HTC Hero on Sprint — $479 With No Contract
This just hit my inbox this morning from Sprint, carriers of the HTC Hero. The Android phone is now available for order for $179.99 with a new contract. I am not eligible for the upgrade price as I only bought my Palm Pre a while ago. I ran through the Sprint order system and the Hero will cost me $479 with no contract. I found it most interesting that Sprint is pushing the Hero as the phone “with Google.” As near as I can tell from the what I’ve read and from the evaluation Hero I am using, the Hero doesn’t have the official Google branding. That’s why it has that tight Exchange Server integration baked in.
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I have a Pre but was itching to try this since Pre is frustrating me. It is just too slow and phone for me at least is almost unusable. I bought Hero on eBay for $350… $479 IMHO is ridiculous.
Have you got the Hero yet? I’m interested to hear your thoughts about it, especially coming from the Pre.
Bought it on Saturday, so it will be in my grabby hands this week.
My plan is to use it for a month and decide which one to keep. Loser goes on eBay :-)
I’ll let you know how I like it.
I just bought a hero and love it, about the only issue I had was letting other people use it initially. It has a learning UI, so that caused me some grief. I reset and started over it, it is running great now.
My wife got the palm treo pre pro. She traded it for a hero two days late and she loves it. She just wanted a phone that was easy to use.
Hey James,
I got it, tried it for couple of days, and sold it tonight on eBay. It is great phone really. The Sense UI really adds a lot to this phone. There are two complaints I had:
1. Phone was slow. In some things even slower than Pre. It has 3 years old processor. Why they decided to put that in is mystery.
2. Push email did not always work instantly as it does on Pre. That is deal breaker for me.
3. Browser is not as good as Pre’s let alone as good as iPhone.
It is good first try but it still needs work even compared to Pre. It can’t come close to iPhone though.
But I really liked all customization and apps Android has.
Hmm…. I *think* you can still do phone swaps on the same plan online at http://www.sprint.com/activate as needed. If that’s the case, I may look at the Hero a little more… or perhaps the Behold 2 or Moment. Ugh… :)
Yeah I’m switching to the Hero with new activation today, and if the Moment turns out to be a better phone with that faster processor, I can just trade for that as it’s within the 30 day trial period. I wonder if the Sense UI could be ported to the Moment…
Ordered mine today, hope to get it some time this week. I would have bought it at Best buy or Sprint store but I’m getting a monthly service discount through online order. I’ll let you know, I’m worried about the processor but its the right time. I cant wait for the “perfect” phone.
I have the G1 which from what I have been reading over the last month you can load the Hero rom onto the G1, I have not done this yet because I see there are some performance issues with it and dont feel like fooling with it right now cause I am sure I will just go back to the cupcake.
If the Verizon/Google press conference from last week was any indication, Schmidt is perfectly happy with HTC Sense; he was holding a Verizon version of the Hero. Hopefully Google has lightened up about the “with Google” issue.