Two long lost siblings, at last reunited. But can there ever be unity? We don't think so. At every turn, the HTC Hero seems to trounce the myTouch 3G -- it's really hardly a contest. The myTouch is certainly lighter, and in many ways "feels" smaller because of it, but the size differences really are negligible. They're still both great phones, but the Hero really feels like a million bucks, while the myTouch feels a bit like a toy. Unfortunately, only one of them just went up for pre-order on T-Mobile, and it's not the one we want to marry.

As much heat as the "myTouch" name has taken, we're starting to understand why T-Mobile went with it -- the myTouch 3G is a very customizable device. At device launch, we're counting no fewer than 17 trinkets to go along with your phone -- not including color variations -- ranging from the ultra-mundane (a USB cable in your choice of black or white, for example) to the awesome (a snap-on battery extender that'll add 50 percent more juice) to the crazy (a myTouch logo commuter mug). Buyers will also be able to get custom-designed shells through Skinit and have access to a fitness belt, meaning you now have absolutely no excuse not to get on the trail and run that ten miles with that trusty Magic firmly attached to your arm. Well, except the fact that The Hills is on. Right after The Hills, though, we swear.

We just got a look at the myTouch 3G, and while it's great to see T-Mobile's next Android phone all official and everything, there are certainly few surprises for those of us already familiar with the HTC Magic / Google Ion. We found ourselves, despite the best knowledge otherwise, still looking fruitlessly for a 3.5mm headphone jack -- it was silly that the G1 didn't ship with it, but this year it's downright shameful. At least the included adapter is nice. Please, HTC Hero, come and save us from this madness. Fresh off our play time with the Hero, we found the stock Android 1.5 keyboard to be quite a bit of a step back. It's certainly usable, but we found ourselves missing the spacebar quite a lot, and the responsiveness just wasn't at HTC's level, though prediction was pretty good. The included zippered case is nice, though we don't know what we'd use it for, and the unboxing experience is generally pleasant and uneventful.

In a lot of ways, the phone seems like a last generation product, but it's obviously the only one of its kind available in the States at the moment, so we suppose T-Mobile would beg to differ. Every single cover we've seen so far looks completely horrible, and while it's nice to have "options" (T-Mobile's big marketing play with this phone) we'd think twice before putting a pic of our dog on the back of one of these. Perhaps the best news making the rounds is that T-Mobile is thinking about putting a visual voicemail app in the forthcoming app pack, though it wasn't pre-loaded on any of the handset we checked out, and apparently the app pack is more of a curated Market than a single app combo download. Peep an enthralling video of the hardware after the break.

We're here at T-Mobile's myTouch 3G launch event -- quite a bit subdued compared to the G1 launch, but still a T-Mobile extravaganza all the same. In the meantime, you might be happy to learn that the phone is now available for pre-order, with a guaranteed August 5th delivery date if they order before the 28th. Notes from the launch talk with Denny Marie Post and Cole Brodman:

• myTouch is about "self expression." Like when you did drawings with crayons for your mom: sure, it sucked, but it was the self expression that mattered. Apparently.
• Cole is talking up the Google love and the Android ecosystem. A "strong Google partnership."
• Cole says we'll have "more Android devices out this year."
• Denny sees it as a more desirable device and potentially more attractive to new adopters of smartphones. "Boundless possibilities" for individualization. They're showing a few videos, which seem to be app-centric as far as individualization goes. "If it could sweat for me, it would."
• A few apps being highlighted: Wikitude, Sherpa, a few exercise apps, imeem, YouTube uploads, Qik (my buddy's iPhone can't do that), Twitter, a ringtone editor. A few Google services mixed in, naturally.
• They're both showing off their own devices and how they've personalized them. Denny is a big fan of Zombie Run, which she plays with her 15-year-old son at the mall. Best mom ever?
• T-Mobile, in partnership with Google, will help put a "lens" on the Marketplace to help users find the good apps. Going to offer an "app pack" to highlight a particularly useful selection of apps. One of the highlighted application partners will be Sherpa. Also working on improved payment options: will include a direct bill option to post app purchases directly to your T-Mobile bill.
• Shipping the phone with a zippered case and a cloth screen-polishing sleeve (like we've seen already).
• Matching service plan warranty with device warranty, and working on retail experience / consumer training, including in-store appointments.
• No current plans to bring HTC Hero to the US.

And that's it! We're heading down now for a hands-on -- stay tuned!

