in GPS – Basically its a satnav! Track your location to within a few metres.
- Digital compass. Unusual amount of in-built sensors. 4D movement G-sensors, magnetic field sensors, light and battery temperature sensor.
- Bluetooth 2.0 – will also work with wireless stereo headsets
- Wi-fi – Connect to your broadband or any other Wifi hotspot. Giving your phone full blown, free and fast internet access. Probably the most internet ready phone in the world. Software built by Google, and is the only phone that also lets you view flash pages.
- Standard 3.5mm headphone socket. – mp3 music, but the quality of the sound output is amazing. Also supports a number of other sound formats.
- Latest full colour large 320×480 touch sensitive smooth display. Able to download and watch videos without a flicker! Support standard video formats including mpeg4, Windows media 9. Light sensor controlled.
- USB 2.0 connector – Fully PC compatible, includes Sync software, and USB also used for charging. Most apps, including contacts, calendar etc.. can be auto sync with your Google account wirelessly without the use of a PC.
- 5m (2592 x 1944) pixel camera. Auto focus, but has a unique manual focus, where you can touch the area of where you want to focus on. Picture quality is superb. As well as normal picture/video use, is can also be used to live video stream direct to the web using Ustream free application.
- Memory – Comes with 512mb internal memory – mainly used for the apps. mp3/pictures/videos are stored on the push-in microSD. Comes with a 4gb. Enough for the first few hundred tracks, photos and about 120mins of video.
- Battery – High spec Rechargeable 1350 mAh Lithium-ion battery, giving a maximum of 18 days of standby time. But like most people, you wont be able to put it down, giving you an average battery time of around 30hrs.
- Charging – standard USB connection, Adapter accepts voltage ranges from 100-240VA. 50/60Hz. so should be fine to charge where ever you are in the world.
Pre-installed phone Software
- Touch screen dialler – Can be change to the old style dialling if so wishes!
- Contact list – Has to be the best contact list you will ever have! Stores people different phone numbers, with their picture, along with their email, birthday, give the individual rings tones etc. But also links it to the live data from Facebook. So you will also see their Facebook status, and view their pictures with just one click!
- SMS – Dedicate SMS app groups SMS into conversations, so you can easily view the SMSs/MMS you had with individual people. Free app can be installed to use voice recognition SMS.
- Time – various styles of clocks. Clock can be set to auto sync with the local network time. Also includes world times, multi-alarms, stop watch, countdown. Also displays weather information for the area your in over the next 3 days.
- Email – Email app can sync up with various email clients either via USB or wirelessly. Can link up with your contact list on company exchange servers or sync with gmail, or, just browse your emails via in-built browser.
- Calendar – Fully functional calendar, syncs with your Google account. Easily scroll through the days or months, options of sync’ing with other live calendars.
- Google Maps – Quickly shows you your exact location, and street view will allow you to view the area just by moving the phone around in the air! Full TomTom services has been announced – soon available to download.
- Calculator – including some scientific functions.
- Market place – Scroll through, search and download from 1000s of free apps.
- Music – Organise and play your mp3s. Music quality via headphone socket is second to none.
- Camera & Video – Picture quality is very good for a phone. Loading the camera app is a little slow to open though. Adjustments to brightness, contrast, saturation and unusual effects can be made
- Voice record – Neat little app that will replace your dictaphone.
- Youtube – App that allows you to easy search and play videos from youtube.
Further notes
Phone uses the Qualcomm® MSM7200A™, 528 MHz processor, which makes everything move pretty slick! It will hold at least 100 applications, and can run quite a few of them all at the same time, but you will then notice it becoming sluggish when switching between the running apps. When closing an app, you do have the option to exit or to leave running in the background.
Forgot to mention, plenty of games available too!
If you have recently bought this phone. Check that you have the Oct 09 updated ROM. Build 2.73 (Firmware 1.5). If not, then its faily easily to update the phone from the HTC website. I recommend you do this first as it will wipe out apps and various settings you had set. This update removes a number of small issues customers had written about in the HTC forum.
Most applications are free, and most of the paid apps are around £1-£2. The information about which apps you have paid for is stored with Google. Which means you can reinstall for free if you for some reasons removed/deleted the app from your phone.
Latest for 2010, HTC Desire. This is the latest version of the HTC Hero. With even more functions and using even more of the latest technology, including a faster processor and now with oLCD screen.
More info: BBC Click
FAQ
Some commonly asked internet questions:
Q) How to exit the web browser on htc hero
A) The browser is always on! There is no need for an exit function. If you wish to exit it, you can download a task manager app.
Q) How to exit ebuddy on htc hero
A) Enter the ebuddy app, use the menu button to find the exit button!
Q) Can I watch live TV on htc hero?
A) Yes, there are some free apps which allow you to watch live TV, and even stream your own TV to the internet!
Q) htc hero, where are the videos stored?
A) Hero has two area’s of storage, its internal memory is primary used for it system and storage of apps. The second memory is a standard CD card (up to 16GB). Music, Pictures and Video is stored on this.
Q) Can I view pictures SMS on htc hero?
A) The default SMS software thats comes with the HTC Hero is able to deal with all types of SMS, MMS messages, and all within the same conversation.
Q) htc hero, how to use gps to track phone?
A) You first need to download one of the many free apps which allows you to do this. eg. Where’s my droid.
Q) htc hero music quality like?
A) The D/A conversation of music stored on the hero is second to none. If you plug your hero into some decent headphones or quaility PA, you will not need to make any adjustments to hear nothing but a quality sound. The phone’s internal speaker wont get the best sound out of the device.
Q) htc hero has a headphone socket?
A) The hero has a standard 3.5mm headphone socket. The hero uses nothing but standard connections. There has been some issues about making the 3.5mm function on the first addition of this phone. Sometimes the software which detects a socket being plugged in faults. To fix this just reboot the phone or download the update.
Q) How many text messages can be stored on the htc hero
A) Uncertain, approx. several thousand.
Q) Time always correct?
A) The Hero has the option to sync with the network time. Which ever country your in, it will always be correct to the second.
Q) Use htc hero, to track live on Google map?
A) Yes, it does this very well.
Q) can you watch iplayer on the htc hero?
A) Yes. Download the free app, and watch live BBC channels or previous programmes for free.
