Just ordered my HTC Hero! Switching from Palm Pre

[jazzneel]

Hey all,

I just finally ordered my HTC Hero from eBay (seller was good, clean esn, etc). I'm really excited for it, as I was getting VERY sick of my Palm Pre (my phone had many bugs, battery life not great, the hardware quality sucked, etc.)


I should hopefully be getting it this week! So I'm excited to become a member of the android community (and leave the PreCentral community-who are still awesome).


So the first things I should do is 1) Root my phone 2) Install Fresh Rom 3) Install Gumbo Kernal 4) Do SetCPU or Overclock 5) Get ChompSMS


Am I missing anything? I am probably going to use the auto rooter for the rooting. And I'm going to read the thread for the Gumbo Kernal to figure how to do that.

 

[Swizz]

Damn, for an Android "noob" you sure know what's up. Welcome, bring your friends.

 

[Kelmar]

Congrats! Hope you love the newish phone.

 

[SeriousBlack25]

Tie your shoes?


Task killer, im using Handcent im feeling that over CHOMPsms, get Beautiful Widgets

 

[SeriousBlack25]

oh yeah Lock 2.0 over that crappy Fresh 1.1 plain lockscreen

 

[thatjerk]

oh yeah Lock 2.0 over that crappy Fresh 1.1 plain lockscreen

I kinda like fresh's lock screen with the green Android dude peeking up from the bottom of the screen.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

And I'm a fan of the stock lockscreen bar, but with a clear background. That is, unless I can find a way to get the same style of lockscreen that's on the AOSP 2.1 build, and even the desk clock that's on the 2.0.1 build from darchstar (I really miss that thing :'() Just goes to show everyone's got their opinions

 

[bmurray82]

welcome! i just switched from palm pre to htc hero! and i'm loving it.

 

[DFRESH]

Welcome aboard..enjoy your stay!

 

[jersey221]

im liking handcent now that im trying it out

 

[rockcrawler]

Welcome aboard..enjoy your stay!

Your'e avatar is going to scare him away! LOL

 

[DFRESH]

Your'e avatar is going to scare him away! LOL

my avatar only scares away forum Trolls ....

 

[chfields]

I came over to the hero from a palm 755P. While I'm not a big fan of the keyboard and the vibration is too weak, I do like the larger screen and the ton of cool apps that are available. I like how customizable the phone is, kinda like a pc. All in all, I think it's a pretty good phone. I've only had it for 2 weeks, so it's still pretty new to me......

 

[superlinkx]

I recommend Gumbo Rom myself. I used Fresh for a while, but I kinda like the stock feeling of the phone. You can always customize it yourself from that. I'm running Gumbo Rom+Kernal and setCPU and ram hack. Phone is fast as lighting and almost never hangs. The Hero is capable of a lot, once you get it going at its potential. 3d Games rock on it, even without 1GHz and graphics chipset. Welcome to Android. Its the best platform ever!

 

[T Mac]

I too switched from the Palm Pre months ago. No questions asked, the Hero is by far a better phone. Although the Pre did master the multitasking, the Hero handles multitasking very well also. Other than that, I am very happy with the switch. The only problems that I have is dust under the screen. I've been contimplating taking it apart and cleaning so thats not a big issue since it can be done.

 

[emike2k3]

I'm making the switch from the Pre myself and look forward to learning the new platform!

 

[jazzneel]

hurray for new android folks! My phone is coming Friday officially! So that means I'm going to be torn from going out to the bars or putting contacts on my phone/rooting/etc and playing with it...ugh, hard decision lol.

Curious, how is the lag issue with the Hero compared to the Pre (when rooted/fresh/gumbo/setCPU) and how is the battery life compared to it?

And how easy is it to save all your texts (back them up) and delete them? I hear there are usually alot of issues with this? I text like 2500/3000 a month on average, so just curious.

oh and also, I am torn between chomp and Handcent. Are there any huge pro's/con's of each? What are the biggest differences in them?

 

[dan330]

hurray for new android folks! My phone is coming Friday officially! So that means I'm going to be torn from going out to the bars or putting contacts on my phone/rooting/etc and playing with it...ugh, hard decision lol.

Curious, how is the lag issue with the Hero compared to the Pre (when rooted/fresh/gumbo/setCPU) and how is the battery life compared to it?

And how easy is it to save all your texts (back them up) and delete them? I hear there are usually alot of issues with this? I text like 2500/3000 a month on average, so just curious.

oh and also, I am torn between chomp and Handcent. Are there any huge pro's/con's of each? What are the biggest differences in them?

wow.. you have asked a lot of question .. that have been talked about a lot..

Lag and Battery: it is very big range of response. I have very little lag before and after root / ROM. Some have great Heros.. Some cant get away from these issues. My theory, it has to do with your local signal strength.

text messages: it is a little pain to delete a lot of texts at a time.. You want to keep the number of deleting text down as low as possible... This will be hard for you (2-4K a month). I use "delete old message", app form market.
I also like Handcent, because I just like it better.. No big reason why.

welcome and have fun.

 

[meangreengdub]

I recommend Gumbo Rom myself. I used Fresh for a while, but I kinda like the stock feeling of the phone. You can always customize it yourself from that. I'm running Gumbo Rom+Kernal and setCPU and ram hack. Phone is fast as lighting and almost never hangs. The Hero is capable of a lot, once you get it going at its potential. 3d Games rock on it, even without 1GHz and graphics chipset. Welcome to Android. Its the best platform ever!

I have fresh 1.1, gumbo, and setcpu but my phone still seems to lag, at least when I wake it up. Does yours not do that? What are ur setcpu settings?

 

[jp89hornet]

This is funny... I'm replacing my pre and my hero is coming in tomorrow! I think palm is gonna tank from all this though: Palm share's drop 10%
This will be my first android phone so I will have to learn everything... I got pretty good at modding my palm pre so I hope it's not too much harder!

 

[jmxp69]

Install Wavesecure and you can backup your SMS and phone logs OTA to their servers free.

 

[MikeMcG]

Good luck with it. I also switched from the Pre a few months ago. It was an okay phone, but I kept feeling like I was gonna break it because of the horrible build quality. I definitely like the Hero a lot better.

 

[dgrobe2112]

i came from the pre, to the hero.. and while i liked the Pre, the hero is way more fun.. the text lag does bug me, however thats usually only when i am getting text at the same time i am typing.. multi tasking on the pre was the best by far.. other than that.. the hero is way better.. i wouldnt go back.. i like the hero too much..

 

[305Cane]

the biggest concerns for me with the pre were the build quality and the battery life. I never had an issue with the phone's build quality, but i was so worried it was going to break i had no peace of mind. The battery wasnt great at all and was a major let down.

the hero is vastly superior to it in those respects. However, webOS is hands down the best mobile OS right now. the things you could do on it are amazing and the multitasking ability puts all other OS's to shame. I love how open Android is, but there are just some things the pre does much much better. the Apps were a big deal for me too. there is a lot of content out there and the pre was just too new and had little support int hat area as well.

you will be happy you changed over, but dont be surprised if you look back every once in a while and wonder what -if about the pre.

also, now we know hero = 0 flash while the pre will have it.

 

[aauussttiinn88]

i can live without flash but when we get 2.1 we will get the multi tasking ability just like the pre minus the cool flicking off the screen animation..IMO the sheer cheap build quality of the pre is just bad and the ui is pretty cool but when do you find your self having more then six apps open that you are using simontaneously so its some what over kill i found its cool (being a previous pre user) but only when i wanted to show it off its like having a pretty girlfriend but is a pia to deal with i the hero is fin aswsome in terms of all around design and UI