Verizon Wireless: Motorola Droid

The Motorola Droid is probably the most powerful phone offered through a domestic cell phone carrier. While there may be a few critics, the majority of reviews are favorable about the Droid and tout it as superior to the famous iPhone. While I could go on about the features it sports, here’s a few for starters: Touch Screen, QWERTY Keyboard, WiFi, GPS Navigation, Camera, and plenty more. While that’s my number one choice, if you’re looking for another good alternative on the Verizon Wireless network, check out the HTC Droid Eris. It’s lighter, looks friendlier, and costs a fraction. The Eris will be receiving the Android 2.0 update that the Motorola Droid uses early next year.

Buy: Motorola Droid $150 | HTC Droid Eris $10
Links: Motorola Droid Review | HTC Droid Eris Review

Sprint: Palm Pre

Palm’s device is a fairly new entry into the Smartphone market. After being announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, it made  official debut on Sprint’s network this summer. It runs on Palm’s fresh WebOS that offers multi-tasking, streamlined interface, and organizes your data. There’s even an App Store with a few steps behind the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace, but still has a good selection. With QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, GPS, and a 3G network, there’s plenty this phone has to offer. If that’s not in your taste, check out the HTC Hero. It was a hard choice deciding between the two, but the HTC Hero was also one of our favorite picks. It also sports all the essential features to make a good Smartphone and will even be getting the Android 2.0 update in the near future.

Buy: Palm Pre $80 | HTC Hero
Links: HTC Hero Review

T-Mobile: myTouch 3G

While T-Mobile is a fairly open network and can accommodate devices such as the iPhone unofficially, they don’t exactly have a best Smartphone. Sure, they offer the HTC Touch Pro2, but that’s not exactly the most ideal device as we pointed out with our review for the Sprint version. While this was a hard call, I would recommend the myTouch 3G. It’s compact, looks good, and has plenty to offer. With a good battery life, 3G network, WiFi, a 3.2 mega pixel camera, and running on the Android OS, it’s definitely a great device. If there’s another device I would recommend, I’d pick the BlackBerry Bold 9700 for business users and the Motorola Cliq if you’re looking for a cheaper Smartphone.

Buy: myTouch 3G $99 | Motorola CLIQ $99

AT&T: Apple iPhone

If I had to choose my favorite smartphone asides from the Motorola Droid, there’s no question it’s the Apple iPhone 3GS. It’s that simple. What’s there the iPhone can’t do? With over 100,000 Apps in the store, you’ll probably never get bored. Despite AT&T scoring last for 3G network quality, there’s always WiFi. With every iPhone supporting software upgrades, it’s fairly future proof. Just keep in mind, rumor has it that a 4th generation iPhone is almost out the door. If security and enterprise features are essential or necessary, the iPhone is probably not the best choice. I’d highly recommend the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as it’s a more traditional business phone. And of course, although not as fancy, it still has a 3.2 mega pixel camera, multimedia player, a web browser, and even an App Store.

Buy: Apple iPhone $200 (16GB) | BlackBerry Bold $0

Unlocked Device: Nokia N900

If there’s a device I’d have to select that isn’t available through any U.S. cell phone carrier, there’s no question that the Nokia N900 is my current pick. In all honesty, I wouldn’t know where to begin with this phone. It seriously has that much to offer. If there’s a feature available on the iPhone or Droid, this phone probably has it or can do it even better. With 3G, WiFi, a slide out keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera (plus another front-facing camera), unrestricted Bluetooth, 32GB of storage, microSD expansion, a Mozilla-based web browser, multitasking, Linux-based Maemo OS, and extensive media file format support, it’s simply a robust device. Unfortunately you won’t get a subsided price when picking one of these up. It’s now goes for about $500 through Amazon.com.

Links: Nokia.com N900 | Skatter Tech N900 Unboxing

This is a part of our ongoing Skatter Tech Holiday Gift Guides.

