Orange is offering the HTC Hero for free to customers who take out a £39.15 per month, 24 month contract. The package includes 1200 any network call minutes, unlimited texts, as well as inclusive anytime internet browsing so users can make the most out of their mobile experience.

Francois Mahieu, Director of Devices, Orange UK said, “We’re really pleased to be launching our first Android handset in conjunction with HTC. The first of several Android devices you can expect from us this year, we believe the Hero is a great all round device which will allow consumers to get to grips with all the things they love about the internet, whilst on the move. We expect it to be extremely popular when it hits shelves this summer.”

[via Android Community]

In the hand, the Hero feels slimmer than the Magic, not least because of the bevelled edge. The HTC rep we talked to wasn’t sure whether the pre-production handset you see here has the Teflon back coating or not; it doesn’t feel especially different to a normal matte-finish panel.  The fingerprint-resistant screen is, as you’ll see in the shots, not particularly good at avoiding smudges in the first place, but like the iPhone 3GS it sheds them with a quick wipe.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Make it Mine

With HTC Hero, personalization reaches a level never before possible. Rather than burying important content under layers of menus, the HTC Hero lets you put it at glance view, with a selection of widgets that can be placed right on the home screen. The widgets themselves can be personalized with a variety of designs and sizes that best match your personality.

With Scenes, a new profile feature, HTC Hero becomes multiple phones in one. Create and switch between Scenes that reflect different moments in your life. Your Hero becomes a weekend phone that helps you relax with your choice of tunes, catch up with your favorite friends and capture some memories with HTC Footprints™. And when you go on a trip, your phone becomes your personal guide and gives you instant access to local time, weather and maps.

Stay Close

Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls and emails to Facebook updates. HTC Hero makes staying close as simple as turning to your friend and saying hello. When you view people, you see the different ways to get in touch, you also see all your interactions like emails sent to your personal and work accounts. You can even check for social network updates and event notices as well as see the latest pictures your friends uploaded to popular photo sharing sites.

Discover the Unexpected

Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. Even basic functions like the dialer will pleasantly surprise you on the HTC Hero. You can find a person by dialing their phone number or simply by dialing the first few letters of their name.

With HTC Hero, you can look at things through different perspectives. Your inbox is not just a list of emails, but a catalog of conversations, a collection of notes flagged as important, and a document library of all your emails with attachments. Your Album is not just the photos saved on your phone. It is also a gateway to online collections of you and your friends on Facebook or Flickr.

Search just about anything, anywhere on your HTC Hero. The dedicated Search button combs through tweets in Twitter™, locates people in your contact list, finds emails in your inbox, searches through appointments in the calendar and very nearly finds needles in haystacks.

With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero boasts a broad variety of hardware features including a GPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero. HTC is also introducing a new profile feature called scenes that enables you to create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times in your life.

The HTC Hero will be available to people across Europe in July and in Asia later in the summer. A distinct North American version will be available later in 2009.

HTC Hero Specifications:

• Processor: Qualcomm MSM7200A, 528 MHz
• Memory ROM: 512 MB / RAM: 288 MB
• Dimensions (LxWxT): 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm
• Weight: 135 grams
• Display 3.2-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 320×480 HVGA resolution
• Network: HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz 
• Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Device Control Trackball with Enter button
• Internal GPS antenna
• Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless
• Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• 5.0 megapixel camera with auto focus
•  MP3, AAC(AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI and Windows Media Audio 9
• Video Supported Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media Video 9
• Battery: 1350 mAh
• Talk time:
  - Up to 420 minutes for WCDMA
  - Up to 470 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:
  - Up to 750 hours for WCDMA
  - Up to 440 hours for GSM
• microSD memory card 
• G-sensor
• Digital Compass

[via slashgear]

Check out the video below