Q. After the holidays, I am probably planning on upgrading my ancient, out of date Sprint Samsung slider for the HTC Hero (CDMA) For Sprint. Does anybody own this phone, and please give me your honest, non-biased opinions on it. It is an obvious investment that I will be keeping for two years, so I need some advice!
Aside from normal cell calls, I text a ton, I want to use my Yahoo email account on it, and I also am interested in Apps.
Thanks for all of your help!
Aside from normal cell calls, I text a ton, I want to use my Yahoo email account on it, and I also am interested in Apps.
Thanks for all of your help!
A. I got my Hero nearly a month ago (switched from a Samsung M520 thank goddd) and overall I'm really happy I got this phone! I'm still finding out new things about my phone every day, there's really a lot to do with it.
So first off, a lot of people complain about the battery life. By the end of my day my battery is already low (I'm a texter/email checker myself), definitely need to recharge it everyday, but I've been used to plugging in my phone at night anyways. There's a lot of task killer apps on the android market, the one I like most is 'Advanced Task Killer Free'. I've read that task killers are 'bad" for your phone though.. I don't know the truth behind that but the app is useful for shutting down apps that run in the background even when you're not using them causing your battery to drain quicker.
Texting took a little to get used to since I've never not had a physical keyboard, but I'm actually surprised at how well I'm able to type on it now. Texting is A LOT easier in landscape mode because the buttons are bigger and more spread out obviously since there is more room, but the time it takes the phone to adjust the screen (when you turn the phone) to landscape mode is laggy. It can get super annoying when you're wanting to quickly text someone and you have to wait a couple seconds for the screen to adjust. Texting in portrait mode seemed hard at first, but I'm able to butcher a word pretty bad and the text prediction still picks up the word I meant to type. Another irk I have with texting is that unless the text you've sent or received is from that day, you can't see the time stamp, even when you long press on a message to view message details - it just says 'yesterday' or the day. I'm picky like that and found that annoying.
A nice added touch to texting - the cute android smileys it has, I was surprised they offered them. There is an app in the android market that allows you to customize font and other things called chompSMS that you can try out when you get your phone (it's free) Also, if you have a facebook account, you can snyc your friend's profile pictures as their contact picture, i thought that was super cool!
As for email, when I got my phone from the Sprint store, the sales representative went through the set up with me and set up my email account (i use hotmail though so I don't know how yahoo goes but I figure it would be the same?)
I truly love this phone, the android market, the sense UI, the beautiful screen, pretty much every aspect of the phone. I also think it's the best design of any android phone out right now. A tip for you if you do get this phone, long press everything to find more options within the phone and within apps. And also get a phone cover/case, people complain about dust getting under the screen though I haven't had this problem since I always keep my phone cased.
and here's a list of my most useful apps that are FREE in the android market:
Advanced Task Killer Free (as mentioned above)
AK notepad (like a memo pad without any frills)
Astrid (a to do list app that is really customizable)
Backgrounds (TONS of wallpapers for your phone)
Bloo (best app for facebook)
Dolphin Browser (better than the phone's browser, similar to firefox with tabs)
FxCamera (cool effects for the camera and also has a useful auto focus button and on-screen shutter button instead of having to press the trackball)
Google Sky Map (generally awesome)
Movies (self explanatory)
Places Directory (finds local restaurants, shopping, & more with reviews from the web)
Ringdroid (turn a song on your phone into your ringtone (this is possible on the phone anyways, but with this app you can select a certain part of the song)
Shazam (identifies songs and even offers to find them on youtube)
ShopSaavy (price comparison using the phone's camera as a barcode scanner, took awhile to figure out how to get the app to recognize the barcode, i suggest standing back and not upclose to the barcode)
Twidroid (best Twitter app, but starts up when phone starts up and causes lags, so if you get this app definitely change the settings)
So first off, a lot of people complain about the battery life. By the end of my day my battery is already low (I'm a texter/email checker myself), definitely need to recharge it everyday, but I've been used to plugging in my phone at night anyways. There's a lot of task killer apps on the android market, the one I like most is 'Advanced Task Killer Free'. I've read that task killers are 'bad" for your phone though.. I don't know the truth behind that but the app is useful for shutting down apps that run in the background even when you're not using them causing your battery to drain quicker.
Texting took a little to get used to since I've never not had a physical keyboard, but I'm actually surprised at how well I'm able to type on it now. Texting is A LOT easier in landscape mode because the buttons are bigger and more spread out obviously since there is more room, but the time it takes the phone to adjust the screen (when you turn the phone) to landscape mode is laggy. It can get super annoying when you're wanting to quickly text someone and you have to wait a couple seconds for the screen to adjust. Texting in portrait mode seemed hard at first, but I'm able to butcher a word pretty bad and the text prediction still picks up the word I meant to type. Another irk I have with texting is that unless the text you've sent or received is from that day, you can't see the time stamp, even when you long press on a message to view message details - it just says 'yesterday' or the day. I'm picky like that and found that annoying.
A nice added touch to texting - the cute android smileys it has, I was surprised they offered them. There is an app in the android market that allows you to customize font and other things called chompSMS that you can try out when you get your phone (it's free) Also, if you have a facebook account, you can snyc your friend's profile pictures as their contact picture, i thought that was super cool!
As for email, when I got my phone from the Sprint store, the sales representative went through the set up with me and set up my email account (i use hotmail though so I don't know how yahoo goes but I figure it would be the same?)
I truly love this phone, the android market, the sense UI, the beautiful screen, pretty much every aspect of the phone. I also think it's the best design of any android phone out right now. A tip for you if you do get this phone, long press everything to find more options within the phone and within apps. And also get a phone cover/case, people complain about dust getting under the screen though I haven't had this problem since I always keep my phone cased.
and here's a list of my most useful apps that are FREE in the android market:
Advanced Task Killer Free (as mentioned above)
AK notepad (like a memo pad without any frills)
Astrid (a to do list app that is really customizable)
Backgrounds (TONS of wallpapers for your phone)
Bloo (best app for facebook)
Dolphin Browser (better than the phone's browser, similar to firefox with tabs)
FxCamera (cool effects for the camera and also has a useful auto focus button and on-screen shutter button instead of having to press the trackball)
Google Sky Map (generally awesome)
Movies (self explanatory)
Places Directory (finds local restaurants, shopping, & more with reviews from the web)
Ringdroid (turn a song on your phone into your ringtone (this is possible on the phone anyways, but with this app you can select a certain part of the song)
Shazam (identifies songs and even offers to find them on youtube)
ShopSaavy (price comparison using the phone's camera as a barcode scanner, took awhile to figure out how to get the app to recognize the barcode, i suggest standing back and not upclose to the barcode)
Twidroid (best Twitter app, but starts up when phone starts up and causes lags, so if you get this app definitely change the settings)
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