HTC Hero vs Blackberry Tour

[cjmjmm2006]

Just renewed my contract with Sprint, 2 lines. I have a BBTour and my cousin has the HTC Hero. I am intrigued by the Hero, but I am wondering if it has the production that I am used to with my BlackBerry? Is there anyone that switched from a BlackBerry to a HTC Hero? If so, I push out around 100 - 150 emails per week and I am looking for a lot of productivity, can the Hero provide this? I know how cool the apps are and they had my attention when playing around with his phone, but I want production first and a media device second, please let me know your thoughts.

Very much appreciated.

CJ

 

[SkottM]

Oh man. I switched from my Curve 8330, and it's a world of difference. First thing you'd probably like to know is: HTC Hero doesn't push email. It pulls emails. Not cool. Second thing, the email application for email addresses other than GMail sucks a D. I hate it. Whenever you have, say 50, unread emails, you have to go through all of them to mark them read, unlike the "Mark Prior Opened" option on my Curve. Those two things piss me off so badly. Give those some thought, and let me know if you have any more concerns...

 

[cjmjmm2006]

Thank you for your response. I know the pull email is going to have some real drawbacks, but I was wondering more about response time and speed of typing? I have been told that you can set up the Hero to send/receive every couple minutes.. Is that true? Like I said I am about production first as my phone is my extension to my business, I love that I can respond to emails in seconds and if I went to the Hero I would not want to compromise that too much. If I could respond in minutes and have a device with many more useful applications, then I would make the switch.

 

[joek71#AC]

I came over from Curve 8330 and I love the Hero, there is no lag or screen freezing like with BB, and i have no problems with email, Hero is just a better all around phone

 

[meangreengdub]

What's the difference between Pull and Push email?

 

[travisFC]

What's the difference between Pull and Push email?

Pull means your phone checks every so often..usually a 15 min. interval.

Push basically means that your phone keeps a heart-beat like connection to the server and as soon as an email arrives it is pushed out to your phone

 

[ERDude]

If you set up e-mail using IMAP it's push, POP3 is Pull. Native G-mail app is push.

I went from the Tour to the Hero and I'm not looking back. It does everything the Tour does and more. To mark e-mails read you don't have to go through each individual e-mail simply tap the box to the left of the e-mail for those you want to mark read or for mass deleting, tap menu and select what you want to do.

 

[T Mac]

I have the Palm Pre and am using push and pull emails on it. I have no problem with push email from gmail, but pull from POP3 sucks. Say you have it set on every 5 minutes, if you have an email sent out every three minutes your going to miss quite a few emails. For instance, I had mine set on 15 minutes and would get about three emails during a nine hour work day, but when I would get home and check emails on my home PC there would be about 15 emails there. Not Good! Also, my Pre does not know what to do with VCAL in emails. So if my wife sends me an appointment from her blackberry, my Pre email can't support the function. Apparently Android email can't do this either. What a dilemna, I thought about switching to the Hero, but now maybe I'll just go with an old fashioned Blackberry Tour. LOL At least everything that is on a Blackberry phone does work and work well.

 

[natrixgli]

I don't think the Hero supports IMAP IDLE. I know this because when I mark a message read on the server, it takes AGES before the Hero becomes aware of this fact. (if ever, I wouldn't know because I ultimately get annoyed and end up manually marking it read.)

I personally am quite disappointed with the email & calendar functionality as compared to phones I have used in the past, namely the Pre and iPhone. The Pre had the best email (combined inboxes, fabulous notification system) and the iPhone had the best Calendar (caldav support!)

The other annoying thing is the fact that you cannot link Trash/Sent/Drafts to existing IMAP folders, which results in these folders being created by the Hero on your IMAP server. This is super annoying!

Cheerio,

-n8

 

[esoteric1311]

There's a couple apps that support push email. I am currently using Seven (SEVEN – Proven Push Platform for Mobile Applications) and it is wonderful. I have my yahoo and a hotmail account hooked up to it. There is another app called K-9, but i haven't tried it.

 

[natrixgli]

There's a couple apps that support push email. I am currently using Seven (SEVEN – Proven Push Platform for Mobile Applications) and it is wonderful. I have my yahoo and a hotmail account hooked up to it. There is another app called K-9, but i haven't tried it.

K-9 is very similar to the inbuilt mail app, but while it does push nicely, it still has the annoying problem in which emails deleted on my client (Zimbra, Gmail) do not delete from the phone even after a refresh. Furthermore, it does not work with the sweet HTC mail widget which if I'm being honest is one of the things that sold me this phone. (i.e. not having to launch an app to get a glance at emails.)

What I will never understand is why there are two email clients installed by default rather than one good one..... They should have nicked the one from the Pre which is about six billion times better.


-n8

 

[SkottM]

Thank you for your response. I know the pull email is going to have some real drawbacks, but I was wondering more about response time and speed of typing? I have been told that you can set up the Hero to send/receive every couple minutes.. Is that true? Like I said I am about production first as my phone is my extension to my business, I love that I can respond to emails in seconds and if I went to the Hero I would not want to compromise that too much. If I could respond in minutes and have a device with many more useful applications, then I would make the switch.