It's been less than two weeks since we laid hands on HTC's latest Android masterpiece, the Hero, and so while we wait to see it again, the cats at Russian site Mobile-review have gotten some extensive time with a pre-release engineering sample, and give it some high marks for those in the "tech geek" demographic who are looking to pick one up. Some caveats to be had, including the use of pre-release Sense UI firmware and the curious case of calling the screen resistive, especially since the model we used was definitely the more finger-friendly capacitive, and all the promotional material we've seen show a capacitive model in use. Still, it's well worth a read, if for nothing else than a glimpse at the sample pictures / video we can expect to capture with the phone ourselves.

[Thanks, Fegan]

No mention was made of a Hero with 3G that'd work on Rogers or AT&T back at its announcement a few days ago, but HTC has been getting awfully good at making phones that work properly around these parts -- so we can't say we're entirely surprised to see a Hero approved for WCDMA on Bands II and V gracing the FCC today. For the record, Bands II and V are 1900 and 850MHz, respectively, which is exactly the combo AT&T subscribers would need to flip the switch on high-speed data. We're not sure if this negates rumors that the Hero would be coming to Sprint, but if we can just get this version released and in our hands, you know... maybe our minds would be operating with a little more clarity.

Ready for even more rumors about Windows Mobile 7 and Microsoft's mysterious "Pink" smartphone project? Good, cause we've got a few -- and the first is potentially huge. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says her best understanding of "Pink" is now that it's a Microsoft-branded phone running a custom UI on top of Windows Mobile 7, developed by what's left of the Danger team and targeted at the Sidekick market. Yep, Microsoft-branded -- as in, the exact thing Microsoft has been denying for ages now. What's more, Redmond wouldn't be letting third parties use this new UI -- Pink would be manufactured only by Sharp or Motorola, who've made Sidekicks in the past. It all makes sense, even if it does feel a bit like MS is knifing its partners in the back -- companies like HTC and Samsung have been equally aggressive in layering their own UIs like TouchFLO 3D and TouchWiz on top of WinMo, but it's another thing entirely to compete against Microsoft itself, especially now that AdWeek says Microsoft's selected an agency to develop a Pink ad campaign. Yeah, things are starting to get a little wild -- we haven't even mentioned the open questions of whether the Zune HD is running Tegra because it's based on Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, or whether Pink will launch on Verizon, or whether Zune will appear on other phones, or... you get the idea. Hey Microsoft -- you want to clear any of this up by shipping some products?

Read - ZDNet
Read - AdWeek

Step aside, JAC Hero, there's a new firmware in town. Fatal1ty (that Fatal1ty?) and nk02 have not only managed to obtain the HTC Hero's new (and almost final) Sense UI-infused firmware, but have spruced it up for consumption by HTC Magic / Dream users. There's naturally a bit of glitchiness -- apparently WiFi and Bluetooth don't work at the moment, and the camera is all funkified, but the real treat here is the first implementation of Flash 10 on Android, even if it is a bit "laggy" on the RAM-starved G1. The widgets are also on display, and other than Flash the general experience is apparently pretty snappy. Naturally, the xda-dev folks won't be leaving well enough alone, and we should be seeing refined versions of this and future Hero firmwares leading up to and after the release of the actual device.

[Via xda-developers forum; thanks Jeremy W., screenshot by johnnylicious]

The HTC Hero has made its first appearance on a UK carrier's website, but finds itself burdened with a teasing "coming soon" badge. Having talked to Orange, we can confirm previous reports that the device will be available for free on some, as yet undetermined but surely eye-gouging, price plans. The company said they are still testing the device and should have pricing information by tomorrow. Expect T-Mobile to quickly follow suit and unveil their Hero by another name (G1 Touch?), also fully subsidized. Both carriers will be offering the graphite edition of the phone, so if you have your heart set on the white Teflon-coated goodness, you may have to go the SIM-free route.

We doubt the July 15 delivery date is set in stone, but UK residents itching to get a little Hero in their lives are now able to pre-order HTC's latest for £429 ($708). That's pretty much what we'd expect for an unlocked set, but Orange is planning to offer the Hero free on contract, so we'd be inclined to hang on just a teensy bit longer. Video after the break.

[Via Phandroid]

We've got some good and bad news... mostly bad, though. First, the good news: HTC is looking into finding a way to bring its new Sense UI -- the one featured prominently in the new Hero -- to its non-Google branded Android devices, such as Canadian carrier Roger Wireless' Magic. Unfortunately, and this is the bad news, even that's not a sure thing, and as you can probably guess from the wording, any phone that's got the "with Google" branding, like T-Mobile USA's G1 and myTouch 3G, won't be getting a chance at all due to the same licensing terms that prevented Microsoft Exchange clients on those same phones. Them's the breaks, folks, but we're sure some hacker with enough know-how will bypass the silly restrictions and do it anyway.

