The new Android packing HTC Hero smartphone has now gained a review from Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, and he says HTC have applied their own signature software atop the Android platform and that’s what set the HTC Hero apart from its Android brothers.

The software is called HTC Sense and brings handsome large widgets and extra features which go beyond the vanilla Android platform experience, and thus the HTC Hero behaves differently.

HTC Sense also has Scenes which are entire collections of sets of screens and applications which can change the HTC Hero software’s feel and look with just a couple of clicks. The HTC Hero’s hardware isn’t that beautiful being a dull grey and is noticeably thinker than the iPhone but with a smaller display.

The HTC Hero has a big drawback, and that is battery life with Sprint claiming up to 4 hours of talk time while the iPhone and Palm Pre deliver 5 hours, but overall is a worthy competitor to the iPhone Palm Pre and BlackBerry; for the complete review hit up the link.