The Hardware – 4/5 stars
The Droid Eris is one of the best-looking smart phones I’ve come across. It’s definitely looks friendlier than the robotic Motorola Droid and cuter than it’s Sprint sibling the HTC Hero. It has an attractive soft black-coated finish and silver trims on the side. It’s fairly light weight and can slip into just about any pocket. There are four touch sensitive keys below the display: Home, Menu, Back, and Search. The inclusion of physical send and end keys are appreciated. HTC also implemented a special trackball for navigating the interface. It even lights up when notifications are available. There’s a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, a 5 megapixel camera on the back, and a volume rocker on the side. I was slightly disappointed to find that the Eris uses a HTC proprietary USB cable and that microSD expansion slot (8GB card included, supports 16GB card max) was hidden behind the rear plate.

The Display – 4/5 stars
The HTC Eris sports a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen display with a 320 x 480 pixel resolution. The display is bright, has great viewing angles, and colors. The ambient light sensor automatically brightens up the display, making it easier to read, when outdoors and dims down the display to save battery life in darker areas. The built in proximity disables accidental inputs during phone calls by locking the display when held to your ear. The UI can also switch to a landscape mode from portrait using the built in accelerometer, but unfortunately only works in one direction. While most people would be quite satisfied with this display, they’ll still be stunned to see detail, quality, and difference in resolution when compared to the Motorola Droid. Despite that, it’s still looks great for the UI, images, web pages, and videos.

Camera & Camcorder – 4/5 stars
The HTC Droid Eris sports a 5 megapixel camera. It supports digital zoom and auto-focus, but unfortunately lacks a built in flash. Max image resolution is 2560 x 1712 pixels. The interface allows customizing the white balance and brightness. The advance settings reveals a self-timer, time stamp, geo-tagging, ISO, and other enhancement features. Launching the camera is a split second faster than the iPhone 3GS. The view finder was quite snappy and more responsive than I had expected. When it comes to capturing images, quality is about on par with the Motorola Droid. Just like most camera phones, the Droid Eris works great outdoors, but faces difficulty in low-light situations. The HTC Eris supports recording videos of any length, only limited by storage space, in a max resolution of 352 x 288 pixels. While the quality was decent, it’s still not a match to the Motorola Droid’s DVD quality recordings.

Music, Media, & Syncing – 5/5 stars
While the Apple iPhone has been known for it’s phenomenal media playback capabilities and an amazing user interface, it’s hard to have high expectations for other devices. The entire Android platform still isn’t entirely on par with Apple iPhone OS, but it gets quite close with the HTC Sense UI. With an included 8GB microSDHC card and support for up to 16GB of expansion, this is definitely a worthy alternative/replacement for a dedicated multimedia player. First off, there’s a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so no adapters are needed. Syncing music is easy. The power cable is actually modular, it separates from the AC adapter plug, becoming a USB cable. Just plug it into a computer and tell the Eris to mount the microSD card from the notification menu. It immediately becomes a standard mass storage device, much like a USB flash drive. Unfortunately, there’s no official tool to sync music or other media, you’ll have to do it manually. Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7 was able to work with the Droid Eris quite smoothly. Motorola actually offers a sync tool for their Droid. Once you get the music onto the device, there’s a neat little HTC widget that goes on any of the home screens. It lets you control playback and view album art without launching the player. Since it’s Android, the phone supports playing music through the built in player or through an application such as Pandora in the background while using other applications. The music player interface allows browsing your library by Artists, Albums, Playlists, Songs, Genres, and Composers. The Droid Eris also supports setting songs in your library as a ringtone and purchasing new tracks from the Amazon MP3 music store.

