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Regret buying HTC Hero

Lettuce

Well-Known Member
Mar 10, 2010
104
21
Lincoln, UK
Hi all.

Is anyone in the same boat as me, whereby you're tied into an 18-month contract with this phone, with a reasonably expensive tariff, and can't do anything about it? I want to like this phone, and I love the whole Android thing, and the apps, and the whole smart-phone concept, it's fantastic. But the phone really lets me down.

It's ok, but it's slow and jumpy and lags a bit. Little things annoy me like when composing a new SMS, typing in the name/number, when it is trying to search through your contacts attempting to match the name/number, it lags like a bitch. And if I start typing too quickly the automatic capslock does not turn off on the second letter, so my words look LIke THis WIth THe FIrst TWo LEtters OF EAch WOrd BEing CApitalised.

When I go to People and try to scroll through, it's jumpy and laggy. Not smooth. When I slide across at the bottom to go to Updates, Groups, Call History and Favourites, it's slow and laggy.

Making calls and dialing is slow and laggy. Opening/loading simple things like the Weather (when tapping on the Weather widget to look at it full screen) is also slow. Don't want to wait seven seconds for that. Shouldn't have to.

The alarm keeps failing to work. I never use my shitty Sony alarm clock on my bedside table, only for the time, but I'm now having to set this as well as a backup incase my phone's alarm doesn't go off. It's a complete gamble on whether it's going to work one morning to the next.

Scrolling through my list of All Programs is jumpy not smooth and feels unresponsive.

List goes on...

Anyone else feel the same? Anyone feel regret? I know someone who just got a Desire and now I'm comparing my chunky thing to his all the time. Anything I can do?

Oh well, only 16 months left until I can upgrade... [/rant]

Lettuce
 
Relating to the lagginess: what firmware revision are you using? If it's still 1.73 then you really need to upgrade. Also, how many text messages do you have stored on the phone?

Relating to keyboard responsiveness: try disabling haptic feedback. I've never had a problem with this but apparently it helps for some people.

Relating to the alarm clock: are you using a task killer app?
 
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Clear your messages for sure, 2000+ will lag your whole system, because it centralises data across many apps, people holds sms info for contacts ets, as stated before, tirn of the vibrating feedback for the keyboard, and reboot your system daily, and clear your caches regularly. Android is no different to any OS it needs some maintenance..
 
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Relating to the lagginess: what firmware revision are you using? If it's still 1.73 then you really need to upgrade. Also, how many text messages do you have stored on the phone?

Relating to keyboard responsiveness: try disabling haptic feedback. I've never had a problem with this but apparently it helps for some people.

Relating to the alarm clock: are you using a task killer app?
how do you update your firmware?
 
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Goto HTC find support put in you serial number download latest. Rom, follow the instructions on the web site, get my backup pro first and do a full. Back up
Ah ok so firmware is a bit like your ROM? i.e. the new 2.1 update we will have soon.

I haven't downloaded the latest rom yet (there is a newer one from orange my provider) due to some people saying you lose your progress in your games etc.

Is this true do you know??
 
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Thanks for all the responses.

I store perhaps a maximum of 200 text messages at any one time, I often clear them out. I do not use a task killer as I have read in several places you do not need one. And below are my stats:

Firmware version - 1.5 (I understand this is the version of Android?)
Baseband version - 63.18.55.06...
Kernel version - 2.6.27-430...
Build number - 2.73.771.73 (I understand this is the latest ROM?)
Software version - 1.0.0.A6288

I will look into the cache clearing thing but overall I think I maintain my phone very well. I make sure things are turned off when they don't need to be. I clear out old files, images, MP3's that I don't need often, I don't save texts, I clear call history often, I reboot every couple of days.

It's just the general feel. It just isn't as snappy as I want it to be. Serves me right for thinking the 528MHz processor would be enough...

Lettuce
 
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I do not use a task killer as I have read in several places you do not need one.
There is a technique called triangulation - find 2 sources to confirm the base one. Honestly - I've never heard anything equally absurd.

Try opening loads of apps on your Mac / PC and just jump back to your desktop without terminating them. On Android they don't terminate themselves, hence speed problems. Simple as that mate :)
 
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Try opening loads of apps on your Mac / PC and just jump back to your desktop without terminating them. On Android they don't terminate themselves, hence speed problems. Simple as that mate :)
On android they dont have to terminate themselves, the OS terminates them as and when it needs the memory theyre using. What magical mechanism do you think the task killer app is using that lets it do this faster than the OS itself?

Which is faster? Only killing apps when you actually need the memory, or killing apps all the time regardless with the added overhead of having an automated task killer running constantly using extra memory and CPU?

@Lettuce: sounds like youre doing everything right... one last thing you could try (only if youre feeling adventurous and have some idea what youre doing) is rooting the phone and installing something like modaco custom rom. It's noticably faster than the stock OS.
 
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You do need a task manager occasionally to kill big processes you no longer need to have running to free memory (navigation for example), and for the occasional runaway process.
What you don't want is to close every app on the phone because your phone will restart many of them automatically thus sacrificing battery life for little to no performance gain. Properly running idle processes do not consume CPU cycles, restarting processes does consume CPU cycles.
 
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Android is no different to any OS it needs some maintenance..

I've only ever found that to be the case with my Hero. Never with any of my Blackberries, or iPhones, or Symian devices.

More often that not I was stood there aimlessly tapping the screen to pickup/drop calls. I tried custom roms, official roms - the lot. It was still high maintenance, and inconsistent. I even tried replacements.
I was sat waiting for the OS during most tasks.
 
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On android they dont have to terminate themselves, the OS terminates them as and when it needs the memory theyre using. What magical mechanism do you think the task killer app is using that lets it do this faster than the OS itself?
So your argument is that when you open several apps such as YT, Docs 2 Go, browser, PDF reader, weather, FB and suddenly you need to type a text then the keyboard won't be laggy? Well... wrong, it will be. That's why you need that wee icon on your HS to instantly kill all apps you don't need and free the memory. And no, I'm not talking about any autokill options.

There's a fine line between what system 'needs' and what has a significant impact on the smoothness of the processes.
 
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+1 on getting rid of the 2000+ texts. If you want to keep them try SMS backup. It will store your sms's in Gmail like Chats are stored so you can easily browse them in conversation view and delete them from the SMS app.

Ermm how does it store them in Gmail like Chats? I have SMS Back up it makes anice xml file but cannt see how you then feed it into gmail......advice much appreciated

ta
m
 
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