How to Make a Hero into a Phone

[hannahl3]

Hi, first post!

I just took delivery of my HTC Hero (T-Mobile G2 Touch) and its got so many toys, its unbelievable!

However, after the initial honeymoon period, I decided it might be an idea to set the phone up for use as a phone. This is where the Hero is sadly lacking - I gave up on Nokia years ago because you needed to download apps to make the apps work, and it seems that HTC have taken on a few ex-Nokia employees as their design team.

My main criticism is the exclusion of the most basic function of being able to set a custom sms tone. I'm not one of those that subscribe to the idea that connecting your phone to a pc and sifting through loads of files and folders called 'dit' 'dat' 'dot' 'com' and 'bollox' is any fun at all, and am a firm believer that ALL of these functions should be able to be accessed from the phone itself. Sure, a usb connection is useful, but should NOT be a neccesity.

With all that in mind, I found the following to be essential in turning a HTC Hero back into a phone -

1) A file manager. I'm using Android Manager and Astro at the moment until I get around to finding the best one.

2) A collection of wallpapers, for which I find 3D Wallpaper and CG Wallpaper particularly useful

3) Mabillo Ringtones has a super collection of SMS alert tones

4) My best find - Grooveshark. This is a full music streaming subscription service and unlike Spotify (at

 

[G8D]

A phone is for making and receiving calls.

Be grateful you even have access to such helpful apps.

 

[lekky]

Hey, and welcome. Check out the thread in my sig, it may help and provide some more useful apps

Having the ability to download apps to add functionality to your phone shouldn't be a bad thing. I think that if doing this is troublesome for someone then they are probably better of not using a smart phone!

 

[hannahl3]

A phone is for making and receiving calls.

Be grateful you even have access to such helpful apps.

Yeah, right... thanks Mr Happy.

Oh, and while I'm at it - does anyone know where that digital clock widget is thats on all the promotional pictures? The only ones I can find in Android Market are nothing like it.

TIA x

 

[hannahl3]

Hey, and welcome. Check out the thread in my sig, it may help and provide some more useful apps

Having the ability to download apps to add functionality to your phone shouldn't be a bad thing. I think that if doing this is troublesome for someone then they are probably better of not using a smart phone!

Hey, thanks for the app page!

The ABILITY to download apps is fine, no problem at all.
The NECESSITY to download apps is another thing entirely.

 

[lekky]

Hey, thanks for the app page!

The ABILITY to download apps is fine, no problem at all.
The NECESSITY to download apps is another thing entirely.

I disagree slightly. Everyone uses their phone differently. Adding native apps for everyone would be a bad idea, the phone would be a massive bulk! The phone is designed with the market and apps in mind, they are integral to this type of smartphone.

The fact that it is necessary to download apps to make the phone how you want it is a fantastic thing, not just with android but all smartphones that have this featured.

 

[hannahl3]

Yes, but the fact remains that it is a necessity on the Hero to download a file manager and some means in which you can allocate custom SMS tones. These kinds of bog-standard features should come already packaged.
The option is then there to enhance and compliment them with any new and better apps that may come along.
Look, I'm not knocking the phone or available apps, but HTC would seem to have a lot to learn yet about something being ready to go out of the box.
And I havent even touched on the lack of image transfer via bluetooth yet!

 

[lekky]

The bluetooth is a problem with android 1.5. Google didn't release it with this capability, but when we get 2.1 it will be there!!