HTC Hero freed from generic box, called best Android device yet

by Nilay Patel posted Jul 16th 2009 at 2:54PM

It's not officially available yet, but the fine folks at Android Community have gotten their hands on a HTC Hero and posted up quick unboxing and overview. Their unit is an unaffiliated generic whitebox model, so it's likely that the retail packaging the rest of us see from carriers will be different, but none of that changes the device itself, which AC thinks is the "best Android device to date." That's quite a statement, but we're inclined to agree -- we'll see if anything changes when we get that US 3G version in our hands. More pics at the read link, video after the break.

Filed under: Handsets, HTC

Tags: android, hero, htc, htc hero, HtcHero, overview, touchscreen, unbox, unboxing, unlocked, video

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

PEZOLLA @ Jul 16th 2009 5:05PM

Really, how different is this from any other Android device out there now? It is going to take another company to really come out with something different. The best? Of course, its in a family of 3 devices that are nearly identical. The UI is different, so what...

Most of us are looking for POWER, screen wise increase, and serious graphics power. Hi, can I have MORE memory please?

G1 .. the best device I've ever owned (since 1989). But underpowered. Give us SnapDragon, man.

Neutral

ReVan @ Jul 16th 2009 3:58PM

Have you read about the Samsung i7500 with AMOLED 16 Million color screen...

Neutral

Vincent @ Jul 16th 2009 9:59PM

Pezolla +1
i hope the sony ericsson rachael will get some competition soon

@revan
pezolla was talking about gpgpu power, not power savings ;)
Even though amoled screens are very desirable

Highly Ranked

bcohen1983 @ Jul 16th 2009 4:49PM

*cough*NEEDSMOREQWERTY*cough*

Neutral

Joseph @ Jul 16th 2009 8:34PM

Man, the Hero looks amazing. If only I was on AT&T...
I wonder if it'll be worth switching for?

Neutral

Dylan @ Jul 17th 2009 1:56AM

Great new UI, but as above, we are waiting for a real 'killer' hardware device.

Once 2.0 donut is here later this year, that will enable WVGA screens. Then we'll just be waiting for the likes of Samsung to start putting android on their high end harware.
Imagine Android on a 12Mp samsung phone, with WVGA(800x480) OLED screen, HD video recording and HDMI out.
I'd sell my granny for that .....

Highly Ranked

Goose @ Jul 17th 2009 4:46AM

Quite a few people seem to have missed the fact that this is probably the best iPhone rival out there at the moment?

Ok so it doesn't have the large amount of memory but for people this matters to, they'll get an iPhone or a N97. The more important aspect of this handset are that (as you all seem to have mentioned but are glossing over) a new UI! Nice step in the right direction, they've taken a good OS and dressed it up to make it a more viable rival to the OSX GUI, capacitive screen, this seems to get moaned about when it's left off but now that they've included it (which they should have, I agree) no one is making a big noise about it. And related to this is of course 'multi-touch'. Really, you aren't impressed that someone else is offering all of this whilst letting you not own an iPhone?!

Don't get me wrong, I like the iPhone, it's phenominal, but I can't afford it due to the tarrif and handset costs, but now that isn't such a problem, this is the first real rival to the iPhone in terms of user experience, and I think that needs to be focused on.

Neutral

su2lly @ Jul 17th 2009 10:21AM

I just want the thing to be availible in the US some time this year if not this summer. I have an idea. Sell it in Best Buy without a sim card for $350 without it being tied to any carrier. We'll take it from there HTC. In fact unlock all phones and just sell them to the public through any source other then the carriers. It seems as though they are the ones causing the delays.

Neutral

Goose @ Jul 17th 2009 11:21AM

In the UK we can currently pre-order from a few places, but the two that spring to mind are Amazon (£425) and Play.com (£399). These are sim free but a bit too expensive at the moment. Hopefully by the time I come to upgrade in October they'll have dropped to about c£300 but I think that might be wishfull thinking.

Neutral

Cassandra @ Jul 18th 2009 10:34AM

Capacitive screen with multi-touch, yum. iPhone has more apps of course, but this is a sweet-looking device.

Also, thought I'd let you know about the contest over at htcpedia.com, they are giving away a Touch Pro2.

http://htcpedia.com/news/contest-htc-touch-pro2.html