User Interface – 4/5 stars
The Droid Eris by HTC runs on version 1.5 of the Android Operating System. It’s a step behind the Motorola Droid which is running Android 2.0 and even the HTC My Touch 3G running on Android 1.6. The Droid Eris supposedly might get a jump to version 2.0 sometime next month. Despite that, the OS seems to be quite well polished for the most part. Especially with HTC using their Sense UI, the user experience and flow is vastly improved. In fact, I found that I liked the variety of widgets available on the Droid Eris over the flagship Motorola Droid. The only issue I found was occasional lag. Even with a 528MHz processor, 288MB of RAM, and 512MB of ROM, the HTC Eris is still not as snappy as the iPhone 3GS or the Motorola Droid. The messaging tools via both the Gmail App and the Mail client are both impressively powerful and compatible with just about any email service. (IMAP, POP, & Exchange supported) SMS/MMS integration is quite well implemented. It displays contact images and displays an entire conversation history. The Android OS also supports linking contacts to their Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter accounts. Simply clicking on a contact card will display their contact info, their location on a map, conversations with them, their Facebook status updates, their photos from social networks, and call history. It even syncs with Google Contacts and becomes available to modify and add too through a web browser. The on screen keyboard has both landscape and portrait modes with haptic (vibrating) feedback, making it fairly easy to use. While I wouldn’t be able to begin to mention all the amazing Applications available through the Android Marketplace, there are 10,000 of them available. The only thing this phone doesn’t have is the free Google Maps Navigator app with turn-by-turn voice guided directions that was originally available on the Motorola Droid and then became available to other Android v1.6 devices. The learning curve is quick and most customers will love it.

Call Quality – 5/5 stars
Over the week or two I’ve had this phone, I’ve definitely had a better signal and call quality compared to the Apple iPhone. The Verizon Wireless network was by far more superior in terms of signal strength, call quality, and 3G speeds in Northern California compared to AT&T’s network. I had no dropped calls with the Droid Eris, while I often couldn’t even place calls or had to redial multiple times with the iPhone 3GS. Call quality wasn’t anything special, but was clear and reliable. The SpeedTest.net App showed that the the ping time to the same servers with the Droid Eris had a tenth as much of lag over several tests as the iPhone 3GS. The download speeds with both AT&T and Verizon in the same spot at the same time were fairly identical for Download speeds coming in at 1400kbps for the iPhone 3GS and 1500kbps for the Droid Eris. However Upload speeds were quite astonishing, Verizon had a clear win with about 800kbps on average while AT&T struggled with a mere 100kbps. For the most part, the Droid Eris has great hardware and utilizes the excellent Verizon Wireless network seamlessly. If you enable WiFi to connect to a broadband network, things only get even better.

Battery Life – 4/5 stars
Most smart phones have fairly poor battery life since they are often running applications and constantly using cellular networks to check for email and retrieve other bits of data. The HTC Droid Eris has a replaceable 1300mAh lithium ion battery which can handle up to 5 hours of talk time or at least a week on standby. In reality those numbers were significantly less due to constant fiddling with the phone to use the browser, listen to music, reply to emails, or utilize any of the phone’s variety of features. Most customers will actually see about 3 hours of talk time and about 3 days worth of standby, which isn’t a bad thing. It just means you’re using your phone.

Bottom Line
I was quite impressed and satisfied with the Droid Eris for Verizon Wireless just as we were with the HTC Hero on Sprint. It’s got all the goods needed to be a good smartphone from the Android operating system, a touch screen, a good camera, WiFi, and a App store. There’s plenty of features to keep you entertained, informed, and busy at all times. The HTC Sense UI takes the personalization and customizations features to a whole new level which customers will appreciate. It’s also cheapest Android device on the market costing just $99 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and signing a new 2-year contract. A data plan is required. If you are looking for a new entry level smartphone and don’t want to spend too much, this is definitely the best one out there.

Buy: Droid Eris on Amazon for $99
Links: HTC Droid Eris – VerizonWireless.com

The Body – 3/5 stars
HTC kept the front Touch Pro2 clean and simple. There’s a large 3.6 inch resistive touch screen, a touch zoom strip, and physical keys for Send, End, Start Menu, and Back on front. Along the sides, there’s a completely flush volume toggle button. A slot to store the stylus for the display is in the bottom right hand corner of the device. The proprietary USB charging port is right besides a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom. It also supports up to 32GB microSD expansion, but no card is included, which is a bit dissapointing. If I had to describe this phone with a quote, it would be: “Business in the front, party in the back.” While not describing a mullet for once, the clean-cut front is offset by an odd array of square perforations on the back surrounding the camera and an oddly placed microphone button. Although these perforations may be able to collect dust, they’re actually openings for the fairly respectable built-in speaker. There’s a full-sized QWERTY keyboard that slides out from under the display. Once extended, the screen can actually prop up at an angle, similar to a laptop. Although it is a neat way place on a flat surface to watch Sprint TV, I felt as though it just made the entire mechanism weaker was quite awkward to use when held. I also should mention this phone is huge. It’s thicker and weighs more than just about any smartphone I’ve come across. It’s at least 0.2 inches thicker than the HTC Eris and weighs about 2 ounces more than the HTC Hero. While there’s a demographic that’s needs this type of a phone, I would imagine that most consumers would prefer carrying a more compact device.

