After digging on the MTN Website …

I found the following models.

• HTC Hero
• HTC Tattoo
• HTC Desire / Bravo
• Motorola Milestone (DROID)
• Motorola DEXT
• Samsung Galaxy Spica
• Sony Ericsson X10

This means … I’m switching to MTN and that MTN loves Android.

Pricing

South African users who purchased their HTC Heros through Vodacom can expect the update as from 22 April 2010.

via Google Android 2.1 Eclair for South African Android ZA

I have used the HTC Hero exclusively as my primary mobile phone/internet device/portable music player.
What follows are some of my thoughts of this amazing device.

Hardware

* HTC Specs from the HTC Website

Even though this is an Android 1.5 Device there is one thing that sets it apart from all the other Android devices out there,
and that is HTC Sense, from the mouth of HTC, Sense is ” a holistic experience that is based on putting people at the center, by simply making things work the way they should, an intuitive, seamless experience built upon three fundamental principles – make it mine, stay close, and discover the unexpected.”

Having unification on a Mobile device is certainly a first for me.

Stay Close

First up is the People app, think of it as Contacts on steroids,  Contacts can be associated with Facebook and Flickr profiles.
In other words you can pull in information from these services, for Facebook, it pulls in the Contact Picture and Birthday,
then giving you the option to use the Facebook picture of the Contact instead of the one defined in the contact.

The People app presents the info in the following way, the 1st screen is called “Information” giving the user common communication methods “Call Mobile” “Send message” and “Send mail”, then extended information like, birthday, ringtone and notes.
Now here is where HTC Sense starts to shine, in the Messages tab, provides a list of of recent SMS messages, following Messages, is the Email tab this integrates with the native “HTC Mail” app on the phone, giving a list of mail messages from the relevant person, here is some of the cool stuff, Updates and events, giving you the person’s latest Facebook status update and possible events organized by that person, next up is Albums, giving you access to Facebook albums and photos on Flickr.

Call History, provides a List of incoming, outbound and missed calls.

Perhaps one of the outstanding features is the keyboard, with intelligent autocomplete.

The Smart Dial provides a quick and easy way for you to find the people you are looking for.

Another bonus of the Messages app is the fact that it organizes conversations per person, then splitting the “stream” according to day, and a nice little touch is the Avatar(Contact Picture) of the person next to the message.

Make it Mine

One of the big selling points of HTC Sense is that you can have such of different ways of customizing the interface and with 7 Home Screens it’s a real winner. You can truly set it up to suit your needs, a good example is “Scenes” you can save you Layout’s as “Scenes” then switching to them when you use. HTC has loads of Widgets for Making it yours a good example is the clocks, the Hero has 12 different clock to choose from.

The Weather widget is gorgeous, having little animations, just wants make you lick your screen. The Music player is straight forward, it shows cover art, Music is sorted via Artist, Album, Playlists, Songs, Genre Composers and Purchased Music. You obviously have 2 nice Widgets to control the player.

The Email and SMS Widgets are out of this world!

The Camera is cool, taking great pictures and shooting video, but there is a little thingy here you have to tap the screen to focus and a shoot with the trackball. A side note here Pinch to zoom works in the Albums, I have to add this about Albums … of course it provides Unification giving you direct access to Friends on Facebook and Flickr’s Photos. Totally Awesome!

Discover the unexpected

The more you use the phone the more you appreciate HTC Sense, obviously the phone is powered by Android which makes it Super Duper! Getting Apps is fun and easy. This was the First Android phone I could show my iPhone friends and say …. “Erm can you do this ?” or “Do you have that?”

Wrap up

I used it everyday I used 3G/Wifi/GPS and I got a full day, the phone never died on me,
the performance was great compared to my HTC Dream.

Calls was crisp and clear, the Headset supplied is stylish and functional.

To conclude if I have to rate the Hero on it’s goals, Stay Close, Make it Mine and Discover the unexpected,
I must say the HTC Hero passed with flying colors.

I can blabber forever on the HTC Hero, it really surprised me and it made me happy using it!

Thanks to HTC for sending the me Handset.

Here is something extra the HTC Hero Product Tour :

One word so far
“WOW”
Expect the review on 5 March 2010

Yesterday I received a HTC Hero review unit, how I usually review devices is move over to the device
completely and use only that device for the review period.
This is Day 1, yesterday I did the setup and now begins the testing.

The HTC Hero is probably the Best Android you can buy locally ….
this will hopefully change in the coming months!

Here is prices from MTN and Vodacom