My Samsung Moment is having issues, as is my wife's, so I took them both to the Sprint store. Turns out they need to be replaced, and there are no more Moments in the Sprint warehouse (discontinued). So the only supposedly comparable replacements are the Samsung Intercept (fairly new but low end) and the Hero (mid-high end -- a year ago). I chose the Intercept for my wife as it has a keyboard, similar features and, well, it comes in pink (not that color's the most important thing to her, but you know...) I got the Hero for myself because even though its a year old (I hear it too has recently been discontinued), it was always my second choice - for its generation - next to the Moment. So since this isn't an upgrade, I figured I'd give it a try. So...am I gonna hate it? How does everyone feel about this phone a year later? Should I have picked the Intercept? I don't think its too late to change my mind right now, but once I take them home it will be.
If you take the time to root it, hack it, install CM6 Final and (note everything after is optional but it's how I have my phone setup) Launcher Pro with the donation to get the extra widgets (uninstall ADW with Titanium Backup Pro soon after to kill the lag that seems to happen with the widgets for some reason) then I think you will be extremely pleased with the phone. This will get you FroYo (thus all the latest and greatest apps) and it will run very smooth. You can also install SetCPU to overclock it and install a WiFi Tether program to hook your notebook or netbook up to it with no extra data plan costs. If you don't do that I can see you getting frustrated later on. If you don't know how to do it, it's not that hard. A little overwhelming at first. But if you keep reading the forums you will figure it out. After the initial hump, it's a cake walk. I was cursing my Hero (I literally wanted to snap it in half) and felt like my 2 year contract was going to last forever. Now I have no issues waiting. I even gave my Premier annual upgrade to my wife because I have no problems hanging onto my Hero for another year. She now has the Epic 4G which is an awesome phone. I gave her 1 year old Hero to my mom who desperately needs a smartphone for her job. Her employer is too damn cheap to buy her one.
HAHA - I had a good Hero and had no issues' Had it for a year and finally Rooted. Its like a whole new phone..... Lots of people around who will help you out if you choose to go this method. NOW - Your wifes phone.....thats one they should throw out the door. My wife has the same one....IT TERRIBLE - Reading up to root hers....see we can make it tolerable.....
Well I had rooted my Moment so I have some experience with that, but all help is greatly appreciated! Next question is, how reliable is the thing out of the box? I.E., how do the photos look, how is the web browsing experience, how well does it handle some of the graphically intensive games (c'mon, that's important!), how is the GPS receiver, HOW IS IT AS A PHONE, etc. Oh, and I guess - how can rooting change/improve these performances?
Honestly, I can't describe the out of box too well. I've tried to block that part out of my mind. I remember it was decent at first but just kept getting slower and slower until it drove me to the point where I had no choice but to do a custom ROM. Some of the load times are slower but the good majority of games are very playable. There was a plane game that was not really playable on the smaller 3.2" screen since my finger was blocking too much. After rooting, it works a 100x better as a phone. There is absolutely no dialer lag whatsoever. Drove me insane with the Sense UI. The web browsing experience is very comparable to other phones. I tend to use Opera to minimize data download. The scrolling doesn't seem quite as smooth as the Epic but good enough. Not having a flash means you can only take good photos when the lighting is right. I do envy Android phones with a camera flash. Just simple navigating the phone, checking e-mail, texting, etc works just fine on the phone. GPS is good. I have lost connections before but I was out in the middle of nowhere when it happened. Google Navigator works great. I wish there was more space on the internal storage but at least with FroYo you can do apps2sd. That actually helps out quite a bit. I wish the initial cold boot was faster. It's insanely quick with my wife's Epic. Like I said with CM6 you will be happy with this phone much more so than any other phone on Sprint besides the Evo and Epic.
I rock my Hero rooted, with a custom stock ROM and OC'd to 691. It works just fine. CM6 is OK, and coming from a Moment you probably won't mind Vanilla Android. However, I like Sense, so I figured out how to make the phone manageable while still keeping Sense. That meant I rooted it first, then I changed from Android 1.5 to a 2.1 ROM that was still almost completely stock. Then I removed the things I will never use and finally I OC'd it. Phone runs like a champ and all major noticeable lag has been eliminated.
Hero is my 1st smart-aleck phone. I love it, have rooted it, and currently trying to successfully transfer to CM6. Folk around here are generously helpful.
Since you asked, I loathe my Hero, worst phone I've ever had. On my third one, and while they've all suffered from intolerable lag and apocalyptic battery life, each one has been awful in its own quirky way as well. Can't say that the Intercept would be better because I don't have any experience with it, but the Hero has been a nightmare.
Just out of curiosity, did you root it and install the custom ROMS that everyone else that loves their phone did?
did not, because it would void the warranty that I've been using on a regular basis to have my phone serviced. Perhaps more importantly, however, I'm somewhat against rooting to get it to work properly on general principle -- rooting ought to be for people that want to tinker, tweak and customize, and should not be required to get it to properly perform basic phone functions. if you intend to root your phone, though, I know there are many happy Hero owners who have rooted their phones, so there's that.
