HTC Hero

The HTC Hero (wikipedia, htc US) is my current personal handset. This phone runs the Android OS. My handset runs Android 1.5. I've been trying to get the developer kit to build on FreeBSD but haven't had much luck. It is rumored that Android 2.1 will become available for my phone within as little as a few weeks.

Gripes

I have some gripes about the phone. Mostly I complain about the underpowered processor, or rather the fact that the phone feels vastly underpowered. I routinely battle user interface latency when (for example) I am trying to send an SMS text message while one is inbound. Sometimes, I'm not able to answer phone calls while messages are coming in and I end up missing calls. In this regard the handset is a disappointment. Another complaint I have is that there is no task or to-do list program "out of the box". I'm sure that there are solutions from the Market, but that's somewhat beside the point. To be fair, I haven't evaluated third-party options yet so there may be a solution I'm not aware of. Keep this caveat in mind for my other gripes as well.

Other gripes include:

• The mail application doesn't sort folder names.
• (ed. note: time to leave work. I'll fix this later).