HTC Hero review

HTC takes aim at the iPhone again - but is the Hero a hit or a miss?

The HTC Hero review
The HTC Hero review

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Battery life on the HTC Hero was fair to middling, although we were impressed with a 1350mAh battery under the hood. It shows that there's probably a fair amount of processing going on at any one time when such a battery will only last around 1.5 days under normal use, as in all honesty we'd have expected more.

The htc hero battery

Actually, that's not a very fair statement, as the likes of the internet and sheer range of applications available meant that we picked up and played with the HTC Hero quite a lot throughout the day, and that's without the natural calling and texting you'd expect to do.

However, once the battery meter starts to fall, the phone quickly runs out of power, meaning as soon as the green bar begins to drop you should probably think about heading to the nearest plug socket.

The htc hero

The organisational aspects of the phone lie largely in its synchronisation with Google Calendar and Mail, with a bit of Facebook thrown in for good measure. You can observe your friend's birthdays, look at all your work schedules (if you use Google Calendars for such) and... well, that's pretty much it for the likes of organisational tools on the phone.

Of course, you can always synchronise your Microsoft Outlook Calendars too thanks to Exchange integration, but if you're looking for much beyond calendar functionality and a bit of calculation or stock information then you should probably head for the Market, where there's a whole host of extra application goodness to play with.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.