[thwarted]

Is [it serving as both the Dialer and the Contacts app all rolled into one] a good idea? When I'm in my Dialer, presumably I only want to call people. Surely the system should sense context (likewise, if I'm in the email app, it should show contacts for whom I have no email!).

There is a "dialer" app that shows the phone pad. There is a contacts app tha shows all your contacts. While the device has phone functionality, it actually does a lot more, and showing all your contacts, and all the methods to contact them, actually makes sense when you have multiple methods (voice, SMS, IM, email) available. The contacts list even shows you if someone is currently on IM.

[Open the contact, long-press on the desired number, and select Make Default Number is] Invisible and undiscoverable except by accident - this is a UI failure. The fact that this is not displayed implies to the user that it cannot be changed.

Just like the long hold on the icons on the iphone so you can move them around and rearrange them (and then they shake?) is invisible and undiscoverable except by accident. It took me forever to find out how to do this on my iPod touch.

[nailer]

The 'People' app in the Hero also dolves a long running prob I had with my iPhone.

Say I know Jeff sent me a website to look at. I can't remember whether this was via SMS or email.

* On iPhone, I had to open SMS, find messages, close SMS, open email.

* On Android, I just find Jeff's entry in people and look at everything he sent me - SMS, email, and calls.

[potatolicious]

I didn't know that, that does sound like a good feature :) This is the point the author was trying to get at though, I think. Right now the vanilla Android "distro" isn't compelling - the UI is pretty mediocre and there are some pretty gigantic rifts in the user experience.

We need a vendor to come in and "iPhone-ify" the experience. Smooth out the rough edges and finish the "full package" (e.g. music/podcast sync out of the box). I haven't looked into the Hero enough to know if they're it...

[nailer]

The Hero's UI is certainly an improvement on stock Android and the iPhone. I wouldn't say it's 'iPhonified' - the iPhone does some things quite well, but it also loses data when closing apps, has no background notifications, requires manually syncing contacts and calendar, has all icons the same shape, constantly selects text to copy when scrolling in Safari since firmware 3, and a few other choices I'm not willing to put up with anymore.