By delaying the Android 2.1 update for the Hero yet again HTC is mistreating their early adaptors. I was one of those early adoptors. I bought the HTC Hero purely because it wasn’t an iPhone, or Windows for that matter.
The fact that it was running Android was a risk for me as a buyer but I was happy to take that risk as it meant that the phone could be updated regularly with new Android versions as they became available.
HTC benefited in sales volume and reduced s/w development costs purely because it was running Android and many people (now wrongly) believed this would lead to regular updates. HTC did nothing to dissuade people of that view.
I liked the phone, I still do and recommended it to many. Unfortunately now because of the shoddy handling of this update I can no longer recommend HTC phones to anyone and will be looking at alternatives when its time to upgrade it.
Google really needs to be aware of how issues such as this are ruining the Android ecosystem brand. Obviously HTC don’t want to canibalise sales of the Desire and Legend. I’m happy with that principle. That being the case they should have issued a statement way back in Oct/Nov to say that they would not be releasing any further updates for the Hero. But they didn’t. Instead they wanted to ride two horses making potential customers have that warm fuzzy feeling about future updates so they would commit to continue buying heroes until newer models were released. HTC shame on you.