Oh, you lucky HTC Hero owner. As of yesterday, you can download and install Android 2.1 from the HTC site and enjoy some speech-to-text and pinch-to-zoom. But not so fast. Heed this warning from the download page:
Specifically, applying the update will "delete all information from your device." And it means all. While losing contacts and other mail details is no big deal (a single sign-on to Google will bring them all back), how do you fancy losing all your text and picture messages and all applications?
There are workarounds. Well, not really workarounds: More lame excuses and procedures to fix a broken design. You can back up text and picture messages, "by forwarding them to an email address". This sounds handy until you realize you need to send a single email for each and every message. And applications? Easy, just "re-download the desired applications from the Market after this update completes." Presumably you'll need to re-input all your user and app login details. Nice.
There is one area that the update won't wipe, and that's your microSD card. We'd pop that sucker out during the update, though, just in case.
This is why normal people buy iPhones. Forget "open" or "closed". This is about ease of use. To update an iPhone, you click a button when iTunes tells you and then wait for all the shiny new features, complete with all your old data. Here's one more terrifying snippet to go home with:
HTC HERO (SPRINT) 2.1 SOFTWARE UPDATE [HTC via ★ and Twitter]
Photo: Patrick H. Lauke
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