More HTC Hero goodness
via flickr.com
Still rare at the moment to see 'real' pictures of the HTC Hero around the web, this ones a beauty - look how bright that screen is.
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htchero
Lucky me! I just got my hands on an HTC Hero demo unit for 10 minutes
I just got to have a 10 minute play with an HTC Hero, and I'm impressed.
First impressions - it feels great in the hand. It's a very angular shape but is very comfortable to hold.
The material is a soft plastic. It seems to resist finger prints and feels much nicer to hold than my iPhone - it doesn't get slipery or greasy like the back of the plastic iPhone's can. It also feels quite small to hold - it's not as big as the pictures I've seen suggest.
The UI is 'whizzy'. Feels more consistent than the vanilla version of Android. Didn't get much time to play with it but it does look good and felt reasonabley fast.
The grey colour that Orange will be selling this in looks very smart, really makes it look like a desirable handset.
I had planned to be getting a Samsung i7500 (if it ever shows up) at some point over the summer but now I'm not so sure!
This post is also published on Mobile Industry Review.
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Does anyone know if the HTC Hero is Android forward compatible?
I love the HTC Hero, pretty much everything about the device looks fantastic. I just have one nagging doubt hopefully someone can answer for me - will the Hero be forward compatible with future versions of Android?
This sounds like a trivial point, especially when HTC have really taken the Android platform to another level with the Sense UI, but what will happen when future builds of Android make Latitude even more useful or add Google Voice as a component part of the OS?
It looks to me that HTC Sense is more than just a UI layer - some major Android components have been swapped out (the keyboard and phone dialler are custom created by HTC for example). I guess this would mean that as future updates to the Android OS or major device applications are released Hero owners would have to wait for an updated HTC build version before upgrading. This would be a shame because it looks like Google are starting to make it easier for owners to upgrade their devices by making updates available though the Android Marketplace.
Any thoughts?
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This is the power of good social media...
12 hours ago I would not have written this post... actually if you told me I'd be writing this six hours ago I'd have been skeptical.
I have not been a fan of the UK mobile operator Orange for quite a few years now. Back when I was last a customer they had some decent-ish handsets for the time (remember the Orange SPV range?) but they were expensive, they seemed slow to roll out their 3G network, and their data plans were downright confusing. Over time the Orange device strategy just seemed to disappear of a cliff - I couldn't tell you the last time they had a decent handset to sell, they just didn't seem to be in the game. To summarize; they're not the kind of a network a mobile geek like me would chose.
But right now, this evening, I've decided I'm prepared to give them a chance. I'm at least going to listen to what they have to say and take a look at what they're doing. And no.. this isn't because they've got the new HTC Hero to sell, it's because of how they've embraced the web as a channel for communicating with me and others out there like me.
Sometime after today's HTC Hero announcement I saw this great video by @conorfromorange pop up in one of my RSS feeds. The highest complement I can give is that it's so good at first I didn't clock on that it was official - even though Conor clearly says so in his introduction.
Later on in the afternoon I did a quick Twitter search to see if there was any news on a UK release date for the Hero; I saw this Tweet which I quickly realised was from Orange's official Twitter feed. This linked me onto to Orange's really pretty good 'The Feed' blog which is nicely written, informative and actually useful to a mobile obsessive type like me. Obviously I subscribed to it straight away.
What Orange have done makes me think of something a friend who works for Yahoo! once said to me about social media; "there's really no secret to building online relationships - its actually the same as any other. It has to be two way, you have to be genuine and you have to be prepared to give something to it." You can see those qualities clearly in what Orange are doing.
This is the power of good social media. It's not just that Orange have got something to say, because after all most companies do, it's that the way they are delivering their message is credible, useful and apparently genuine.
And as I say it's got me prepared to take Orange seriously as a mobile operator once again...
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