HTC – You Owe it To Us

On October 11, 2009 I rushed to get the HTC Hero on the first day it was sold. Eight months later that phone is now considered obsolete. Especially by HTC. First they took nearly seven months to update that phone from Android 1.5 to Android 2.1 now they’ve promised to never update it again.

One update is all they could give us? I really like my phone but when I bought it I thought that it would be updated for a long time to come. I had just come from the iphone where we got all the updates we wanted and when an update was released there was no waiting.

Let me cut to the chase,

Dear HTC,

You have abandoned Hero users. When we buy a phone we don’t just buy it for what it can do, we buy it for all that it will be able to do. Maybe you’ll be better in the future about keeping products updated (and updated in a timely manner) but for now you need to remember the people that made you money just eight short months ago. Here’s what you must do.

Opensource all the drivers for the Hero.

You make a lot of phones, I understand thats a big strain on your dev team to try to keep everything updated. That’s fine I guess. I’m disappointed but the least you could do is release the code for all the drivers. Be honest, there’s not a lot of proprietary value in keeping your drivers secret, especially for what is now considered an “ancient” phone.

Please do this, then I can compile from source myself with a 2.2 rom or a 2.3 rom or whatever rolls down the pipe. You want to abandon us? Fine, at least leave us with the tools to pick up the slack.

Signed,

Dan a, until recently, loyal HTC fan.

BTW, this isn’t a suggestion really, HTC required by law to opensource their kernel. I’m asking nicely but really they’re obligated to.