We wrote about the 2.1 update possibly coming to the UK a little over a week ago. Well apparently good things come to those who wait. HTC Europe has begun pushing out groundwork for the 2.1 update OTA to Hero owners today. If your phone receives the update, you will see a notification on the phone and all you have to do is press OK to accept the update, which will download via your data connection or wifi. After installing the update, you can verify it installed correctly by checking the Build number.

From the Home screen, go to Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Build Number. Once there, the new Build number after the update will be 2.73.405.93; 2.73.405.94 (Nordic) & 2.73.405.95 (Greece/ Ireland).

[via HTC]

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We can also pretty much confirm that Sprint wanted to give the upgrade to the two Android handsets on its network at the same time. For whatever reason, they apparently wanted to make it reasonably fair for everybody. In any event, as you can see from the images herein, Sprint is saying that the upgrade to Android 2.1 for both the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment will be coming in early May. We’ll assume that’s the first week, but we could also see somewhere in the second week, too.

Those of you out there sitting on your hands, waiting every day for some kind of update to hit your phones should probably relax now. You’ve always known the update is coming, but now you can have some solace knowing it won’t be this month. So, start enjoying your phone as they are, because here soon they’re going to get a nice face lift. Excited?

At the same time in our update to the new version of Android OS , please be patient.

Android 2.0 (code name ‘Eclair’) will introduce an updated user interface, Bluetooth peer-to-peer connections, as well as native Exchange support.

But Europe’s hero users will not get the Google open source mobile phone operating system, ‘Donut’ version, that is Android 1.6 version. HTC said in an e-mail sent to customers  that hero will not accept Android 1.6 upgrade, but it will directly upgrade to 2.0.

Once the new version of the Android release, HTC and other mobile phone manufacturers will integrate the new version of its own custom version of OS. The end result is usually sent to the wireless telecommunications service providers, to facilitate branding (branding) and add new features.

Donut is currently with T-Mobile G1, and HTC Magic experience such as a Google phone, but these phones do not HTC Sense user interface panel (skin), so HTC is likely to decide to skip Donut, a direct upgrade to the Eclair – Motorola Droid Mobile has adopted Eclair-, because the Eclair is almost ready to release large-scale.

HTC hero is not an experience of a so-called Google phone, USB cable must be connected to PC for firmware upgrades, but this will need to uninstall the older operating system, and then re-install all of the user settings and applications. So, just skip the Donut, perhaps the right hero Users can also relatively easy.

In addition, this update also improved the camera, an increase of holding down the screen button will be able to auto-focus feature (this feature is very useful).

Note: In a Swedish forum, someone said that HTC’s customer service, said: This ROM problems, missing some important part of the ROM where a formal update will be released a few days. Although the user has already installed the update that they did not find any problems, but it is better to wait a moment for stability.