[General] My HTC Hero - Android experience

[Ahmad Al-Ibrahim]

Majed B. wrote:
> That's great!!!
> 
> 1) How was the typing experience on the virtual/onscreen keyboard? Was
> the screen laggy or had issues with recognizing your input?
> 

At the begining, since I haven't used a touch screen phone before, I had
some difficulty to get things right, then it became easy to write, I
haven't noticed any lag. If you have big finger you'll have problems
recognizing your input. but you can always keep pressing and move till
you reach the correct letter. it happens sometimes.

> 2) Since you used it for 4 hours and consumed 40%, so the battery
> life-time with constant wifi & calls here and there, the battery's max
> is 10 hours.
> 

Not necessarily, I was using the phone most of the time playing here and
there, and thats why it took 40%, the phone can go in sleep mode, where
the battery consumption is much less than having it on all the time. and
the phone was awake 77% of that time, which means I didnt give it the
chance to sleep well :)

What is also great about android is apps do not close, they sleep too.
Lets say you want to close a running app, you just hit back button and
whatever in memory gets dumped to the storage and the app goes to sleep,
and once you launch the app again memory is restored from storage. this
helps to save battery, CPU, memory resources. (exception may apply for
network apps).

> 3) Youtube videos: Have you tried playing ones with fast motion? Like
> action-movie trailers.
> 

Yup, Transformers 2 trailer without glitches.

> 4) Have you explored the possibility of using another mail client, if
> any is available?
> 

There are other mail clients in android market, haven't tried any of them.

> 5) How much internal memory do you have?
> 

Internal phone storage 128MB, external storage 2 GB SD card.

> P.S.: The UI is a custom-made one by HTC (Called Sense) and I guess
> you could override it if you don't like it or some features annoy you
> (At the cost of losing other UI features).
> 

Not interested, I love it the way it is shipped :)

I have no idea where the SMS is stored, and I dont think there is away
to change that in the menu and the settings.

I went through two problems, one of them the lack of Arabic support. I
cant read/write arabic. Arabic is expected to be supported natively in
the next version of Android 2.0. The other problem is related to email,
it happened twice today, some emails when I open them I get a message
saying "the mail is still on the server" and I cannot see the body of
the email. the client used is HTC mail client, I know there are
alternatives in android market, but just wanted to let you know about this.

> You've restored my faith in HTC Hero!!
> 

You should never lose the faith in a Hero :)

Regards,

Ahmad Al-Ibrahim

> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:56 PM, Ahmad Al-Ibrahim <ahmad at koutbo6.com> wrote:
>> Salam,
>>
>> My hero has just arrived today, and I'm so excited to have in my hands.
>>
>> This is a brief of every part of the device:
>>
>> Social experience
>> I've started with linking my google, flickr, facebook, and twitter
>> accounts, and the device pulled in the contacts from google contacts, I
>> can easily assign contacts to friends from facebook. and get live
>> updated tweets from twitter in the home screen. as well as sending
>> update to twitter and facebook. albums were also synced with flickr and
>> facebook, I can see my albums or my friends albums.
>>
>> Mail
>> It was easy to configure my mail accounts, and I'm getting email
>> notifications for new mails. I really like the email application as it
>> is extremely easy to use.
>>
>> Browsing
>> What can I say more? its based on webkit engine, so websites are
>> rendered the same way they are in the desktop screens, webkit is used by
>> Safari and Google Chrome browsers. the browsing experience is amazing
>> specially with the tapping to zoom in and using two fingers to zoom out
>> and one finger to navigate.
>>
>> SMS
>> Text messaging is similar to chat conversation which is cool, it lacks
>> the ability to forward a message (I really dont use forwarding much as
>> I'm not a spammer)
>>
>> Calendar
>> The calendar looks neat, I haven't used it yet. But I see it possible to
>> link other calendars, possibly google calendar and outlook.
>>
>> Music
>> There is a music player, sound quality is very good, haven't played much
>> with it.
>>
>> Video
>> The device is shipped with Youtube client, videos played were smooth and
>> clear.
>>
>> UI
>> The most amazing part of HTC Hero, it is really exciting to play with
>> the phone with this UI, sometimes the response is a bit slow, but its
>> not something that prevent people from buying the phone as they
>> mentioned in previous review in engaged.
>>
>> Android Market
>> The market is full of apps, I haven't got the chance to download many
>> applications, I've just downloaded nimbuzz, ssh client, and a poker game :)
>>
>> Weather
>> Built in application and widget to pull weather updates, useful for our
>> unstable weather :)
>>
>> Notifications
>> One of the best features of the device is the notification framework. I
>> get all of the notifications aggregated in one place, missed calls, text
>> messages, emails, tweets, downloads. An icon will appear at the top and
>> I can slide the notification window down to see the details.
>>
>> GPS and Google Maps/Latitude
>> The device is GPS enabled and ships with Google Maps/Latitude. Cant say
>> more.
>>
>> IM
>> The default chat client is GTalk, but there are many clients that
>> supports different networks and protocols available in android market.
>>
>> Stock Exchange
>> Hero ships with widgets to get updates on stock market prices with charts.
>>
>> Battery
>> The phone was up for 4 hours with wifi connection enabled, pulling email
>> and twitter updates frequently and using it every few minutes to
>> download apps and test the features and make regular calls. So far 60%
>> of the battery left.
>>
>> Over all experience
>> I'm really excited, and happy with the device as I've always wanted a
>> device that is rich of usable and stable internet applications and all
>> of that is in my Hero!
>>
>> P.S: I will never go back to use symbian enabled devices. and I
>> encourage everyone to switch to android.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ahmad Al-Ibrahim
>>
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> 
> 
> 
> --
>       Majed B.
> 
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