Feeling cool and connected with my HTC Hero

So, it was a combination of sitting on a train for six hours (three hours each way) and staying in a hotel for two days during the recent Microsoft Technical Launch – with no viable internet connectivity - that I realised I needed to sort out my online connections. Living in an off-line world for this period of time did have the advantage of making me talk to people more, and read books and magazines, but I must admit I did pine for the chance to check my email here and there. Is this an indication of the world we live in?

Anyhow, it was during my adventures in developing a few games in Flash and ActionScript 3, largely driven by a work-based social media project, that I was bitten by the development bug again and looked around for a few devices that would both keep me online and offer some chances to flex (not Flex!) the brain cells.

After much soul searching (see Could We Ever Be Too Connected?), blog reading, and web-based investigation I have finally settled on the Android-based HTC Hero and the WebOS-based Palm Pre, both of which should offer plenty of opportunity for development. I am also throwing one of those 3G-based dongles into the mix to help me keep online with my laptop and netbook when out and about. I did quite like the looked of the Nokia N900 so if you get one let me know how you get along with it.

So far I have been quite pleasantly surprised by the Hero, it is much smaller and sturdier than I anticipated and the interface (the display and the touch screen) is really quite intuitive, the Market is a good place for downloading additional applications, many of which are free, and last night I even caught up on some TV watching courtesy of the beebPlayer application which delivers BBC iPlayer programs. Best of all so far is the Google Mail, Twitter, and Flickr integration – though I have yet to discover much of the functionality – all based around the contacts list so you keep everything together. The only downside so far seems to be the battery life – which offers me just over one day of charge before running out of juice so I have to keep the charger handy.

I will be interesting to see how the Palm Pre compares as it was only available from today (16 October) and is due to arrive on Monday. I will post an update/comparison when I have had chance to give them both a good run.