The Keyboard – 4/5 stars
The QWERTY keyboard has large buttons which have a “papery” feel. For some this means comfort, for others it may come off as cheap. While the 5 rows of keys were well spaced out, it would have been nice for them to have a more positive “click” when typing. While most phones have an on-screen indicator for Caps Lock and Function modifiers, the Touch Pro2 had real LED indicators as found on traditional keyboards. There’s also a sensor that turns on the back lighting when dark.

Speakers & Headphones – 4/5 stars
In regards to speakers and all things audio, the HTC Touch Pro2 does not disappoint. With decent reception, all calls sounded clear with through the earpiece. It was difficult to use this phone in even moderately loud areas as audio gets drowned out since the ear piece volume doesn’t get loud enough. It would be preferable to have a louder earpiece that needs to be turned down than having to struggle at max volume. Fortunately the speaker on the back is excellent. It’s just as clear a the earpiece, but the speaker-phone mode gets pretty loud. It’s not just for phone calls, but quality was quite impressive for both listening to music and watching Sprint TV. While it may not be the best for audiophiles like me, lacking punchy lows and articulate highs, the average business user won’t even notice.

The Display – 3/5 stars
As with any smartphone these days, the most notable feature is the display. The HTC Touch Pro2 sports a 480×800 pixel WVGA (Wide-VGA) resistive touch screen. Resistive touch screens utilize  layers of conductive material that registers inputs when pressed with either a finger or stylus. Unfortunately this is now a fairly old technology and is quite frankly being replaced by more advance multi-touch capacitive display technologies such as the one on the Sprint HTC Hero. Some people living in colder areas often prefer styluses since capacitive displays, such as the one found on the iPhone, will not work when wearing gloves. The downside of the Touch Pro2’s display includes needing to figure out how hard to press on the display, lack of multi-touch, and it can get activated and accept inputs while in your pocket. The phone ended up accidentally dialing a few of my contacts. Despite that, it was still quite accurate and I rarely missed an item or key when put to use.

Operating System – 2/5 stars
The HTC Touch Pro2 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1. The most recent version of Windows Mobile, 6.5, just missed being available for this phone by a few months. The use of Windows Mobile is also the reason the phone uses a resistive display rather than a capacitive one. It just doesn’t support it yet. For the most part the operating system can adequately handle all of the HTC Touch Pro2’s features, but it’s far from being the fastest or most efficient mobile operating systems out there. It’s just too hard to even begin to explain how much further and advance competing operating systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone OS, and Palm’s WebOS are. While HTC has added a beautiful TouchFLO 3D interface to overlay the outdated Windows Mobile interface, you still run into those menus and pages. It’s often sluggish to respond when switching through menus, opening programs, and even performing general tasks. It’s simply not as initiative as the next generations of mobile operating systems that are now available. HTC’s hardware is great as we’ve seen on the Hero and Sprint’s network is fairly reliable, it’s the outdated software that’s holding this device back. No one want’s to look at or use “Windows 98″-esque menus.

Sprint TV – 5/5 stars
One feature Sprint touts with this phone is their popular Sprint TV application. It offers numerous channels from Disney to motorcycle racing. It should have something for just about everyone. There’s even live TV for the major channels and full length episodes for primetime shows. To enable Sprint TV, you must first, annoyingly, disconnect from Wi-Fi networks. It only works with Sprint’s 3G network. I can’t possibly imagine why both can’t work in coexistence, but I’ll blame it on the Windows Mobile OS. Despite that, Sprint TV was quite impressive. Even with low reception, I had a crisp and clear image and smooth audio. While AT&T and Verizon are in a war over 3G coverage area, I should note that Sprint’s 3G network is also impressively quite fast. Plus, I’m eager to test their new 4G network.

