So the folks out at Wirefly sent me an HTC Hero to try, and though it took me a while to ultimately get the hang of it, I still found plenty to like about this Google-driven phone.

The HTC Hero is a candy bar style smartphone that offers conference call capability, voice recorder, a trackball navigation system, speakerphone, Sprint TV, calendar, calculator, mobile email, mobile web with WiFi capability, a Twitter application called Peep, a stock ticker, YouTube browser, five megapixel camera with automatic focus, GPS, MP3 player with video playback, 3.5 mm headset jack, and a battery capable of yielding four hours and ten minutes of talk time on a single charge.

Like I said, in the beginning I had a rough time getting this one to even work. But after a while, we just started to click, that HTC Hero and me, and the end result was a surprisingly pleasant package that held my interest nicely. The camera was easy to work with and the music player had good sound for a cell phone music player. The battery has a life span that can best be described as the low end of decent and there are a variety of good quality options here. It’s safe to say that the HTC Hero is a good quality cell phone.

And Wirefly will offer you one of these incredible phones for $449.99, unless of course you’re a Sprint customer. Then it’s $19.99. I know, that’s a pretty pronounced price drop, but still–it’s a good quality phone you can really get behind.

The Good

Plenty of solid features

Good sound

Decent battery life

The Bad

Difficult to control at first

Tendency to respond sluggishly

Score 8 / 10

Incoming search terms for this article:

• htc evo specs