[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] qazzi76:
FYI - Anyone considering upgrading to Hermes

I have been using a universal for the last 18months and have now sold it and upgraded to the HTC Hermes.

The universal served me very well and the only thing I miss is the larger screen and VGA resolution and standard 3.5mm jack - however - I don't miss the bulk.

The hermes is everything the universal is minus the VGA.

My default Rom on the universal was Helmi's v1.3 which was AKU 3.5 and was a very very stable/solid rom.

I later installed PDAVIET 2.04 pro (Crossbow/WM6) which was a little temperamental but solid never the less.

I have installed XDA Live 0.20 which is a Crossbow rom on the hermes and it is very fast, I mean very very fast in comparison to the the universal.

In actual fact the hermes feels like an overclocked blue angel. (Normal operation, responsiveness, games etc)

Before I had the universal I had a blue angel that I used to regularly overclock to 530mhz (XCPUSCHALAR) and I can tell you that the herms feels very close to this.

I actually wonder what the hermes is capable of if overclocked slightly - As I don't have any figures (Pocket Hackmaster performance Index, SPB benchmark, etc) I can only speculate - but I'm looking forward to investigating this further.

Incidently the hermes has the Imageon gpu that was present in the blue angel so it runs films in TCPMP with hardware acceleration something the universal lacks.

Now I'm not sure whether the Universal had slow ram, or it being a VGA device slowed it down or what but I do know that the hermes is orders of magnitude more responsive in every day operation than the universal was...

Wireless connects at 54mbs on the hermes instead of the 11mbs maximum thoroughput the universal supports even with the 802.11g hack.

And the Hermes also supports HSDPA (1.8mbs theoretical - if your network provider supports it). Admittedly this was a deal breaker for me as umts is cool but connecting at 1.8mbs to the internet whilst on the road is edging very close to nirvana LOL!

Now while I will miss browsing servers at 640x480 using ts client in WM6 (WM5 tsc was atrocious BTW - LOL!) I feel the hermes features and performance more than make up for it. Plus I recently purchased a Sony u50 (1st generation umpc circa 2004) which has a 800x600 5 inch screen and the u50 allows me to TS into server using the hermes as a modem (Bluetooth or serial comms)

Last but not least I need to mention the hermes 2MP camera - OMDs - LOL.

It is head and shoulders above any HTC Camera I've ever experienced and I have seen them all...

SPV to wallaby to alpine to blueangel to universal I've had them all and this camera is the 1st USEABLE camera in terms of how responsive the camera app is, the picture quality and the overall experience!

Granted it's no replacement for my Canon SLR BUT (BIG BUT) it's definitely useable and supports typical camera functions such as self timer, darkness controls etc.

All other HTC devices had a fairly decent camera app but a piss poor camera sensor that only operated remotely correctly with good light. The pics I get with the hermes are of comparable quality to recent nokia and sony phones.

Hope this information is of use to anyone considering moving from the Universal to a hermes.