The Hero has 4 buttons and a central trackball/button on its front. These buttons are the current application menu button, the home screen button, the search window button, and the back button. The central ball is a track-pad like button.
The first task was to browse the net. I immediately attempted to open Google's search page. I clicked on the web and typed the address in.
Once Google's search results came in I attempted to zoom in. As a note zoom in isn't supported on mobile websites. I didn't know this. What came as a shock was that it allowed a kind of zoom out and then bounce back. This to me was unnatural, and made me think perhaps that my zoom in motion was wrong. If zoom isn't supported on a mobile site then disable zoom completely.
Google provides many results. I clicked the first. I then changed my mind and clicked the second but at this point the browser was busy and couldn't respond to my new choice. So it's still loading the first page and this is not going fast. The page loaded finally.
Once the page was open I had to scroll up and down to paginate. This didn't feel extremely smooth, but of course it worked. At this point I started to open new pages, and go back and forth. This was very confusing. I sometimes had to use the menu button, and sometimes had to use the back button. Not a very good experience. I couldn't figure out if there was a browser forward button.
I now want to navigate to a new page. How to get to an address bar. Not very intuitive. I figure it out using either the menu button, or perhaps the back button to start a new search.
Now I have to modify the text. If I want to just change a few letters of the text box then I have to navigate around the text box using the track-ball. Horrific! It doesn't allow a continuous motion, you must keep pushing it to move it a few spaces at a time. Big negative for functionality.
It's important to be able to use the landscape view while browsing. I tried this. I found it's response time for detecting landscape vs portrait position lagged quite a bit. Sometimes it didn't seem to figure it out at all.
I must've used the Hero for at least an hour in the Sprint store. I was very disappointed. It wasn't responsive, and it didn't have the uniformity in the UI that I expected. I walked away realizing that the HTC Hero isn't ready.
After this experience I went on to try out an IPhone 3GS.
The IPhone has a single menu button on its front. This button brings you to the main menu. All other functionality is provided via the application using the touchscreen. This enables each application to give you the exact buttons you need and only when you need them.
I started on the IPhone by browsing to Google. The IPhone immediately brings up an address bar and the favorites menu. I liked this very much since Google was one of the first pages listed. I click on Google. I do a search.
I test zoom in. Doesn't work. I test zoom out. Doesn't work. I guess the IPhone also doesn't support zoom on a mobile page. I'm happy to say that IPhone's response was uniform - both zoom in and zoom out do nothing.
I click on a result and then decide to click on another one. The IPhone has no problem with this and immediately begins loading the second link I clicked. The page is now loading and seems to come up pretty fast.
The page is up and I begin to paginate. Feels very responsive and smooth. Zooming works well too. Now I'm going to open a new page. There are a few ways to do this and they are all pretty natural. I scroll up to the top of the page and I have the address bar and the Google search box. I can both load a new page directly or start a new search. There are also 4 buttons that the IPhone puts at the bottom of the screen of the browser screen. Back and forth buttons, bookmarks, and a browser window select button. I love the back and forth as they work well and as one would expect. The window select button allows a new browser window to be created or deleted and allows you to choose which window to view. Very simple in its use.
I now want to put a new address in or perhaps modify the text. Very simple to understand. You can double click on the text and it selects it, a single click brings up a select all like menu. There are little notches that you can move around for selecting parts of words. This is simple. I start to modify the text and I can easily browse to a new page.
Portrait versus landscape view. The IPhone can also detect this and it does it seamlessly. There is an expected delay of about 1.5 seconds which is uniform all around.
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The IPhone made me very happy when compared with the Hero. A much more user friendly experience, higher performance and responsiveness, and overall a superior product.
My experience using the HTC Hero is what so firmly convinced me to buy an IPhone. That said, everyone has their own taste, and my decision is based on what I need in a phone.
(I purposefully omitted a number of functions and abilities that were either explained to me in the Apple store or I discovered later. This is not a tutorial on use but rather a step-by-step history of my impressions of the two phones.)
