Couple of disappointments with Hero/Android

[snovvman]

1) I wished the scrolling and screen animation were more smooth. As much as I dislike the iPhone, it does this well. The Hero gets choppy and the screen scrolling is inconsistent and not smooth.

2) I don't like how the menu, back, home, and other keys are hardware keys. Having to transition constantly between the touch screen and hardware buttons is an unpleasant tactile experience. It would have been nice for everything to be accessible via the touch screen.

3) The capacitive screen is a lot less sensitive and responsive than I had hoped. My Touch Pro 2's resistive feels more sensitive than the Hero's.

Your thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[joek71]

I am coming from the Palm Pre, and i personally like the Hero and i do get lot of chance to play with iphone and i find nothing special about it. I can see you seem to like the iphone a bit, maybe you should get it and give it a ride, just remember you can do only one thing at a time, after the pre the iphone looks like a huge app phone and nothing more. iphone great to play games on, multi funtion, well how can i say it, idont multi function.

 

[oktane]

You are right about the Iphone (and even Pre) being smoother.

However, the trackball and hardware buttons are a HUGE plus. There's something very disconcerting about fishing around a touch screen to hangup a call while driving and not knowing if you've really hung up.

The trackball is nice for moving the cursor.

 

[snovvman]

I am coming from the Palm Pre, and i personally like the Hero and i do get lot of chance to play with iphone and i find nothing special about it. I can see you seem to like the iphone a bit, maybe you should get it and give it a ride, just remember you can do only one thing at a time, after the pre the iphone looks like a huge app phone and nothing more. iphone great to play games on, multi funtion, well how can i say it, idont multi function.

I do have the iPhone as well, and I carried the Pre for some time too. I have a longer list of things I do not like about the iPhone. It does do animation and screen touch response well. I just wished the Hero was a little better at it.

Windows Mobile (PocketPC) was multi-tasking long before the Pre was ever conceived. That is in fact one of my dislikes with the iPhone.

Back to the Hero, does anyone else find that the screen drawing/graphics performance to be lacking?

 

[snovvman]

There's something very disconcerting about fishing around a touch screen to hangup a call while driving and not knowing if you've really hung up.

The trackball is nice for moving the cursor.

As much as I don't like the menu, back, and home keys being hardware, I do agree that it's nice to have a hardware "send" and "end" button, for the reason you stated.

As far as trackball goes, I feel that it's a step back. The purpose of the touch screen is "direct" interaction, where it allows someone to act on the object on the screen directly by touching it. It is fast and, well, direct.

With the trackball, much like a mouse, one is translating the movement of the mouse onto the screen, navigating to a location, then select. It is slower and less direct.

 

[Bnice]

Well coming from the Instinct to the hero,the hero is ten times better and a lot smother.I happen to think the trackball a plus it comes in handy .

 

[Edaze55]

I find the trackball very handy for correcting any typos/punctuation that the auto correct might feel the need to add. Its really the only use I have for it

 

[jlachesk]

I find the trackball very handy for correcting any typos/punctuation that the auto correct might feel the need to add. Its really the only use I have for it

I'm with Edaze on this one. Few things are more frustrating to me than poking at the screen 10 times to get the cursor right after the "." I typed instead of a space to delete it. Much easier to just tap once and get right to it with the track ball. Outside of that, I'll use it for navigation every once in a while.

On average, my Hero performs probably 90% as well (in terms of animation, smoothness) as my girlfriend's 3G. The only time I notice a difference is if I'm a bit overzealous with apps and such, or quickly transition to the keyboard and start hacking away. To me, those are far outweighed by the flexibility of the platform and the pure sexiness of the handset (in my opinion at least). Responsiveness to rotating the phone is also lacking, that's probably the biggest one for me actually. Everything else I can live with.

Hopefully some of the smart guys over at xda-developers will get it rooted and we'll get some steamlined ROMs to smooth out some of the edges.

 

[Edaze55]

Hopefully some of the smart guys over at xda-developers will get it rooted and we'll get some steamlined ROMs to smooth out some of the edges.

With the release of the kernel today, maybe root wont be far behind.

 

[Kenotic]

I personally use the trackball for web page scrolling and reading documents. I took back a Pre after a few days and got the Hero and I can tell you the Pre is smooth. I have also had an iPhone and the same goes for that device. I find the smooth issue to only be a problem if I pay attention. During most of my use it does not show up or I dont notice.

 

[Negrito]

With the release of the kernel today, maybe root wont be far behind.

I was thinking the same, I been checking XDA all day!

 

[twospirits]

As far as trackball goes, I feel that it's a step back. The purpose of the touch screen is "direct" interaction, where it allows someone to act on the object on the screen directly by touching it. It is fast and, well, direct.

This was my observation as well until I read this...

I find the trackball very handy for correcting any typos/punctuation that the auto correct might feel the need to add. Its really the only use I have for it

Wow, sometimes its the little things that stick out and are so simple that I tend to dismiss its usefulness. This is surely something I will use from now on when texting. Thanks for the tip.

As for my own small grip, coming from my Winmo Touch Diamond, I had the program Wizbar Advance on it and that allowed me to have a cascading start menu. This allowed me to place my programs in group folders. Quickly getting to the app I wanted. With the Hero, due to its nature, thats impossible having a cascade menu.

My other grip is that no matter what I do, I can't get to screen capture, I tried the sdk way and no good. Just hoping that some modder will eventually get to root the cdma version.

TS

 

[snovvman]

Having played with the text input a bit, I agree with what folks said about moving the cursor using trackball. I guess the difference is that it acts directly on the object in focus, so it's fast.

At the same time, if the UI/app is designed for touch only, one should be able to navigate around text without having to use a seperate device that gives a different tactile experience. With the Hero, I see that it is nearly impossible to precisely move within a text field without the ball.

Now it's philosophy, I know.

Cheers.

 

[aznsmith]

just out of curiosity and maybe concern, is it normal for the entire phone's os to lag when sending and receiving text messages?

 

[Deleted User]

I have miixed feelings about the extra buttons. Sometimes I like them and sometimes I do not. It seems the back is akward in landscape mode. Not a real deal breaker for me though. Just a learning curve.

1) I wished the scrolling and screen animation were more smooth. As much as I dislike the iPhone, it does this well. The Hero gets choppy and the screen scrolling is inconsistent and not smooth.

2) I don't like how the menu, back, home, and other keys are hardware keys. Having to transition constantly between the touch screen and hardware buttons is an unpleasant tactile experience. It would have been nice for everything to be accessible via the touch screen.

3) The capacitive screen is a lot less sensitive and responsive than I had hoped. My Touch Pro 2's resistive feels more sensitive than the Hero's.

Your thoughts?

Thanks.