Great article! I do not own an iPhone nor an ipod Touch so I have no experience with the app store. I am curious about what the app store was like in it's first year. The Android Market is roughly 1 year old. How does it compare to the app store at the same age? I see people comparing the 3rd generation iPhone to 1st and/or 2nd gen Android phones. Same thing with the respective markets/stores (not saying you are doing that here). I'd like to see a little perspective that takes into account the fact that the iPhone and it's app store have been out longer.

It is not possible to use the standard Android contacts app without some serious hacking.

You can remove the Facebook link for your contacts though. Unfortunately this can only be done one contact at a time. Select a contact in the People app. When viewing that contact's details press the "update" icon at the bottom. Then press menu and select "Remove Facebook link".

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news! Verizon customer service gave you incorrect information. This may cheer you up though: http://news.vzw.com/news/2009/11/pr2009-11-05.htm... (Droid Eris $99.99)

I'm not surprised by this. I believe that 1.6 was meant for the G1 and tmo released it for the MT3g just to keep the peace with tmo customers. G1 probably will not get 2.0 but the rest of the Android phones will go straight to 2.0 from 1.5. Pure speculation, but things seem to be moving in that direction.

Sense UI is still on the phone. What you are doing here is just choosing to use the standard Android Home instead of the Sense Home. There are other elements of Sense UI that are built into Android and still perform as expected even after one changes the "home" default. The HTC People app is one example of this. People integrates Facebook and Flickr updates into the address book. There is also HTC's Twitter App called Peep. Peep and People continue to work after Sense Home is turned off. There is also HTC's phone manager and customized web browser. Everything works. Going back to the Sense home is easy and painless.

It's basically like choosing to use one app over another. In this case it's the homescreen app. As far as updates are concerned. The Hero is based on HTC's Customized Android kernel. The only official way to get an update is when HTC and/or Sprint releases one. When that happens it will work on the Hero regardless of whether or not you have turned Sense home off.

Here is a good comparison between the ARM11 and the Cortex-A8. It's a long read but does a good job in explaining why the Cortex-A8 is faster despite only a modest gain in clock speed. Cortex-A8 "allows multiple instructions to be active at any given stage in the pipeline", while the ARM11 only allows one instruction at a time. The article gives a better explanation than I could: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3...

Pressing and holding the HOME button or pressing the NENU button both result in the default actions...and neither one allow for discriminate changing between Home and Sense. If, after you switch to Home from Sense, you hold the HOME button you will see Sense in the recently used apps popup but that will only be in that list for a short time until you use some more apps....If you don't select either as default as outlined in Step 8, you will be prompted which home to use every time you press your HOME button.

I don't have the GSM Hero but I believe you should look for "TouchFlo" in the list of apps and turn off the defaults for it. Hope this helps.

With all that this phone does right, the apparent lack of a flash has me scratching my head. Hopefully Acer will add a flash to the final build.

I walked into my local Best Buy and talked to one of the mobile sales people. He logged into his employee account and read the Sprint Hero Reward Zone early access info to me. He did say that an email was sent out to RZ members. I never received one and asked if I needed that email to pick up my Hero on Friday. Best Buy guy said no, "just bring in your Reward Zone card."