HTC Hero/G2

billa_champion

Hi all
I was wondering if anyone that has the HTC Hero/G2 find that it is slow. It looks good to me but most of the reviews I read and saw on YouTube (admittedly before the phone came out here) said that the phone suffered from old hardware and that the same OS on an iPhone would have been awesome. I want one but need to be sure that I don't regret it!

phildiggle

I too would also be interested in knowing the answer to this.

I was sold on the Samsung Omnia HD, but have now been put off by its monsterous size! I heard that the Hero Device suffered lags, but in a video I've seen on Youtube it matches (almost) to the 3GS.

Contract ends soon, and there's so many choices to make but HTC hero is now looking favourite.

Sorry for hijacking your thread.

nafe

Actually the hardware complaints are *somewhat* unfounded. Yes the iPhone 3gs has superior hardware, but the previous model - the iPhone 3g - actually had a slower processor than the Hero.

*Here I inserted a couple of wikipedia links but I'm new to the forum and it's been rejected (a very good policy indeed actually) but check out the iPhone and HTC Hero entries on wikipedia to see the tech specs.

From what I've read, speed problems can be caused by a couple of things. First of all, this phone runs a lot of apps at once, having too many widgets open and running will slow things down. Secondly, apparently Android stores a cache file on the microSD memory card. The card that comes with the phone is (as far as I know) class 2 - that means about 2mb/s which is a pretty poor data transfer rate. I've read a fair few comments saying that getting a class 6 card (6mb/s) improves the performance significantly.

I'll be grabbing this phone when I can upgrade at the end of the month, though I'm a little concerned that Orange only offer 500mb/month for it which strikes me as quite low given how much data it'll use day to day.

talkalot

Orange do a new bundle 1 gig of anytime use for £10.00 pm. They do not push this bundle and you have to ask CS to add it on. Having used a Hero I must say its a great phone. No sign of lag at all on my one.

nafe

I did read about that somewhere - 1gb is good but an extra tenner a month is pretty cheeky. T-Mobile are offering the same phone for 36.50 a month, something like 800minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited net on an 18month contract. Their "unlimited" net used to have a fair usage policy of 1gb (and if you breach that they get in touch rather than just charging extra), but now they've increased that to 3gbs!

Orange are being pretty damn uncompetitive with this phone, but I've been with them for several years so I'll see what sort of deal they can offer me when I contact retentions.

shauniebabe

dont contact them tonite! Ive been on hold for an hour and ten mins atm!

shauniebabe

Hi could someone give me some advice about this phone? I was wondering if it constantly goes online or is it only when i want it to? Also what internet is it worth adding for it on orange? could this be unlocked?

Thanks

dhil1on

I had the HTC hero for a week, I must stress I only sent it back because Dialaphone gave me the wrong colour, but they have corrected their website now.
Any way back to the phone, its a great little device so nice to hold in the hand but im sure anyone should be able to go and experience this themselves.

The phone does not constantly go online, I had the phone setup so all (most) of the contacts pulled images off facebook, used palringo and surfed the web a little for the 7 days I had it. And when speaking to orange regarding another account issue I was told I had used around 10mb in those 7 days. But I didnt use the browser or youtube that intensely.

The browser on the phone is amazing, although it does have flash, as you can see from youtube videos its a bit slow but it is still there.
The android market has loads of applications, I havent tried an iphone but there was plenty of free stuff on there.

The phone was fine, it can slow down in places especially when you load up the several home screens or scenes with widgets, or if you have several applications running at once, but this is only when you take the p*ss and I wouldnt see it as a big disadvantage against the phone.

For anyone who has not already done so there is an application that can be downloaded for free called Taskiller - which allows you to close application which remain running in the background and obviously speeds things up a little.
I have heard that a class 6 card does the trick and if you follow the htc hero page on facebook this has been confirmed by many users of the phone.

Overall the phone is great its 100x better than the touch diamond I had previously! i'm sure the hero has a similar speed of chipset to the 3g s but I dont think the slow downs should put anyone off the device. Its only a month old if that, HTC are bound to bring software updates and using a class 6 card is also working for many people.

Hope this helps.

nafe

Damn you dhil1on. I was already excited about the phone and you've just made me more so. I've got another 2 agonising weeks before I can upgrade .

Fork86

I can undoubtedly concur with dhi1on, the HTC Hero is a fantasticlly slick piece of kit and extremely well built. I have had no issues with it. The screen is a pleasure to use.

A camera flash would have been welcome, and the video camera isn't the best, but it does everything else brilliantly.

nafe

That's the one complaint I've seen against it that doesn't have a comeback. Fortunately I can't stand phone cameras so I'm not even a little bit concerned. The camera is good enough to do barcode scanning for those apps that do price-checks so I'm happy with that .