Wi-Fi & Web Browser – 2/5 stars
I faced issues a couple of times logging into a secured WiFi network that requires authentication through a browser. After several repeated attempts, it finally worked. Once connected, signal strength was quite strong. However it was a bit of a painful process compared to other smartphones that will have you connected in a click or two. I was also unimpressed with the built in browser. It’s behind in several ways: speed, compatibility, and navigation. It takes longer to render pages than on other devices. Even once rendered, it has issues displaying many web pages that work just fine on the browsers on the iPhone, Droid, and Palm. Navigating wasn’t much easier. With out the increasingly popular pinch-to-zoom function, you’ll need to resort to using the touch sensitive strip below the display. Scrolling through pages was not as snappy as other mobile browsers either.

The Camera – 2/5 stars
Should you ever need to use your James Bond-like reflexes to whip out the HTC Touch Pro2’s camera to snap a license plate number, you’re better off not even trying. It takes way too long to load. And even when you’re in the viewfinder mode, it’s still laggy. While the HTC Eris’s 5 megapixel camera performed impressively well, the HTC Touch Pro2’s 3.2 megapixel camera looked about as clear as a 1 megapixel camera on my ancient Audiovox phone. Even with auto-focus, capturing a quality image of an object only a yard away proved difficult. Seeing how far camera technology has progressed, the results of this camera was quite disappointing. While it can record video, I won’t bother explaining that.

Messaging – 4/5 stars
Text messaging and email both worked smoothly on the HTC Touch Pro2. Email was easy to set up and updated itself as scheduled. POP, IMAP, and MS Exchange are supported. Emails are displayed as physical envelopes and are neat to interact with. Replying to messages was easy, but switching between messages required a bit of fidgeting with the touchscreen or the help of the stylus. Text messaging are displayed in a thread format continuing off of the last message sent in the conversation. While it didn’t offer great interface that the HTC Hero does, the HTC Touch Pro2 did prove functional.

GPS Navigation – 0/5
If you are looking for a device to replace a traditional car mounted or built-in navigation system, the HTC Touch Pro2 isn’t the answer. Although the HTC Touch Pro2 advertises GPS Navigation, it’s far from delivering it reasonably. I tried to get the GPS to locate my position, but just about every attempt failed even after trying from many different areas. I repeatedly saw a “Signal reception is poor, please go outside and stand still.” Even if it connected, I wouldn’t be standing still when driving. While the Touch Pro2 repeatedly had issues, the Google Maps app on the HTC Hero worked perfectly in the same locations at the same time. Compared to the navigator on the Motorola Droid which has voice commands, voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, satellite/street views, traffic data, and much more, this phone seems like it’s in the stone age.

Battery Life & Charging – 4/5 stars
The battery life on the HTC Touch Pro2 proved to last about a day and a half with normal use. I would make  some calls, read some emails, send a few texts, load some web pages and show off the Sprint TV on average. This is about average for a smartphone, nothing impressive. Once you receive the low battery notification, you have about 10 minutes before the phone powers itself off. The devices claims about 6 hours of talk time and it sounds about right. Standby is apparently 11 days, but even with slight use, you won’t get nearly as much. You need to charge the phone with the included USB cable. I liked the modular feature since it can connect either to your computer or the port on the AC adapter. I do wish HTC used a miniUSB or now standard microUSB port instead.

Bottom Line:
Overall the HTC Touch Pro2 is a great phone for business users. It has many of the features to be a mobile office in your pocket. The most important aspect, calls sounded great and signal strength was stronger than on other Sprint devices. The build quality is fairly good and the QWERTY keyboard is useful for composing messages. It’s still nowhere as intuitive or “fun” of a device compared to competing smartphones, but that’s mainly due to Windows Mobile 6.1 being truly outdated. The HTC Touch Pro2 also has the largest touch screen Sprint offers. I wouldn’t recommend this phone to just anyone. It will run you nearly $349 with a new two-year contract, making it the most expensive phone Sprint currently offers. It’s not for average dad, mom, or student. They will find the HTC Hero a much more pleasurable device. However for business users, it’s probably one of the best phones out there.

