14 DAY TRIAL // European owners of a HTC Hero have been waiting ever since last year for a newer Android operating system version to be deployed on their devices, and it seems that HTC has finally decided to make them happy. The long promised Android 2.1 OS update is now being pushed out to HTC Hero devices across Europe, a recent post on HTC's support website states.
“In our commitment to providing you with the best user experience, we are pushing out a new firmware update to your HTC Hero. Your phone will receive a notification of this update when it is made available. Simply press OK to accept the update via a data connection such as Wi-Fi or GPRS/3G. After installing the update, you can confirm a successful update by confirming the Firmware version (From the Home Screen go to MENU> Settings> About Phone> Firmware version). The new Firmware version will be 2.1,” the company states.
The Android 2.1 firmware arrives on HTC Hero devices in the second phase of an update process the Taiwanese mobile phone maker started a few weeks ago. For the time being, it seems that the software update would be delivered only over the air, though it might not be too long before the company makes it available for a manual download too. The new software solution follows another update the handset vendor pushed to Hero recently, and which was meant to prepare the handset for the platform upgrade.
One thing that should be noted here is that the update would wipe all data on the device, which means that users should perform a backup before proceeding. Here's what HTXC has to say on the matter: “Please back up your data first, and you have to upgrade your phone with the first FOTA package to be able to get the Android 2.1 FOTA upgrade. We recommend using a free Wi-Fi hotspot or an unlimited data plan to apply this update. If not, standard data connection charges may apply.”
Additional details on this are available on HTC's support website here.