1) No “phone/send” key on the front. I get that Google values search over everything else, but really? No key to pull up the phone app, when you have FOUR buttons on the front? (anyone find an app to re-configure these buttons yet?)
2) Keyboard — not enough definition between the keys, makes it harder to use.
3) Wake up — the only button that pulls the phone from sleep is on the top. I have pretty big hands, but this function makes it hard to wake the phone up with only one handed operation. (Or without maneuvering the phone in such a way that I feel like I might drop it.)

Other than that, I’m very pleased with the device, especially with GV as the dialer and text messaging app. Google Nav is really very well done, too.

Droid can and DOES multitask…just depends on the app and whether it incorporates that functionality.

I think we’ll see better implementation of gestures in Android, once Google re-codes their own native apps, accordingly.

My understanding is that Verizon’s CDMA network does not allow this while you can on ATT.

The Hero had me frustrated in other areas, too. As someone who takes a lot of voice noted, I couldn’t believe how bad the recording quality was on the Hero. Video recording looked good on the Hero’s screen, but then if I recorded longer than two minutes, the recording started to show strange flickers and color shifts. And the battery! Holy god, I was consistently down to 50% by lunchtime with minimal use. (This may have been due to the apparent problem with the messaging app, but I returned the phone before finding out. No regrets.)

Yes, I miss some of HTC’s polish (the weather app, particularly on a rainy day, was the first thing I would show people on the phone) but Android 2.0 integrates Facebook into Contacts in a frankly more usable way (I love simply clicking a contact’s picture for that slick fly-out menu) and I find myself wanting for little more than graphical refinements from HTC. And to me, this is the clincher: I LOVE knowing that I don’t have to wait for HTC to make adjustments to their own UI before I’m allowed to get OS updates. I’m impatient like that!

So, in short, the reasons to stick with the Droid over the Hero:

Much more powerful processor
Much better screen
Much better battery life
Much better audio & video recording
No 3rd party developer standing in the way of OS updates

And on size? While the Hero was certainly lighter, I actually think it felt bigger in the hand.

Hope this helps your decision making process!

I definitely think that Android is getting better, and so far is eclipsing everything but the iPhone, but they aren’t just a year or two behind the iPhone in maturity, they have a very different design point, and its going to end up more like the Mac vs. other desktop OS’s. Apple limits what you can do to maintain purity of design, and wins in usability and the discoverability of features. Windows and Linux and Android let you customize everything, but are always going to be much harder to use.

I can’t imagine going back to using an onscreen keyboard nor Google Maps without multi-touch. To use their own analogy, it would be like the Air Force taking delivery of a new stealth fighter only to discover the engineers designed it so the pilot had to lean out of the cockpit with a .45 and bang away at the enemy!

The reason I ask is that the more prominent reviews seem to have lauded the audio quality, while the real world feedback has been heavily mixed, with some people claiming a massive improvement over the iphone, others having people ask them to stop calling them from the droid because it sounds so bad or they cut out a lot.

There could be a lot of reasons involved in these complaints, but when I see trends like this, especially when the prime reviewers have no problems, but the early adopters do, I worry about QA issues in the final production units. (I’ve been bitten by that before, though usually with samsung devices)

When I hear a ringing endorsement for Google’s app like the one here….it seems more likely that Garmin and Tom Tom’s market share are in danger.

Interesting to see a shakeup in the niche world of gps navigation systems.

The web browsing experience is very good too.