I have now owned and used the HTC Hero G2 Touch for a couple of months now and felt it was time to spill the beans on both the good and bad side of this phone. A lot of people will happily ignore the bad points on some reviews as they are now locked into a long contract but I do not believe in hiding the things that should just work.
The Good
The size of the phone is very small and thin – I have no trouble carrying this around in either my Jean’s pocket or my suit trousers and the weight does not come into question. I have not had a single case of the phone doing mad things while in my pocket, by comparison the Sony W850 I had liked to text and call people all the time.
I like the fact it takes Micro SD Cards which means I can go out and buy extra and/or larger cards to suit, swapping the cards did not prove difficult at all and can be done with the phone on. I have yet to upgrade from the supplied 2GIG card which holds quite a few applications as well as a collection of music.
There is a varied amount of application on offer and the phone offer’s multi touch, the applications all have ratings which help pick out the good from the bad and most I have come across are free. I would prefer if the paid apps had a demo mode and let me install them to see if I want to buy them rather then pay and hope for the best that they do what they say on the can.
The Bad
Battery Life – this is the most major bad point I can say right now and in reality I charge this phone each night. I spent a day at work patching in network points and listened to some music stored on the card plus making a few phone calls, checking mail and such and the battery used 1/4 of it power (this is good). Another day I drove 120 miles to see the family and used the GPS function, it had almost ran out of battery by 4pm. Heavy use of the 3G and/or wireless will kill the battery it seems.
The phone goes to sleep while on a call, not good if you need to press a numbered button and you end off killing the call instead. When the phone rings – the screen is still locked, maybe this is something I need to get used to I guess. It is fiddly to switch to Speaker phone mode and the whole calling experience is in fact flawed. While using the supplied hands free headphones – I managed to start the music in the middle of a call – not good.
Speed – the whole thing seems very slow to use and could do with some updates to be honest and I need to speak about the GPS part. This is not a replacement for a GPS, it kept telling me to turn left on a Major road where there was no left turn, I think it was referring to much later on in the journey and it kept saying “Pay Attention”.
Conclusion
It is a good phone but they need to re-think when putting these phones out that Battery life is mega important. It would be easier to buy the individual parts (such as GPS for your car) then trying to let the phone do everything.
