At the moment it doesn't look like Sprint will be bringing anything new on the smartphone front to market before this summer AND I'm at that point in the smartphone cycle where I'm getting bored with my Palm Pre. It's not that the Pre is a bad phone. It's a great phone! However, I do tend to get bored with things after some time and the fact is I've been packing my Pre since June of last year. It might not sound like a long time but for me this is fairly impressive! I believe I've mentioned here before just how many smartphones I've gone through in the two years I've been with Sprint, four in two years. The Motorola Q9c lasted the longest with me at nine months while the Blackberry Curve 8330 lasted all of three months before my frustration with the device forced me to revert to my old HTC Touch Diamond.
With new Windows Phone 7 phones not hitting the market until the holiday shopping season and without anything exciting looking to be coming from the Palm camp any time soon I've pretty much settled on an Android device being my next smartphone. I got a bit of hands on time with the HTC Hero last year after it first came out for Sprint and I enjoyed many of the features of the device. The Samsung Moment looks good on paper (or computer screen) but there is just something about that device that just rubs me the wrong way. It might be the difficulties in updating the device (taking it to a Sprint service center) or the "plain" build of Android that it ships with. The 800Mhz CPU and AMOLED screen are the only two things about the device I like while everything else leaves me less than impressed. The hardware itself seems clunky and the layout of the QWERTY keyboard is just too hinky for me. It's a large plastic slab of a phone. Call me vain but looks matter in my smartphone devices.
This leaves me thinking about getting the HTC Hero from Sprint with my annual upgrade. There are a few reasons for my thinking on this one.
- I like the look and feel of the phone in my hand. Beautiful hardware there!
- It runs the currently shipping version of HTC Sense interface which is rather nice based on my previous experience with the phone.
- It has seven "home" screens rather than the three of regular plain Android.
- In some ways it integrates with social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr better than the Palm Pre.
- The quality of pictures from the Hero is probably the best of all the smartphones I've used.
- This will give me some time to play with Android to better get a "feel" for the OS and determine if that is what I want to use on a longer term basis.
Two things are keeping me from clicking "Buy Now" on the Sprint website though. First, the WebOS 1.4 update is due any day now from Palm. Second,I keep thinking I should hold off until at least next month to see what CTIA brings in the way of announcements from Sprint. However, based on CES and MWC I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope on Sprint making any sort of "big" announcements.
If I do decide to grab the Hero I'll more than likely hold on to my Pre for at least a couple of months. With Sprint it's very easy to switch phones (unless one is a Blackberry!) so I can tote the Pre one day and the Hero the next depending on my mood. Also, by keeping the Pre as a "backup" phone I can do some serious playing with the Hero (rooting the phone, playing with custom ROMS, etc) without worrying about being stuck with a new paper weight.
Okay, who am I really kidding here? Odds are very good that by the end of today I'll probably end up clicking "Buy Now"...
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 1:42PM