One of the biggest criticisms I’ve read (and have) of the lovely new HTC Hero is the slow speed at times. This seems to be largely caused by the lovely TouchFlo home screen interface, which has lots of lovely features and effects, but can slow things down a bit. This home screen is just part of the HTC Sense experience.

It is however very easy to switch from using this custom HTC homescreen, to using the default Android homescreen. The upside is things get a bit faster, the downside is that you can’t use the lovely HTC widgets (contacts, clocks, Twitter etc), but there are equivalents for many in the Android Market. You do still get to use the HTC improvements to things like contacts (with Facebook and Flickr integration). I’m not sure how much switching homescreens speeds up other apps (I haven’t played with it for too long). It is also very easy to switch back to TouchFlo.

To switch homescreens:

1. From the Homescreen press [Menu] and select [Settings]
2. Select [Applications]->[Manage Applications] (this may take some time to load)
3. Scroll down and select [TouchFlo]
4. Once the application info loads, scroll down and tap the [Clear Defaults] button. You may also want to tap [Force Stop] to ensure it closes.
5. Press the home key and you will be given the option of using [Home] or [TouchFlo]. You should select [Use by Default…] if you want to fully make the change, or just tap [Home] if you want to try it out first.
6. There you go, a standard Android homescreen.

If you want to switch back, the process is very similar, except you select the [Home] app at stage 3 instead.

Let me know what you think. Personally I am going to stick with TouchFlo for now. I now just need to find how to disable Footprints, as I’m sure it must be using some resources!