I have now had my HTC Hero with Sprint for about 6 months now and I feel like I should do a sort of informal review / trash talking session. Considering 2.0 should be coming out relatively soon, I need to vent before some of these problems are fixed! Overall I think the phone is amazing. The app selection is phenomenal and it has overall contributed to the quality of my life. This is my first smart phone and the amount of features blows my mind, but each of those features creates new opportunity for something to go wrong. And I think that they have in many places.
So I have taken note of many of the problems that have either driven me absolutely insane and made the phone nearly dysfunctional or slightly annoyed me. Most of these are simply problems that I have not found a solution for.
Bugs?
Inconveniences
Many of these problems have a combination effect, for instance: a short ring time coupled with a delayed response due to the indiscernible vibrate leads to a rushing to get the phone out of your pocket, increasing the likelihood that you'll accidentally touch buttons on the screen that bring up things that block the incoming call information, and if you're concerned with wanting to know who is calling prior to answering it then you have to close the screen that popped up (which is somewhat slow when there is an incoming call) and by the time you can see who is calling you and process that, the call has long since gone to voicemail.
This may be the worst case scenario but something similar happens to me very frequently.
To what extent these problems pertain to Android in general, my phone specifically, or to me specifically, I do not know. I have not searched extensively for threads about the individual problems, so I do not expect solutions from this thread, but feel free to go at it if you're bored.
So I have taken note of many of the problems that have either driven me absolutely insane and made the phone nearly dysfunctional or slightly annoyed me. Most of these are simply problems that I have not found a solution for.
Bugs?
- Powering on while battery is dead wipes memory (like a factory reset). This is extremely problematic since the power button is extremely sensitive in pockets. I have experienced this over 8 times on two different HTC Heroes from Sprint. Here is a thread I started prior to realizing the the power button actually must be pressed after the phone has powered down from running out of batteries. http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/16765-uncontrollable-factory-reset.html
- Phone doesn't start ringing until too late, making the overall ring time very short
- Headphone detection dysfunctional if phone powered up with headphones plugged in
- Events created on my phone in the calendar app repeatedly give me a notification, and neither dismissing or snoozing prevent it from re notifying me every 10 minutes for the rest of the events duration. Events created on the web interface do not give me these types of notifications, only SMS when it is the selected reminder type.
- Problems with autocorrect, such that when autocorrect adds characters (like youre to you're), backspacing back to that word often leads to character indexing problems.
- Open a text message, and do a word with a subtle misspell, for instance "I like yourr" and when it should display "you're" as the word it is going to correct to, hit space, it corrects it, then hit backspace, because maybe you were actually trying to say "your", it adds an extra y before the word. Another instance: type "My name is JT," you'll see it updates the "JT," to "JR," and if actually did want to say "JT" but you were to fast and hit space, backspace to correct it, and it will eliminate the space before "JT". Not a huge problem, but when you're typing fast and you accidentally hit space to let it improperly autocorrect, it is quite annoying.
Inconveniences
- Inadequate button lock, so an annoying security unlock is necessary to prevent in-pocket activity
- Vibrate is too weak, and it is often indiscernible from tactile noise, which leads to several problems
- false positive: renders the user paranoid and extremely receptive to any similar tactile response from that area
- miss: the vibrate isn't immediately noticed or not noticed at all and when it is, at least one of the rings is wasted as a check against a false positive
- No global control over notification bar so it can get out of control and often redundant when using apps that don't have a notification toggle
- For instance, I listen to the Android music player and last.fm to scrobble the tracks most of the day, and they both are listed on the top notification panel, and when I drop it down, I get the artist song information listed twice. Neither app provides me options to disable this, so there should be a global setting (for the phone, or an app) to only allow certain notifications or something to that effect. This is especially problematic when I have GPS, WiFi, am listening to music, and I get a text or something. The notification panel is completely overloaded with crap I don't need to see, and it prevents me from seeing what I do want to see (namely that I got a text).
- while phone is ringing other screens (e.g. contacts page) come up way too easily and blocks visibility of incoming call information
- HTC weather widget is essentially worthless because it doesn't properly update
- Can't change which calendar an event belong to from the phone, but only for a preexisting event
- My Contacts should be the only group selected for the contact list by default, and changing this option should be more intuitive
Many of these problems have a combination effect, for instance: a short ring time coupled with a delayed response due to the indiscernible vibrate leads to a rushing to get the phone out of your pocket, increasing the likelihood that you'll accidentally touch buttons on the screen that bring up things that block the incoming call information, and if you're concerned with wanting to know who is calling prior to answering it then you have to close the screen that popped up (which is somewhat slow when there is an incoming call) and by the time you can see who is calling you and process that, the call has long since gone to voicemail.
This may be the worst case scenario but something similar happens to me very frequently.
To what extent these problems pertain to Android in general, my phone specifically, or to me specifically, I do not know. I have not searched extensively for threads about the individual problems, so I do not expect solutions from this thread, but feel free to go at it if you're bored.