both phones are awesome
After owning the Moment and participating in Moment reviews and forums, I found that Moment owners are constantly preaching how it is the underrated phone (I was one of them), but after owning the Hero now I actually feel like it is the underrated phone to Moment owners. I hope that makes sense
I have very few complaints about each phone, they are absolutely amazing in their own right. I personally like the Hero for its stock features, including widgets, personalized contact list (facebook integration), usability (soft phone button)...I found myself adding a lot of apps to the Moment to make it look like the Hero (Open Home - beautiful widgets etc), so I figured why not just own the phone I'm trying to copy.
One of my favorite things about the Hero compared to the Moment is the fact that the buttons and trackball do not turn off when the phone is low on battery. On the Moment the back lights would turn off and it would bother me, especially if you were using the phone in the dark, which was not often, but often enough to be noticeable.
I've been able to sustain the same amount of battery life on both phones and if there is any difference it is too small to notice.
As for lag issues on the Hero, I don't seem to notice them any more than the small bits of lag I had on the Moment, so that is another difference that is too small to notice.
One of the biggest selling points for me when I purchased the Moment was the "beautiful" screen, well I finally sat down and compared the two phones side by side and if you simply switch youtube to high quality both phones look just about the same. Coming from an iphone where youtube videos were choppy and pixelated, both the Moment and Hero are a breath of fresh air. I realize that the AMOLED screen doesn't just apply to videos, but that is honestly the only thing I was concerned about.
As for design, the Moment looks cool imo, especially for a phone with a slide out keyboard, so that should be an obvious plus for the Hero. However, there are some things I dislike about the Moment such as the covers they put on the headphone jack, usb and the holder for the laynard is a lol point for me, really, laynards? I also prefer the track ball, which is not the most popular hardware feature from what I have read, but I do prefer it because I think it is slightly more accurate and the fact that it lights up. Also, even though the Hero isn't that much thinner or that much lower in weight, I still feel like it is much smaller when I hold it, I consider it to be much more efficient for those of us that like to use a phone with one hand, whereas with the Moment I feel like I have to use both hands. That is a very general statement and I can only offer you to try and hold both phones out of the box to understand my reasoning.
gps worked on the Moment, so I'm not too sure about that complaint. I read somewhere that if you turnf off wifi, gps should work and that seemed to be the solution for my Moment.
The qwerty keyboard was nice to have, but I actually prefer to just type on the screen quickly instead of opening and closing a keyboard. The only issue is the typos obviously, but that doesn't bother me. Also, I went through two Moments due to loose plastic around the keyboard, neither phone started that way, but after a few days of owning them the plastic keyboard started making a creaky cracking noise. This was probably due to carrying the phone in my pocket, but that should not loosen any parts on the phone (unless I was wearing skinny jeans lol). The defect was extremely minor and was not the reason I returned my second Moment for the Hero.
I probably should've addressed each specification in a neat manner, but oh well I hope this is helpful to anyone still trying to decide between the two phones.