HTC Hero, one of the nicest mobile phones that came to the market this year, running under Google's Android operating system, has been just photographed with the Android 2.1 flavor on board. There are no exact details available on the new platform version, nor on how the Hero got the operating system packed inside it, yet there are a series of screenshots that show the two playing together.

The Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation, most of you might know already, said a while ago that the HTC Hero won't be upgraded to the Android 1.6 flavor of Google's OS, due to the fact that it will jump directly to the Android 2.0 version. However, the Eclair is still not present with Hero, though Sprint's version got a firmware update not too long ago.

As for the Android 2.1 version of the platform, some of you might have heard about it already. It is expected to arrive as a minor update for Eclair, mainly focused on fixing any issues that the latest Android iteration came around with. Since the Motorola DROID on Verizon is the only handset to currently run under the platform, and makers and carriers don't seem to hurry on delivering the update for other phones too, only a small number of Android users will actually benefit from it, if it arrives in the very near future.

However, as it always happens with new platform releases, it is a great thing to see that the development continues. Compared to the Android 1.5 flavor present on the HTC Hero, is seems that the UI looks about the same, which means that the Taiwan-based handset vendor brought Sense to Android 2.1 pretty fast, as Engadget notes. The update might not be too far in the future after all, and we're sure that many users are already eagerly waiting for it, so stay tuned to learn when it will be available, both for the Hero and for other devices.

More screenshots are available here.