First Impressions

[nigeve]

As I lost all my contacts during my sim activation (my fault) my first task was to recreate my list… Rather than doing it on the phone I created a Google mail account and recreated all my contacts in Google mail contacts… I then added photo’s to all the people who will appear on my favourites list (again from Google contacts)…
5 minutes later and it had all synched to my phone. So now my frequent contact list has details and photos of my 6 most common contacts with their mug shots…
Luckily for me my girlfriends name is still alphabetically top of the list so I don’t need to listen to her whittering on about why my biking buddies are more important than her (which then leads to the inevitable, you treat this place like a hotel and spend more time with that new effing phone than you do with me rant). She hasn’t yet made the correlation between the amount of time my phone nags me to the amount of time I spend on my phone
Next I set up hotmail and my newest emails were downloaded to my phone. Now interestingly when I get a new hotmail I get a little icon on my mail (on the home page) telling me I have mail… However all I get from Google is a @ icons on the notifications bar… No icon on the Inbox. I am not sure how my Hero receives Google and Hotmail, or if there is any difference between the push synchronisation… I’ll try to look into this over the next couple of days but if anyone knows please enlighten me…
I am very impressed by the build quality although I keep pressing the power key instead of backup and putting the phone to sleep… Everything seems to work as it should. I’ve not overloaded it with Web Widgets and there isn’t a huge delay for the most part… Although the camera is infuriatingly slow and has lead to some blurred snaps.
Calls are easy and excellent quality, customisation is pure simplicity and good fun. I put an anti scratch screen guard on the phone and it worked ok but it slightly detracted the use of the fantastic Sense UI so I’ve taken it off for the time being and am being particularly careful with the phone… All in all even my friends who have iPhones are very impressed and are now wondering if they’ve done the right thing being held to ransom by Apple and O2… I’ll update this as I delve further into the phone this week.

[elthorne]

I agree with all of the above-I especially love the level of customisation you can apply. I previously had a SPV M700 running Windows mobile 5-had to buy the SPV shell just to get ANY customisation. My hero rocks big style!
I was initially concerned about using a phone which didnt have a stylus as i've got rather podgy fingers! but the data input keys are very good and the tactile feedback really helps to minimise typing errors-I've heard there is a typing prediction widget called touchpal which i would really love to try-if anyone knows how i can get hold of it i would be grateful-it doesnt seem to appear on the market at the moment

[nigeve]

Just to add very quickly… Following some office banter about who has the best phone now (I win by miles) a colleague was demonstrating her Blackberry Storm… It was like a brick displaying a car number plate… Absolutely awful
I mean it did a lot of the stuff the hero does, as does the iPhone and as do so many others… But if you ain’t doin it in style then you just ain’t doin it at all…
There’s no real customisation to speak of, unless you call changing wall paper themes customisation …lol
I have heard of a toy that recognises you office GPS location and loads the work scene then reloads your custom theme as you move away from the office… Can anyone validate this..? Surely this would be the ultimate in customisation

[Sroey]

I have the Hero with T mobile UK (Touch G2) - It is a great phone indeed. the UI is a little sluggish at times but hopefully future updates will improve this. Its great and the Android marketplace is loaded full of useful apps.

I will update with a further detailed impression as soon as I have time!

[slick tona]

ive had my hero for about six months now and i can honestly say i dont regret selling my previous handset a nokia 5800 to buy my beloved hero the nokia didnt come anywhere close to the functionality of my hero ive had such fun over the last six months with this phone when i first got it there was all the drama with constant delays with the 2.1 update in the end i got fed up and rooted my hero ive never looked back since ive never had a phone so customisable i recently unrooted my hero to get the official uk orange 2.1 update but found it was not as good as the rooted 2.1 roms available with apps like friends stream not included on the orange update so i went back and rooted my hero again i couldnt be happier as i am now running villain rom 12 and froyo 2.2 for hero which i am able to switch bitween depending on my mood