(A post from Mai, our web developer/Android guru)
The Road Less Travelled
Before anything else, a disclaimer: This is NOT a technical gadget review. I won’t be talking about the specs here because you can Google that anyway. This is going to be about my experience as a “fresh” user because the HTC Hero is my first smartphone. My phone prior to this was a chipped (and cheap) flashlight phone that had a yellow backlight. Save for Snake and its built-in super useful flashlight, you can’t do much with it except to call and text. Which were all I really needed in a phone, anyway. Of course…until I started using the Hero.
I actually wanted an iPhone 3GS because it looks hot stuff and I can play SIMS3 on it. Furthermore, one of our business’ core competencies is iPhone development, and adding another toy for our app development experiments wouldn’t hurt. But a month ago we also decided to enter the world of Google Android so my business partners convinced me to get a Google phone instead. Annoyed as I was, I gave in. Practicality over vanity. After more than a week of hacking and ‘lovemaking’ with my HTC Hero, I’m glad I took the road less traveled.
The HTC Hero is a gadget from another galaxy.
Cool and creepy
The minute I turned on my phone and connected to a network, I teleported to another dimension. I was totally awed when I discovered that it automatically pinned down my exact location and its local time, its current weather, its current temperature and the expected high and low temps of the day without me entering any kind of information (gone are the days of entering date and time). It was cool and creepy at the same time. Cool because my phone finally has a mind of its own and I felt like I was in a James Bond movie, creepy because I associate the advancement of technology to the end of the world. The device felt so futuristic that I kinda expected it to know my favorite color and current celebrity crush as well. And to my amazement, it did. Read on. (Can you imagine the convenience, you don’t have to key in your date and time each time you travel to a different timezone).
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