Specific hardware: HTC Hero (marketed as T-Mobile G2 Touch by T-Mobile in the UK, Austria, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Hungary; and as Era G2 Touch in Poland) is the third phone manufactured by HTC running the Android platform, announced on June 24, 2009 in London.

[9] FCC documents surfaced to show, that there would be a version of HTC Hero supporting Rogers' and AT&T's 3G bands.

The outer body is significantly altered, with the controversial "chin" that is present on the Asian, Canadian (some providers) and European models being removed in favor of a smooth, beveled surface where all but two of the once raised buttons now lie flat.

A modified version of the Hero, the HTC Droid Eris, was released on the Verizon Wireless network on November 6, 2009.

[12][13] HTC announced their intent to release an update for the Hero in the first half of 2010 that would upgrade the Android OS to version 2.1 while incorporating Sense.

Most notably, Orange in Europe did not announce any official update policy or guidance for the phone despite numerous requests from their customer base until late July 2010.

This proved to be so frustrating to consumers that a Facebook group[19] was set up to try to gain more information from Orange and their lack of support for the HTC Hero.

The criticism had been particularly fierce from those who purchased the Hero on 2-year contracts shortly before and even after Sprint effectively ended the upgrade lifespan of the phone.

[24][25] Android 2.3 has also been ported to the GSM HTC Hero by the popular aftermarket firmware creation team CyanogenMod.