Originally Posted by Clack:
Huh? What exactly are you babbling about?
Android has a proven track record, the Palm Pre does not. That is not theory but fact.
The core difference between the Sprint HTC Hero and the European one is the CDMA radio vs. the GSM radio.
You're taking it to mean that I think there's some grand Android Theory or something. I'm just saying that my earlier discussing the theoretical vanilla install of Android (which yes, is present on the G1, but not on the Hero), which is not present on the HTC Hero because of the SenseUI modifications, is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of the Hero. It is this vanilla Android install that is completely unpolished and unfinished in my opinion. SenseUI seems to fix a great deal of that. Still holds no interest to me, but it does seem to be a much more polished and well designed interface (minus the widgets which I still think just make things feel cluttered, but that's just me).
Originally Posted by ADGrant:
Is the Hero build really that different? It can download and run standard Android apps from the app store can it not?
To the general user of these phones who doesn't spend all day discussing it on a message board like us, I think it makes all the difference.
The reason the iPhone was a success (besides the Apple brand name) is that it took all of these things people like us had already been doing and put a flashy GUI on them and made them simple to use. Without SenseUI, Android didn't have this. It was a functional OS, but for mass market success you need more than that these days.