Wow, Glad I found this thread. Phone's been pissing me off. LOVE the HTC Hero but, I'm on my third phone now and I think you guys might have solved the problem. I just checked and I have 71 downloaded apps right now. What's been happening is phone works perfect UNTIL it loses power (battery dies, removed battery, etc...) without shutting down by the power button. Then when restarted, phone has NO service, followed by a BUNCH of forced close notices (probably related to the lack of service). Anything that requires service is inaccessible (phone, mail, messages, etc...). Phone still connects to my wireless internet though. I made sure phone had latest firmware download and use advanced task killer to make sure phone had plenty of available memory. Sprint store service Tech could not figure it out, replaced phone 3 times. Sprint cust service checked and said that they could "see" my phone and it was active and should be working??? Each time the tech did a Master reboot (which wipes out the phone and resets to factory specs) and it starting working again but they replaced thinking phone was defective.
Now this has happened 4 more times on my current phone and I do a Master reboot again and "presto" it's fixed. That followed by 45 minutes of red-ownloading apps, re-entering passwords and re-setting up my scenes (pain in the ...). So anyway, It sounds like you have nailed my mystery problem. The next time it happens, I'll remove apps 1 by 1 and see what happens and I'll update then. Hopefully this info helps someone else a little and all it takes is a reboot to get phone working when it happens. Feel free to contact me regarding this problem.
Jeff Vladika
AFXRacing
jvladika69@gmail.com
p.s. 70 apps Really isn't that many once you start downloading...