Links: Sprint.com HTC Touch Pro2

On another note, Verizon Wireless also announced the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530. Unlike the clickable touch-screen the Storm2 features (see our review), it has traditional form factor with a physical QWERTY keyboard. Unlike older BlackBerry phones, this one does away with the trackball, replacing it with a touch-sensitive trackpad. And for some quick specs for this phone, it’s packed with WiFi, 3G, GPS, 2 megapixel camera, and mainly a lot of business/enterprise features. The Curve 9530 will be available on November 20th for $99 after a $100 rebate and signing a 2-year contract.

We will be getting a hold of both of these phones in the coming days and will be publishing full reviews shortly after. In the meantime, to be the first to read our reviews, subscribe to our RSS Feed, sign up for Email Subscriptions, or find us on Facebook or Twitter!

The Hardware: 5/5 stars
Although the HTC Hero shares similar elements of style from it’s European predecessor, this model has a new and revised body. The distinctive bottom lip (Jay Leno chin?) that characterized the original Hero has been replaced with a more traditional rounded edge. I never spent much time handling the chin-ed version, but I’m satisfied with the comfort the new HTC Hero offers. There’s a large illuminated trackball centered below the display. A send and end button are on the far left and right of the bottom portion, respectively. A Menu and Home key are on the left of the trackball while the search and back key are on the right. The mini USB port is on the bottom, the camera is centered on the top portion of the back side, and the headphone jack is on the top of the phone. The trackball was quite responsive and the inclusion of physical keys for answer and ending calls suited my taste. The phone isn’t the most fancy device on the market by any means, but it’s smoke gray coat with gun-metal accents look elegant. The phone’s also has a great grip to it and feels durable enough to survive a few small drops.

Touch Screen Display: 4/5 stars
The HTC Hero features a 3.2 inch 320×480 HVGA display. I should note that this is one of the few Android devices that supports multi-touch gestures. Even the Motorola Droid on Verizon lacks it. The screen is pretty bright and sharp. It isn’t extraordinary, but meets the standard of other smartphone displays. The default touch sensitivity was just right and was quite responsive. Since the phone doesn’t have a physical keyboard, the on-screen keyboard is the only option. It takes a bit of getting used to especially if you are moving over from a device that had a physical QWERTY keyboard. Even with a bit of practice, it’s still isn’t as easy to use as the virtual keyboard on an iPhone. The screen is a bit smaller and slower to respond. Photos and Videos either captured by the phone or transferred over all looked great on the display.

Battery Life: 2.5/5 stars
After using the phone for about a week or so, I have become quite disappointed with the battery life. A full charge should be able to last at least a full day. And of course, bearing in mind that you only run a fair amount of applications at a time. I found myself having to cut back down on checking emails, refreshing Facebook, and browsing Twitter just to save enough charge. Although HTC claims 5 hours of talk time and 360 hours of standby, I can testify that it didn’t last nearly as long. I did however see standby time improve after disabling the GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, however features such as those are what make this phone a good phone. I feel as though improvements could be made as easily as by releasing a software upgrade to manage power usage better.

User Interface: 4/5 stars
The user interface is a distinguishable factor of the phone. Dubbed “HTC Sense”, the interface is composed of seven customizable panels. These provide a wrap around panoramic view of everything going on. The panels are fully customizable offering you the power to select which widgets or application shortcuts appear. I found that the preloaded layout to be quite adequate for the average user, but it’s fun and useful to spend a few minutes and pick the things that fit your needs and taste. I wish more freedom was offered to rearrange items on the home screen. Overall, the interface looks quite wonderful, colorful, and exciting. Plus the widgets offer plenty of information on those panels without even having to open applications. The HTC Hero runs on v1.5 of the Android OS, but rumor states that an upgrade to the v2.0 OS will be possible in the near future.

