HTC Hero Review

So I've had the phone for a week now and am just now getting a chance to post this. With everything else going on it's been hard to find time. This isn't all-inclusive or massively technical, just my impression and experience.
Form factor: The Hero doesn't exactly stand out from the crowd at first glance. It's a bit bigger than a deck of cards with rounded corners and a flush screen. At the bottom is a brushed aluminum plate with 6 physical keys and a trackball. (The keyboard is on screen, but we'll get into that in a sec.) The phone feels solid and light and the back is textured in a way that prevents it from just sliding out of your hand. That's also where you'll find the grill for the speakerphone and the camera lens. The left side sports a rocker arm for volume control and at the top is a standard headphone jack for enjoying your tunes, with the USB at the bottom. Gripe alert: The USB cable plugs into a wall adapter for home charging and the wall connector comes out at the slightest provocation, so be gentle! After having a ATT Quickfire (nicknamed the Brick) I sometimes panic when I can't tell if my phone is in my pocket because it's so thin.
Using the phone: HTC launched a new user interface called "Sense" with the Hero that allows you to customize not just three but seven screens with all your app widgets and such. At first this can be a bit overwhelming but once you have things organized and sorted the way you want, it's pretty handy. Just swipe your finger left or right to change screens. Along with that comes the "Scenes" feature with different themes for different situations: Work, Play, Social, Travel, HTC and Clean Slate. While cool, I found it was easier to just organize all my shortcuts on a custom screen with my productivity stuff in one direction and social/entertainment in another.
The keyboard is virtual, which is a first for me. In portrait mode, it's pretty cramped, but I can usually get the job done, and when I switch the phone to landscape the accelerometer kicks in and the keyboard switches after a brief pause. More space to type, but the USB cable and headphones can get in the way when plugged in. In either mode the predictive text and spell check are intelligent, so I don't really feel the need to download a "better" keyboard.
The web browser is a bit sluggish, but not intolerable. To be honest, I don't really use it all that much right now because of the apps I have downloaded. When I am, it's straightforward and easy to use.
Phonebook functions are great, adding contacts is a breeze and you can even pull info from your friend's facebook page and add it into the entry. I love that.
There are a couple downsides to this phone: at the moment the apps can only be stored to the phones small internal memory, which slows it down. Granted, there is a way to fix that, but I' really not savvy enough to do that.
Battery life is short and you have to constantly manage your power with an app that shuts down anything running in the background.
Other than that, the phone is great. I'm really happy with it so far.