HTC Hero to Sprint iPhone 4

[Hunter11]

First post so be easy on me. We currently have two HTC Hero phones and have the full upgrade available and have been thinking about getting two Sprint iPhone 4. We use our phones for calls, text and since we travel a lot by RV I also have Easy Tether on both phones and use them as aircards for our laptop which they work great for. So I start doing some research on the new iPhones and keep reading about slow data speeds on them. Would we be making a mistake by upgrading to the iPhone for our usage? Would we be better off with something else Sprint offers? Just trying to make sure we don't make a mistake then can't get out of it once we do trade. Thanks for any help.

 

[mikej798]

Only slow data speeds not because of the iPhones but because sprints network isn't all that fast I'm on sprint and in my area it's pretty fast I live around Chicago. If you guys have a upgrade I would highly recommend the 4s over the 4 because the 4 only comes in 8gb model and that does fill up rather quickly.

 

[Hunter11]

Ok if it is the Sprint data speeds that are slow for some people I guess we would be ok with the iPhone since the Heros seem to work good for data speeds when using Easy Tether for our laptop in the places we mostly travel. The reason we would go with the 4 over the 4s is we would not use to phones for music or video downloads just calls and text so why pay $100 more per phone for more memory we would not use. My next question would be does the iPhone have an app like Easy Tether that we could use to connect to our laptop for internet access when there is no WIFI available? Do the Sprint iPhones get 4g speeds if they are available? Sorry for all the questions but I want to make sure we can do everything with the iPhone that we can with ours Heros before we order new ones.

 

[mikej798]

You can get hotspot I believe but is more money per month and I don't believe unless you jailbreak your iPhone that you can get free tethering only android phones offer apps like that so if that is a feature you absolutely need or you could get he iPhones then just get a separate sprint hotspot modem.

 

[Rik756]

I came over from the HTC Hero to the 4S and the phone itself is an amazing upgrade as hardware goes. The speed and smoothness of the 4S is leaps and bounds ahead of the Hero. With that said, there are some really simple things that I think Apple really missed the ball on.

I didn't realize how much I used the dedicated back button until it was gone. The same applies to widgets. I really miss some of mine being right on the home screen.

The App Store for Apple is controlled by Apple, not users, so 1. you have pay for FAR MORE apps than you did with Android and 2. there are few fewer actual utility apps that allow you to adjust, modify or control settings on your phone.

For example, with the Hero you could set up silent profile, vibrate profile and a loud profile. With the iPhone you have two choices- silent or loud and the settings you can adjust are minimal on either. I REALLY miss using apps like Missed Reminder (custom notifications for missed calls, texts emails etc) and I miss SMS Alert which allowed me to set custom virbration settings for texts, emails etc. No such things exist on the iPhone or the app store unless you are jailbroken.

If you plan to jailbreak, you might wait a month or two and see if the 4S is successfully broken and all the Cydia (jailbroken app store) apps are fully functional. If you're OK with only 8gb of space (for people that don't store lots of music or movies 8gb is more than enough) the iPhone 4 is a great choice and already IS successfully jailbroken.

Instead of HTC sync, you'll have to use iTunes to sync your phone and or transfer pics back and forth unless you use iCloud, which I do not. Too buggy for me.

You are limited to the type an amount of *themes* you can use and there are several icons that you cannot delete from the iPhone (newstand and some others I think) but that is just a minor annoyance for me.

Anyway- Yes, the iPhone is a great upgrade but the above are some things that I wish I would have known before I bought. I would have either gone with the iPhone 4 or maybe even stayed with some other Android.

Rick

 

[Hunter11]

Thanks for all your help. It sounds like I may have to just upgrade to a different Andriod phone so I can still use Easy Tether and let my wife get a new iPhone 4. We had a Sprint Aircard for the laptop but that was costing us about $70 a month and we only used it 8 to 10 times a year on our RV trips so we dropped it. Same would hold true for paying for the $29.99 a month for the HotSpot that we would not be using all the time. That is why I got the Easy Tether on our phones to use on those trips. Now if we both got the iPhone 4 and they would allow us to only pay for the HotSpot when we needed it that would also work I just can't see paying the $29.99 a month for it and not using it all the time. Glad I asked these questions before I ordered new phones. Thanks again for the help guys.