Messaging + Email: 4/5 stars
The preloaded messaging app has a solid set of features. For SMS, it displays history of conversations between you and your contacts. Following a threaded message is more convenient than a mess most phones call an inbox. The default options such as quick text and attaching files are available. Unlike the the iPhone prior to the 3.0 OS, the Android supports copy and paste. Multimedia messaging worked seamlessly with Sprint’s network. Although the casual texter should be satisfied with the default app and a quick search on the Android Market will uncover more powerful messaging tools for the power users. Email on the Hero was quite remarkable. The setup process was easy and I didn’t have any configuration issues with any of the accounts I added in. The Mail App even provides the ability to consolidate multiple email accounts into a single view. Emails can also be tagged or labeled for organization. The Android 2.0 OS takes it a step further with more features, but even the current version offers just about all the features anyone would want on a mobile device.

Camera + Camcorder: 4.5/5 stars
The HTC Hero offers a powerful 5.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Unfortunately, a flash is missing and would have been a welcome addition. Photos can be shot in either landscape or portrait mode. Images max out at resolution of 2560×1920 pixels. There are a number of other features found in the setting including self-timer and timestamps. Photos in your library can also be easily uploaded to web services including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. The camcorder functions almost as well. It wasn’t remarkable, but decent for a phone. Recorded videos can also be uploaded to YouTube or shortened clips can be sent out through a MMS.

Music: 5/5 stars
The Hero comes preloaded with an easy to use and functional music app. A widget displays the album cover and offers a few basic controls. Tapping on it will launch the full application. There’s a cover flow view similar to what iPods offer. There’s also a list view which allows browsing by Artists, Albums, and Genres. The phone even has a built in tool to create custom ring tones with your own music, take that iPhone! Sound quality through the speaker was decent. The quality with standard headphones plugged into a 3.5mm headphone jack is a lot better. No cumbersome headphone adapters required! And since Android can handle multitasking, you can do just about anything else you want while listening to music. This is especially handy with Pandora. Once again, iPhone can’t do that either. The Hero utilizes Amazon MP3 as it’s primary music store just as the iPhone does with iTunes.

App Store: 4/5 stars
The Android Market offers over 10,000 applications. That may sound like a lot, but that’s still a 10% of the 100,000 found in Apple’s App Store. Despite that, the quality of the applications I found were quite impressive. The interface allowed an easy way to browse, find, or search for programs. The reviews and ratings also help making decisions towards purchasing paid ones. Installation is as easy as tapping a button. The Android Market continues to grow and I’m fairly confident that with more Android-based phones hitting the market, there will be even more quality applications coming along.

Other Features: 5/5 stars
The web browser is fairly powerful and is close to what the Palm Pre and Apple iPhone offer. It utilizes the same pinch gesture to zoom in and out of web pages. There’s a tabbed interface to browse through different pages. Although it jerks at times, it isn’t too much of an issue. If you have decent amount of signal, pages load fairly quickly on Sprint’s 3G network. Plus with WiFi built in, everything becomes a whole lot faster. I was happy with the GPS performance on the Hero and the ability to use two very powerful navigation tools is a huge advantage over some other phones. Other features like the Sprint TV and Navigation package is a very nice benefit for being with Sprint. With Sprint’s Everything Data plans you have unlimited access to both.

Bottom Line:
The HTC Hero is a powerful smartphone and has a lot to offer. The hardware is excellent and the Android software is truly flexible. If you are currently in the market for a new phone, I would highly recommend taking a look at the Hero. I would definitely rank the Hero as one of Sprint’s best phones along with the Palm Pre. I wouldn’t suggest it for customers that aren’t tech-savvy, want a cheap plan, or don’t need business features. The packaging includes an AC adapter, a USB cable, a 2GB micro SD card, and documentation. If you are ready to grab one, it’s priced at $179.99 with a new 2-yr contract.

Links: Sprint.com HTC Hero | HTC.com HTC Hero Info

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Links: Sprint.com