In general, android phones are meant to be tinkered with and customized to your liking. Rooting only enhances that. Rooting gives the user gives full control over the phone and the user can decide if they want to change things or not
FWIW, the Sprint rep in a Corporate Sprint store told me he has rooted his Android phones. Advised me to look at XDA and Android forums for help. I didn't tell him I was already rooted and part of both forums!
Ok...I got it today. My verdict: I certainly don't hate it. As far as toasty being on his 3rd one and each one being quirky in its own way, to me that's the nature of cell phones. I've yet to have a device I didn't need a warranty repair for (or in this case, a swap out) at some point. This Hero I got is refurbished and from the get-go has trouble with phone calls (ironic), where I can't hear who I'm talking to unless its on speaker phone, or they can't hear me. I did a hard reset and it hasn't been a big problem since *knock on wood* but still, day friggin' ONE and I'm probably going to bring it back tomorrow to have another one ordered if it happens again. Compared to the Moment, I noticed right off the bat that it definitely has a more responsive touch screen. Scrolling seems smoother, and I'm really digging the Sense interface. CNET really didn't give the camera function enough credit when I read their review last year - though no flash, it still takes solid pictures with enough ambient light. And it handles 3D graphics way better than the Moment, which was horrible at it while supposedly having the faster processor (worse GPU I guess). I can see where the sluggishness claims may come from, but I don't intend on over-doing it with customizations and multiple processes. The Moment was pretty sluggish at times too. I like the build quality, it feels sturdy in the hands. The battery is more powerful than the Moments as well - 1500 mA to 1440 mA. And what else can I say - multitouch is fantastic being as the Moment didn't have it. Say what you want about this phone, but I think after one day I can at least say I'm sold on HTC as a manufacturer. Not sure I'd go back to Samsung, they've been underwhelming as a manufacturer and they quit on their phones shortly after release; the Moment came out a month after the Hero and Samsung apparently dumped it long ago. I know the phones I buy will be obsolete so far as technology and features go 2 months after purchase, so its better to know that the manufacturer will stand behind it well beyond its release date, which it seems HTC does.
Update: ok its day 3 with this thing. It doesnt take long to see the lag issues everyone's complaining about. I may have to root this badboy and overclock it. My wife is getting Samsung themselves to fix her Moment. I miss some things about it (keyboard, internet speed, processor speed) but there's still some impressive aspects of the Hero (touch screen, Sense, camera quality, battery life). Here's a few things I DON'T like: 1. Internet speed. This is EVDO Rev A?? I dont buy it, its gotta be Rev 0. My last phone was way faster. 2. Lag. I dont think i need to elaborate more on that, but I will say its amazing that the phone can handle some graphically intensive games well (Raging Thunder, Deadly Chambers) but plays other simpler games like Angry Birds terribly.
If you're going to root the thing, but you're intent on keeping sense on there for now, a must have app is autokiller. It tweaks the memory limits that android should start killing apps with. no it's not a task killer like ATK. set it up to moderate preset if you like, or run it at 45, 55, 65 respectively. Should smooth out sense some what on the device. It wouldn't hurt to get yourself a new kernel so you can do some OC'ing on the thing. That'll also help with any lag. Personally I don't think sense should be on any device that has less than a 1ghz processor. Yeah it's nice and all, but in my experiences with it on the hero it just doesn't work as well as it should. On my evo, I'm running a sense rom (rooted evo) and I love it to death. Once you get sick of the bloat and lag sense happily provides your phone (rooted or not), go grab yourself cyanogen 6.1 and enjoy the stock experience. The hero flys with CM on it! Side note -- turn off haptic feedback and the noise feedback on the htc keyboard, it'll also alleviate some of the lag you're bound to experience when typing.
Nomadic - If you decide to root -There are Lots of us that will Help and You can make both of your Don't Like Items Go aways - I played angry birds this morning....it was fine! : )
I rooted it, and WOW. Amazing difference. I'm running CM6 and I'm using the Overclock Widget. It seems to default at 691 (is that the safest speed? Is the max speed safe?). Even without overclocking, FroYo just seems to be so much smoother than Eclair with Sense bogging it down. The thought of vanilla Android was disappointing at first after seeing all of the cool features Sense offered, but that was before I checked out 2.2. There's a lot of improvement. I'm very happy with this phone now. Thanks to everyone for all the input and help. This blows my Moment away, and my wife can take the next Premier upgrade for all I care, I'll be good with this for awhile, I love it.
691 was found to be the speed that everyone heros were able to boot at. Some heros can't run stable passed that clock speed. You can try to go higher but I found that anything over 710 really didn't provide much benefit.
Well, it turns out there was an update that included ads and apparently lags on a lot of devices. DON'T UPDATE!
Me and my wife have had ours for 11 months. We love them and they're still 1.5 stock. I listened to Kelmar's advice a long time ago. TC
