Android HTC Hero
A few weeks ago ioerror and I were at a San Francisco Go club get-together at a cafe in the Mission a few weeks ago and ran into a guy with an HTC Hero. It's the new Android handset, not out yet. Unfortunately, it sucks for one reason: no physical keyboard.
Android v1.5 added an on-screen keyboard which pops up, iPhone style, when you need to enter text. Unfortunately that's the only keyboard you get with the Hero. This means you lose a third of the screen when you start typing. It also means the same sort of all modal interface that I hate on the iPhone. No app switching hot keys either: like the iPhone you have to navigate through the home screen for everything. I have no idea how or whether it's possible to cut and paste without menu-C and menu-V or switch to landscape mode, and of course there's no multitouch thanks to Apple's patent lawyers. With the Hero, HTC seems to be ditching all the features that differentiate it from the iPhone so that they can offer what amounts to an inferior clone. I wish I could call the Hero an upgrade from my G1 but from the 15 minutes I played with it it really didn't seem to be.
Android v1.5 added an on-screen keyboard which pops up, iPhone style, when you need to enter text. Unfortunately that's the only keyboard you get with the Hero. This means you lose a third of the screen when you start typing. It also means the same sort of all modal interface that I hate on the iPhone. No app switching hot keys either: like the iPhone you have to navigate through the home screen for everything. I have no idea how or whether it's possible to cut and paste without menu-C and menu-V or switch to landscape mode, and of course there's no multitouch thanks to Apple's patent lawyers. With the Hero, HTC seems to be ditching all the features that differentiate it from the iPhone so that they can offer what amounts to an inferior clone. I wish I could call the Hero an upgrade from my G1 but from the 15 minutes I played with it it really didn't seem to be.