Is it cooler than Sprint's Snap? That's for you to judge, but whatever the case, Verizon has now announced its own version of HTC's latest WinMo Standard handset. The so-called Ozone features WiFi, global roaming capability, VZ Navigator and visual voicemail support, a QWERTY keyboard (which feels great if it's anything like its cousin's), and a beefy 1500mAh battery that we're betting will keep this thing going all day and then some. The best part, though, might be the price: it'll be just $49.99 on contract after rebate when it launches online on June 29 and in stores on July 13.

We're going to need some real time with the device to make a final opinion, but we're cautiously optimistic that HTC has a winner with its new Hero. Here's what we've got from our first looks at the phone in London and NY:

• The beveled edges along the back makes the handset sit comfortably in the hand, and while the teflon coat doesn't necessarily feel revolutionary, it's going to make a world of difference after a couple of months riding in our grubby pockets. It's certainly solid, but much more so than other "brick" phones.
• The Sense UI (or as HTC terms it, "user experience") riding a capacitive touchscreen offers a people-centric approach to managing your information that is absolutely dreamy at first blush -- though it shares a lot of TouchFLO heritage. In fact, HTC promises to have a very similar Sense-branded experience for Windows Mobile.
  
• The on-screen keyboard also seems quite useable with a nice simulated haptic forced-feedback bounce when you strike each key in either landscape or portrait mode (which can naturally be deactivated). HTC has built its own touch keyboard from the ground up, and in our brief couple of tests we'd say it's probably the best touchscreen typing experience we've ever felt. It never lags behind, and has great colorful visual cues for its auto-corrected words -- green means it's suggesting a correctly spelled word, red means we've gone off the beaten path, and the T9-style multiple suggestions are heavenly.
• This intuitive one-hander isn't shy with the specs either as we've already seen in the official press release. Our only concern is possible sluggishness from the Qualcomm processor that cause the graphic transitions to stutter a bit and results in screen rotations that feel dangerously uncomfortable.
• We were told that the device we saw was running pre-production firmware so there's still time to tweak -- though not much with a July European launch.
• The Hero is not a "Google Experience" device. As such, you won't find the Google logo anywhere (no big deal) but you also won't be downloading any firmware updates over the air -- sideloading only kids. Not a deal breaker but an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation nonetheless. There's still a small lack of clarity of how updates will work with HTC's "mods" living on top of basic Android -- even if they're able to port in new Android versions seamlessly, we imagine there will be some breakage.
• For a device without a physical keyboard, the Hero seems a little thick up against its HTC Magic, Nokia N97, and iPhone 3G counterparts, but not overly so.
• HTC has confirmed that whichever (unspecified) carrier gets the phone in the US will have a modified version, both in software (carrier-specific services) and in hardware chassis tweaks. Just don't take our teflon away, ok HTC?
• Battery is the same larger slab that's in the myTouch, and HTC also claims to have done some vague, unspecified things OS-side to improve battery life as well. "Heavy users will be able to get through a day."
• The camera is responsive and seems to do a fine job at autofocus, but wasn't astonishingly great at first glance.
• The phone will be available for free on T-Mobile UK -- if only we could be so subsidy lucky in the US.
  

There are four videos for you after the break. The first shows Flash running at full screen on the HTC Hero courtesy of YouTube. The second, however, shows it failing when running a trailer from Yahoo Movies, just like Adobe did -- in fact, it crashed all four times that we tried it on what we were told was a Hero running the final build of the OS. Third one is a quickie showing the on-screen keyboard rotating from portrait to landscape and back. Lastly, we demonstrate the hardware a little bit and show off our lightning speed at typing. For the real completists, there's also a new gallery of hands-on shots from the NY launch event right below.

Been hankering to see what Flash -- via the Open Screen Project -- actually looks like on an Android (or any modern mobile) device? Well hanker no more, ya'll. Adobe has helpfully dropped a video on us which has Flash team member Adrian Ludwig demo'ing the newly minted HTC Hero (multitouch gestures included). Once the content loads up, it seems to run at a pretty snappy rate, though waiting on Flash content to appear doesn't look encouraging if you're in the midst of casual browsing (or on a weak connection). We'll be interested to see what this is like in the real world -- and for platforms beyond Android -- but for now at least we've got something to go on.

Read - HTC Hero: The first Android device with Flash
Read - New HTC Hero Delivers More Complete Web Browsing Experience with Adobe Flash Technology