Sprint HTC Hero

The HTC Hero was my first true smart phone.  I bought it because I wanted something similar to the iPhone that was on Sprint.  In all honesty when I heard about the EVO a couple of weeks later I really wished I had waited a bit longer to upgrade my phone.

I lived with my decision for a bit over a year though and used my Hero as my everyday cell phone.  Below is a brief recap of my experiences over that year.

I bought the phone and immediately started playing with it and downloading applications.  The Sense user interface that HTC built was very nice and polished.  I felt I was lacking something though.  I am a very technical person and had been reading up on Google’s Android for quite some time and this just didn’t feel right.

I rooted my phone so I could take more control of it.  Once I rooted it I put the Fresh ROM on it.  The Fresh ROM is based off of HTC’s Sense UI and was very familiar to what I had already been using and still didn’t feel complete.

After about 6 months I did flash the CyanogenMod ROM to the phone.  Now I had the experience I had been looking for, for the most part.  I had the ability to use many apps that were not available to a Sense UI user for some reason, but I missed the polished look of the Sense UI.

I also started having some issues with the hardware itself after the second upgrade to CyanogenMod that I installed.  The Hero is an underpowered Android device and as such I was pushing it past the capabilities.  I also had an issue where my volume button snapped where the + crossed the button.  The volume buttons still worked, it was just a sharp edge on the volume up button.

Overall the phone was a great entry into the Android world and smart phones.  It was also a great tool for me to learn about rooting and customizing my phone.  The people who I would recommend this phone to is anyone who does not plan to hack their phone like I did, the phone is a great entry phone for people trying out Android phones for the first time.  I also recommend the phone to those who do want to hack their phone and customize it like I did but don’t want to risk a more expensive phone for their first attempts.