Tag Archives: htc hero

iPhone versus Android (HTC Hero edition)

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htc_heroAfter MAX I went backpacking and fell in a river with my iPhone in my pocket. The iPhone is not a fan of water so it was totally dead. I have to get a new one through the Adobe system but this week everyone at Adobe has been on vacation so I wasn’t going to be able to pick up a replacement. That left me with the HTC Hero that I’ve got for demoing Flash mobile content. I swapped the sim card and I’ve been using it all vacation. I hadn’t used any phone but the iPhone for a prolonged period of time in a while so I figured I’d write up my thoughts on the iPhone versus Android now that I’ve actually had to learn the Android quirks.

Overall User Experience

I really, really want Android to succeed. But the iPhone is still the king when it comes to user experience. I find the HTC Hero with Android to be much, much less snappy than the iPhone. When I click something on the iPhone, I get an immediate reaction. On the HTC Hero, there’s a noticeable delay which becomes very annoying. However I like the UI for the Hero a lot better. Android has a nice, polished UI that is mostly intuitive and a bit more interesting than the iPhone’s boring button UI. The responsiveness is what got me though. On a faster phone, I could see Android being king here, but right now: Winner: iPhone

Battery Life

I found the battery life between the iPhone and the HTC Hero to be pretty equal, they both last me less than a day with heavy use. But one thing that I found extremely annoying is that the HTC Hero takes forever to charge via USB while the charging the iPhone over USB works really well. As a result: Winner: iPhone

Software

I love the Android software. I know Apple has the “There’s an App for That” crap, but out of the box, Android rules. Being able to install applications with a barcode scan is also really slick. I found the Android software to be more full featured, have many more hooks into the social networking services I’m a junkie for, and generally just more fun to use. If it wasn’t for the sluggishness, it would be perfect. The exception to this is the mapping. It’s abysmal. No gesture support for zooming, you can’t click on markers and interact with them in the same way you do on the iPhone. It’s just terrible to use. But in general, even with that and all of Apple’s apps, Winner: Android/HTC Hero

Typing

I type a lot on my mobile devices because I use them pretty heavily for email. I found it took a while to get used to the Hero’s keyboard. I like the fact that Android offers you a set of words based on what you’ve typed so you can auto-correct. That feature also makes it easy to add things to the dictionary because you can just click the word you typed and it will be added (no more ‘shot’ and ‘duck’). But even with that enhancement the iPhone’s keyboard is just better at detecting which letter I want to type next. Maybe I just need to spend more time with the Hero, but Winner: iPhone

Annoying Things About Android/HTC Hero

No sensor that detects when the phone isn’t near your face any more. This is just a limitation of the phone but it is annoying as hell. I also think the phone is too “buttony”. While I like the rollerball, it seems like any time I want to do something I have to click a button. With the iPhone they did a great job of making it as gesture-based as possible. The browser is a good example. On the iPhone, to type a URL, just move to the top of the page, and type it. With Android, you have to push the “menu” button. Takes some getting used to and the iPhone feels more natural.

Annoying Things About the iPhone

No Flash Player for one :) . But I also loved the GPS indicators on the Android. The little status icon at the top tells you whether you actually have GPS signal, and the camera lets you know when you’re locked on so it can geotag your photos accordingly. I really wish the iPhone had that.

Summary

In the end, the iPhone is just too damn good. I have high hopes for the Droid, but I’m on AT&T so I won’t be seeing it any time soon. But if the new processor is as good as people say it is, then hopefully we’ll get a snappy Android phone on AT&T soon. When that happens, I’ll ditch the iPhone in a heartbeat.

HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support

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htc_hero_flash_platform

The Flash Platform is coming to Android. Today HTC is shipping their Android-based HTC Hero smartphone and it’s the first Android device with Flash on it. There was a lot of news this week about Adobe delivering the full Flash Player 10 experience in the browser and this is an important step towards this. We’ve set up a section on the Adobe Developer center with HTC Hero information and Adrian Ludwig has a good video that shows off what you’ll be able to do with the device there. Adobe’s mobile evangelist Mark Doherty also has a lot more info. One of the cool things for Flash developers is that this is the first device with multi-touch support for Flash content.

I think the main thing this shows is that Adobe is committed to mobile devices and ensuring that every phone, not just smartphones, has some kind of Flash support. Ultimately it’s about bringing the best Flash experience that the phone can handle. Once we get the runtimes out for Flash Player 10 and AIR then we’ll be able to bring a much more full fidelity experience to higher end devices. But we’ll also continue to support the less powerful devices as well with as many features of the Flash Platform as possible.

In addition to the support for the Flash Platform on the Hero, HTC also announced they’re joining the Open Screen Project (OSP). As I’ve been talking to customers about the OSP I’ve discovered a lot of interesting tidbits about the project. One of them is how we’re working with members to port Flash Player to their devices/chipsets/operating systems. In this case, with Android and the HTC Hero, we gave HTC an ActiveX and Linux reference implementation of the Flash plug-in. HTC then used those to implementations to port the Flash Player to the Android web browser on the device. Adobe, HTC, and Android engineers then worked together to optimize it.

That’s happening with a lot of our partners and all of the work we do helps feed into making Flash Player 10 available for more devices. As an example ever since ARM joined the Open Screen Project engineers from both Adobe and ARM have been working together to make optimizations to the Flash Player for ARM chipsets so any netbook, smart phone, or embedded device with an ARM chip will get an optimized Flash Platform experience. I think it’s going to be a good year for Flash Platform developers who want to get into the mobile space.