Well with the speed, my Hero is way faster than my 8330. My typing is a lot, a lot slower on my Hero. I have the predictive text feature turned on, and that makes texting a little easier, but it's still not the greatest, or what I hoped for moving from my BB.
You can have your Hero check for emails every few minutes, but I don't. That would kill my battery more than I'd like, so I have it check once a day automatically, and then I can check it manually whenever I'd like.
Hopefully, this will help you make your decision. I don't want to sound like I'm hating on my Hero. I love it.

 

[bosstalker]

Just renewed my contract with Sprint, 2 lines. I have a BBTour and my cousin has the HTC Hero. I am intrigued by the Hero, but I am wondering if it has the production that I am used to with my BlackBerry? Is there anyone that switched from a BlackBerry to a HTC Hero? If so, I push out around 100 - 150 emails per week and I am looking for a lot of productivity, can the Hero provide this? I know how cool the apps are and they had my attention when playing around with his phone, but I want production first and a media device second, please let me know your thoughts.

Very much appreciated.

CJ

when it comes to production the blackberry is second to none. i had the hero for a couple weeks my biggest problems were the battery life was terrible no flash on camera and no keyboard. typing wasnt that bad but if u send alot of emails a keyboard is a plus. the apps on the hero were great. so here i am back with my blackberry. blackberry r in a class of there own. hope this helps u out

 

[cjmjmm2006]

Now I am starting to see the true colors of the Hero. Thanks to everyone for responding to this thread. =) I know that I like the media features of the Hero, it's great for being a time killer, that is certain, but the bottom line is getting things done. And Hero user's themselves admit that the BlackBerry is a better production device and that is what I need first. I just wish there was one device to rule them all... There is always a compromise with each. The email works flawlessly on a BB, the Hero and iPhone have wonderful media capabilities.

Another point is the physical keyboard.. I push out a ton of email so I agree with previous post stating that they could type better on their BlackBerry than on the Hero. Wish RIM would step up their hardware game and give their devices more internal memory.

Any other thoughts?

 

[natrixgli]

The email works flawlessly on a BB, the Hero and iPhone have wonderful media capabilities.

I rather like the email functionality of the Palm Pre. Have you checked it out? It's combined inbox and notifications are probably it's biggest asset for productivity users, they are pretty phenomenal. The iPhone is no slouch either; while it only shows the number of unread messages from the home screen, the updates are nearly instant when using IMAP, Exchange, Gmail, etc. Usually I hear my iPhone's new mail sound before messages show up in Gmail web client.

A great phone would be the iPhone 3GS running Android 2.0 with the Hero's camera sensor and trackball, HTC Sense widgets, Apple's calendar, and the Palm Pre email client and notifications.

-n8

 

[T Mac]

I have the palm pre. The email client is great, except is doesn't support vcal. This is a big problem for me since my wife and I had blackberry phones. She still has one, and whenever she sends me an email appointment, my pre doesn't know what to do with it. It just opens up appointments in the email client with a bunch of script. That sucks. The blackberry really is better for this function, although if this were to be fixed in a soon to be update the Pre would be definitely superior in emails hands down.

 

[cjmjmm2006]

So you guys are saying that the Pre has better email functionality than a BlackBerry? I also can not use the keyboard of the Pre as well but that maybe due to lack of familiarity. I do not dislike the Pre at all and have no objections to trying it, but I will say that the form factor seems somewhat flimsy and I can see it having durability issues over time. I usually keep a device for a year so that is not asking it to last too long, but I want its integrity to be maintained throughout me owning the device.

 

[natrixgli]

So you guys are saying that the Pre has better email functionality than a BlackBerry? I also can not use the keyboard of the Pre as well but that maybe due to lack of familiarity. I do not dislike the Pre at all and have no objections to trying it, but I will say that the form factor seems somewhat flimsy and I can see it having durability issues over time. I usually keep a device for a year so that is not asking it to last too long, but I want its integrity to be maintained throughout me owning the device.

I have never used a BB device, so I'm not saying the mail client on the Pre is better than that of BB devices, but I do like it better than what's available on the Hero.

-n8

 

[cjmjmm2006]

I understand, and I have never used the Pre, so I can honestly say that I don't know either.. However, my gf had a palm and she liked it but she knows that the email is not nearly as fast. Hard to say, and seeing how small the keyboard on the Pre is, really rules it out for me. iPhone plans are out of this world as far as cost is concerned so I am limited to Sprint, which is ok, because I think that their network is the best anyhow.. At least in Pittsburgh. I think with the Hero I will have trouble being as productive as I am on my BlackBerry, but the capabilities that I see it has, ie the Android Market, 5.0 MP camera etc, draw me to it.. I know BB's work for me, but the switch might be a nice change up.. That is why I totally appreciate all your takes on this decision. =)

 

[meangreengdub]

So you guys are saying that the Pre has better email functionality than a BlackBerry? I also can not use the keyboard of the Pre as well but that maybe due to lack of familiarity. I do not dislike the Pre at all and have no objections to trying it, but I will say that the form factor seems somewhat flimsy and I can see it having durability issues over time. I usually keep a device for a year so that is not asking it to last too long, but I want its integrity to be maintained throughout me owning the device.

For me, that's the biggest thing. I had a Pre and it felt so cheap and thats why I got rid of it and got the Hero.