- I found it. ------------- So far, so good. I've only had it since Thursday night, so I'm still mucking about with the android market and customizing settings, but so far I like it a lot. There are real buttons for send, end, menu, search, home, and back, and a trackball for navigation. There is a rocker key on the side for volume - ringer volume if you're not doing anything, media volume if you're playing media, and call volume if you're on a call. Otherwise everything is done via the touch screen. There are certainly better screens out there - The Samsung Moment has an absolutely gorgeos OLED screen - but the 3.2 inch 320x480 TFT LED on the Hero works just fine for me, and the Hero is more responsive than the Moment. The Hero also benefits from HTC's investment in adding their own function to the Android interface with HTC Sense. I usually chalk that kind of thing up to marketing hype, but in this case I really like the additions. The contact manager alone would sell me on the Hero over the Moment - I can link my friends on Facebook (yes, I know, but You know who shamed me into joining since it's apparently the only way to find out why my siblings, nieces, and nephews are up to. I mostly just play Mafia Wars and wonder if the incredibly hot chick in the "who searched for you" ads is really searching for me) to their contact information in my phone. I can view all of my content organized by who sent it, or by conversation regardless of how many people were involved, and customize nearly every setting in the phone based on who the contact is (and the "send all calls directly to voicemail" is perfect, especially when coupled with "reply with text" - so I can send all of the calls from certain people to my vm and automatically send them a custom text saying whatever I want). As a phone it works very well within the limits of being on the Sprint network. Obviously coverage isn't as good as Verizon, but frankly, I don't go anywhere, and if I do go somewhere beyond the reach of Sprint, I don't want to talk to anyone while I'm there (I know, I might want to talk to EMTs and the like, but I finally decided that I didn't want to spend out the ass to get remarkably little in the way of features, functions, and services, just in case one day I happened to be off the network and need to make an emergency call). And even when I'm off the network, the wifi hooks up quickly and painlessly and works very well (if I'm really desperate to make a phone call, I can d/l a VoIP for Android app and be off to the races). I've found a halfway decent VNC client for the phone that works fine on the home PCs, but nothing that lets me connect through the VPN at work yet, but I have faith in the Android market, something will be along soon. All the Android stuff is probably a half-step or maybe even a full step behind The Droid - the Hero is on Android 1.6, The Droid is on 2.0, but when 2.1 comes out I'll upgrade and we'll see how that goes. And finally - as a phone it's Very Damn Good. Calls are loud and clear, managing contacts is easy-peasy, and so far everything I've tried to do has been pretty intuitive. The virtual keyboard and I are still coming to grips, but recent events have led me to believe that the fault is mine - once I left the auto-correct alone and let it do it's job, typing became pretty fast and pretty easy. Battery life is pretty good - my expectations may be low since my Razr required charging three times a day, but I can go a couple of days of average use on a single charge, and I use the Hero a lot more than I used the Razr - I connect to the wifi at home and use it to read mail and do basic web surfing on the couch rather than haul the laptop over. Oh, and I found an app that maps liquor stores and keeps track of local closing times. Zog like. I never wanted to be one of "those people", but over the weekend I was trying to find some bottles to put up my latest batch of homemade Kahlua (Hi Dave!), and nobody seemed to have anything that worked. Then someone recommended a store I'd never heard of and started giving me directions. I was in Burlington, so I don't really know the town very well, and she was losing me when I realized that all I had to do was googlemap it on the phone. So I google mapped the store, selected options, called it (number provided by google), found that they had what I wanted, and then used the phone to navigate to the store. It was just like one of those commercials on the tv, I tell you what. I would say that the Hero is tentatively Bartender approved. -- Me, If you don't start in the morning, you can't drink all day. Sent from my mobile gizmo. On Jan 15, 2010, at 6:00 PM, "Laura DeWeese" <festive@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > - > Anybody have any opinions about the HTC Hero? > > > > > **************************************** > For List Info or To make _ANY_ changes to your account, including > unsubscribing from this > list, click -----> //www.freelists.org/list/geocaching > > Missouri Caches Scheduled to be Archived http://tinyurl.com/87cqw > Missouri Geocaching land policies --> http://tinyurl.com/lgyy84 > Missouri Geocachers Forums -->http://mogeo.ipbhost.com/index.php > **************************************** For List Info or To make _ANY_ changes to your account, including unsubscribing from this list, click -----> //www.freelists.org/list/geocaching Missouri Caches Scheduled to be Archived http://tinyurl.com/87cqw Missouri Geocaching land policies --> http://tinyurl.com/lgyy84 Missouri Geocachers Forums -->http://mogeo.ipbhost.com/index.php