To be fair the manual is there to help but i would be more disappointed that the phone isnt naturally intuitive to complete a simple task like setting a ringtone.

I talked to a number of other HTC Hero Owners and it turns out if you drop MP3’s into the Notifications Folder in the Media Folder the phone will pick them up automatically and give them as options. So a quick download of a File Manager from the App Market and i was away in a hack.

I like the hero, its probably one of the best phones ive owned and i really like the step up in functionality from N95 to Hero. I just feel in some cases some things just dont feel natural or logical to complete and sometimes its a basic task like the speakerphone thing that could easily have had a touch button on the call screen or setting a ringtone (where i still feel any Mp3 files should automatically be in the list) but as long as i can get what i want to do done by asking around im not too hacked off. Just would be a big promoter of intuitive user interfaces for completing tasks

Reading the manual is useful, it does say how to access speaker phone etc. You can read this with the PDF app, as the manual is on the phone or you can down load it from HTC’s site. With regard to the ringtones issue I downloaded an app called Ringdroid, just Google it. It set up a couple of directories for you to place ringtones in and notification tones. I didn’t use the ring tone creator that is Ringdroid I just dragged my tones from my PC in to the appropriate media folder. You can then assign tones to message alerts and contacts. Seems to work but I’m not holding my breath as setting up this aspect of the Hero is a real pain and keeps reverting back to the default tone, but we will see.

Regards,
Brian Jones