14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC Corporation announced at the beginning of the ongoing year that it would offer the owners of its HTC Hero handset the possibility to enjoy the latest flavor of the Android operating system available at that time, the Android 2.1 OS. Yet, it did not fulfill that promise until now. The original release date for the Android 2.1 update for HTC hero has been pushed back from March to June, and the owners of that device have now the opportunity to take stance and sign a petition for the update to arrive in due time.
The HTC Hero 2.1 Update Petition is an application that can be downloaded and installed over from the Android Market, enabling Hero users to show their interest in the release of this software update. The fact that HTC has delayed the update for Hero certainly made a lot of users angry, and this petition is their way of saying that HTC should do something about this, and fast.
Here's how that solution is described over at the Android Market: “Are you tired of HTC promising us time and time again our much needed Eclair update? Even when we get updated we still wont be at the latest version! Sign this petition and hopefully we will get the message to HTC to stop giving out false release dates! Sign by downloading and then leaving a comment on the market!”
One thing that is certain is that the emergence of this app does not come as a surprise. The HTC Hero was released on the market almost a year ago, but it hasn't enjoyed a software update since. In autumn, when Google unveiled plans to release Android 2.0 before year's end, HTC said that it would skip the Android 1.6 update and go directly for 2.0, while promising 2.1 in early 2010, as soon as the new OS version made it into the wild.
However, HTC Hero owners are still using the one-year old Android 1.5 version at the moment, even if the solution was released for Sprint's Hero and Verizon's Droid Eris, while others are getting ready to enjoy Android 2.2 on their handsets. Hopefully, HTC will indeed listen to its users' needs and will come up with that Android 2.1 software update for the Hero in June, without further delaying the delivery of an improved experience to them.