Walt Mossberg Reviews Sprint’s HTC Hero

Mossberg:

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

Thank goodness they boogered up the front display with big “HTC” and “Sprint” logos. It retails for $280 but there’s a $100 mail-in rebate, and it only ships with 2 GB of built-in storage. That compares really poorly to the $99 no-rebate-necessary 8 GB iPhone.

Update: I should mention that Dave Nanian (of Shirt Pocket Software) has a Hero, brought it to C4 last weekend, and was kind enough to let me play with it for a few minutes. The Hero is clearly way better in every single way — way, way, way better — than last year’s G1. However, if I had to buy a non-iPhone today, I’d probably get a Pre, because the WebOS web browser is arguably as good as the iPhone’s, whereas Android’s is still behind, and Safari is by far my most-used iPhone app.

★ Thursday, 1 October 2009