I almost trade in my Tour for the HTC Hero.

[noized77]

So I went into my local sprint store to check out what the fuzz is about concerning the Hero OS/UI. OMG, it has the slickest looking UI of any phone I've ever seen! The display almost look holographics with the animated BG. It makes the iPhone and Pre UI look like little boy among men.

I was 80% percent sure I was going to walk out with the Hero considering they would give me $150 trade in values for my Tour minus the retail of the Hero which was $479. Not a bad deal I'd say.

Here's the bummer. The HTC Hero could not multi-task at all. No LED notification which I love on my Tour. Those a small issues to some people but they're very important for me. Are there any 3rd party apps will that will allow the Hero to do these things? ****, a fake LED light on the display will do. The lady said it has push email, is that true? I thought it didn't.

The deal breaker for me was typing on the virtue keyboard. My god, is it really this hard to type or do I just suck? I've spent nearly 3 hours in the store to mess around with the Hero and I still can't type out "Hello, how are you today?" without making a TON of errors no matter how many times I type the phrase out. Needless to say, I was frustrated. The lady even calibrate them for me to my typing style to no avail. She said I will get used to it and I will improve with time. Umm, I was messing with it for 3 hrs with no gradual improvements and I don't have the time to try and get better. Maybe the touch screen is not for me or should I give it another chance? Please chime in Hero user and convince me.

Other tidbits I found that's not related to HTC.

The sales person said the Storm is not a true touch screen when I ask I would like to try them out at Verizon down the street. What? She said something about them using mechanical bottons. I was like WTF? Can someone shed some light on this, or is this what the click/Surepress is about?

The 5.0 OS will be available for DL on the Tour this thursaday.

Anyway. I think I'm happy with the Tour for now and maybe the new OS will improve on it some more.

[papped]

Originally Posted by noized77

The deal breaker for me was typing on the virtue keyboard. My god, is it really this hard to type or do I just suck? I've spent nearly 3 hours in the store to mess around with the Hero and I still can't type out "Hello, how are you today?" without making a TON of errors no matter how many times I type the phrase out.

Welcome to the world of virtual keyboards. They all suck. Some are worse than others. Some cheat a fix by trying to correct as you type, which still means you probably aren't registering the keys you think you are a lot of the time.

The sales rep was on crack though... The S1 is a touchscreen. It just has the additional surepress component which is a button click for the screen (S2 works differently). It's still a touchscreen though...

[papped]

Originally Posted by noized77

a fake LED light on the display will do.

I don't think this would work as a solution, simply because it means the screen would have to be on. Any time during standby the screen goes off and the LED light generally flashes while the screen is off... I think you would see reduced battery life too if the screen was forced on every time to simulate an LED flash....

[kbunnells]

After downloading the handcent and turning off all the appropriate apps im still getting double texts. how can i uninstall the messages?

[martyn]

wait for the new HD2!

[Semantics]

Originally Posted by kbunnells

After downloading the handcent and turning off all the appropriate apps im still getting double texts. how can i uninstall the messages?

You cant uninstall the native messenger app. If you go into the settings and disable auto retrieve, and notifications, you should not get any double texts.

[Semantics]

Originally Posted by noized77

Here's the bummer. The HTC Hero could not multi-task at all. No LED notification which I love on my Tour. Those a small issues to some people but they're very important for me. Are there any 3rd party apps will that will allow the Hero to do these things? ****, a fake LED light on the display will do. The lady said it has push email, is that true? I thought it didn't.

I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to multi task at all. The phone indeed does multi task, and every bit as good as a blackberry. Nowhere near as good as the Pre though. There is of course LED notification, I have a nice little blinking green light flashing right now, telling me I have a message waiting for me. Android phones will push Gmail, you have to pull other types of mail.

[morfy50]

Yup, mine is doing full multitasking running multiple apps at once in the background.

Not only is there a green LED on top of the phone but the trackball also lights up for incoming call alerts, etc. Really, there are a ton of notifications on the Hero. Also the pulldown notification tray is the best notification listing I've seen on any phone.

[joshua.worth]

Originally Posted by noized77

The 5.0 OS will be available for DL on the Tour this thursaday.

Anyway. I think I'm happy with the Tour for now and maybe the new OS will improve on it some more.

Lol what a joke !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dwaynewilliams]

I don't think that the OP is talking about the same device. The Hero muktitasks very well. It also has LED notifiers. I think that he should have played atound with the Hero a little more. Also. If typing is an issue he could use the compact qwerty function. It makes texting a little easier.

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