HTC Hero : key features & disadvantages

The HTC Hero is the third phone manufactured by the HTC Corporation for the Android platform, as part of the A series.

It is the first phone of A series to feature a 3.5 mm audio jack, multi-touch capability, the HTC Sense experience, and Adobe Flash.

The phone was announced on June 24, 2009 in London.

Key features :

- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support

- 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps

- Heavily customized (in both graphics and performance) Android OS v1.5 (Sense UI)

- 3.2" capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution

- Qualcomm MSM 7200A 528 MHz CPU, 288 MB RAM

- 5 megapixel autofocus camera with video recording

- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver

- Trackball navigation

- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute

- Digital compass for automatic navigation of maps

- Multi-touch zooming in gallery and web browser

- Standard miniUSB port for charging and data

- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)

- microSD card slot with support for up to 8GB cards (2GB one included)

- Standard 3.5mm audio jack

- Direct access to the official Android repository

- Web browser comes with Flash support

- Smart dialing

Disadvantages :

- No video-call camera

- No FM radio

- No camera flash, dedicated shutter key or lens cover

- Camera features are a bit outdated

- CIF@15fps video recording (352 x 288 pixels) is below par

- No TV-out port

- No voice dialing

- Flash video playback is laggy

- No DivX or XviD video support

- Poor MP4 playback performance

- No Bluetooth file transfers (not without rooting)

- No proper file manager (not without rooting)

sources : GSM Arena