Telus Officially Discontinues HTC Hero

The Canadian carrier Telus has recently decided to discontinue online sales of the HTC Hero as of September 24 th. This does not mean that you won't be able to buy the smartphone from retail stores, but it seems that the stock won't be replenished anymore.

Telus decision will probably annoy its subscribers who own the HTC Hero smartphone and who were waiting for the upcoming Android 2.1 software update.

Announced a few weeks ago the update was listed on the carrier's website, but it was withdrawn quickly, Telus saying that they are still testing it.

Oh well, now instead of announcing the update, they are basically bury it and show HTC Hero's users that they do not care about them that much.

However, it is still possible that Telus HTC Hero will get the Android 2.1 software in the future, but this is not a priority for the Canadian carrier anymore.

The decision was probably made, so they can boost HTC Desire's sales, which comes with Android 2.1 out-of-the-box.

Still, there's no telling if you will get an eventual update for HTC Desire to a new future version of the operating system.

In fact, users with the HTC Desire will probably end up just like HTC Hero users ended now, with no software updates and a discontinued device.

I'm not suggesting that you should not buy Android smartphones from Telus, but at least expect that you won't be getting software updates anytime soon.

This seems more like a marketing move, which will probably help the carrier on a short term, but in the long run they will probably lose a lot of subscribers that are expecting their devices to be updated to the latest OS available.

HTC Hero was launched by Telus in November 2009, as one of the first Android devices offered in Canada by the carrier.