Pixel Concept

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It’s been about a month since the almighty Hero came to rescue me from the N97, yet the gadget lust has not worn off. That alone should give an idea of my first impressions of this device. I must say, I am impressed. Though the design may seem like a slimmed down version of the Dream, the build quality of the Hero really stands out. The device is solid and feels good in the hand. The teflon coating gives a bit of that soft-touch feel to the back, and does a great job at fending off dirt and fingerprints. I must admit, the reorganized button layout does not make much sense. The ‘Back’ button should be easily accessible at all time; unfortunately, this is not the case. Hitting the ‘Back’ button requires a very agile thumb, and just feels unnatural when reaching for it. It’s not impossible to reach, but it could be easier. Of course the true appeal of the Hero is HTC’s new Sense UI. In short, HTC has scored a homerun with Sense. The multitude of widgets and additional home screens make the Hero extremely customizable right out of the box. Many reviewers seemed frustrated with speed issues and overall system lag, but I have not experienced that. Every once in a rare while an app will hang up, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary and so far seems to be more of an app issue than a Sense UI issue. Overall I am very happy with the HTC Hero and only plan on switching phones when I receive the Nokia N900. I will be writing a full, in depth, review in the coming weeks of the HTC Hero, so stay tuned.

The tech world has been waiting for someone to step up and take the lead on the possibilities that the Android OS holds. Even though HTC was the brand behind the first Android device, it seemed to be in name only since the hardware was not up to the standards that HTC had set for itself. The HTC Magic changed that a bit, with its HTC style looks, but the OS was still the same ol’ vanilla flavor. Enter the HTC Hero. An device with HTC sprinkled all over it; on both the hardware and the software. Though the unboxing gallery doesn’t show off HTC’s customized Android build, it does put on display HTC’s design prowess. Check out the gallery for some unboxing shots and stay tuned for first impressions and a full review.

HTC Hero Unboxing Gallery

One of the applications that I rely most heavily on when using any S60 device has been DataViz’s RoadSync which provides a great Exchange Server experience that rivals the built in Exchange Support on Windows Mobile. The lack of out-of-the-box Exchange support on Android has been one of the biggest deterrents for me from sticking with an Android device. Even though there are a couple of options out there, like Touchdown, it just does not compare to the DataViz solution. Well DataViz has a beta version of its RoadSync app for Android available for download. It seems like all of the expected RoadSync functionality is there including calendar and contact sync as well as HTML e-mail support for Exchange Server 2007. This is perfect timing as I now have a Google ION, the perfect device to test it on so expect a little review of the performance soon. The beta is free and expires on July 31, 2009. To participate in the beta, simply go to the Android market on your device and search for “DataViz”. Select RoadSync from the results and follow the installation prompts. You must have v.1.5 of the OS for the beta so make sure your phone is up to date. To find out more on the RoadSync beta, follow the link below.

DataViz RoadSync for Android