Hero of the Galaxy

As promised I indeed bought an Android phone. First I bought a Samsung Galaxy. It is a plain vanilla android phone. I was actually planning to buy a HTC Hero but "The Mobile Store" at Velachery did not have Hero. They only had Galaxy. They did not know a damn thing about Android but somehow oversold it to me. With the device being 7000 rupees cheaper than Hero while it had almost same spec and with their promise of replacing the device if there is any problem I ended up buying Galaxy reluctantly.

After buying the phone, I read the reviews, and they rated Galaxy as very average. Added to that the GPS did not work at all. I also realized Galaxy does not provide OTB MS Outlook Exchange server sync. Hmm bad. I had to visit "The Mobile Store" multiple times about these problems. Poor guys did not have any clue about GPS. They repeatedly tried convincing me that it is Airtel that needs to enable GPS. After lot of frustration and with the help of "GPS Status" app, I figured GPS would work if I go out and stand below clear sky. GPS receiver in Galaxy is very weak. Ok...fine. I was about to live with it and then came the killer. The regular EDGE itself stopped working. Even after lot of massaging Galaxy refused to budge. Terrified, I again rushed to "The Mobile Store". They told me that I need to go to an authorized Samsung Mobile service center and get a "Dead on Arrival" certificate and after that only they would replace the device.

I doubt if Samsung service center ppl also had any clue about this new model. I convinced them to give the DOA certificate. The incredible thing was just after getting the DOA, Galaxy started connecting to EDGE network. By this time I completely hated Galaxy so I kept quite about it. With DOA and another 7K I exchanged the Galaxy to a HTC Hero.

Hero is definitely nice. The Sense UI is cool. Couple of problems though, Android OTB does not support Tamil fonts. I will have to root the device to make Tamil fonts in. I am little scared to root 32K brand new babe. In addition I am not sure if I would loose or not the Sense UI when I root. I am continuing the research.

Will post updates...