HTC Hero on Sprint: Not All Are on the Faster EVDO Rev. A Network

Image courtesy engadget

I have been impressed with the HTC Hero phone I have been evaluating on the Sprint EVDO Rev. A network, even though I just found out this evaluation phone is not actually on the faster Rev. A network; like other Hero owners are beginning to report, this one is only running EVDO Rev. 0. The Rev. A network is the newest flavor of EVDO on the Sprint (s s) and Verizon (s vz) networks. Rev. 0 is the predecessor to Rev. A and is slower, especially for uploads.

Sprint owners have begun to report that their phones are in fact running on the the slower Rev. 0 Sprint network, not the Rev. A as advertised. It is not across the board, many of the owners are reporting their phone is running Rev. A as is should. What has emerged from this confusion is that some of the Hero phones have “with Google” branding on the back, where others do not. So far, it appears that no phone lacking the Google branding reports Rev. A support, while those with the branding are hit and miss as to which network is reported.

It’s important to realize that there could be local network issues at play here, EVDO phones automatically drop to Rev. 0 if Rev. A coverage is not there, even if the phone can support Rev. A. Most current EVDO phones can support Rev. A, so I doubt anything sinister is at play here. I suspect that early Hero phones have an older firmware version that lacks Rev. A support erroneously, and HTC has updated the firmware to address that. They need to get the update to everyone if that is the case, as some owners are not getting what they paid for.

I have been pretty happy with the performance of this evaluation Hero, but it would be even better with Rev. A active. This unit shows Rev. 0 like many, and since I have the Pre on the Sprint network I know for a fact I have Rev. A coverage here.

(via engadget)