The HTC Hero, a device many of you have heard of but have probably forgotten about. A device that came with Android 1.5 Cupcake out of the box three years back in 2009 (a long time in the fast advancing smartphone world). Regardless to say the device stopped getting official updates quite a while back after the Android 4.1 update.

However, the device has refused to fade away into oblivion, with custom Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 ROMs having been released for it back in June, which has now been bested by an unofficial Jelly Bean Android 4.1 ROM as well, for both the CDMA and GSM variants! That’s right, if you still own the Hero, you can get a taste of the latest two versions of Android thanks to the development community.

XDA Senior Member tvall had come out with CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) based on Ice Cream Sandwich for the CDMA variant, which is usable except for the not yet working camera and USB mass storage. In the GSM land, CM9 was released by XDA Senior Member jordfaz, which is quite functional except for a few issues including the GPS and hardware acceleration not working. While some may be put off by those things not yet working, both ROMs are good enough to at least try out for a few days.

And of course, Android 4.0 is old news, so those wanting to try out Android 4.1 aka Jelly Bean can do as well thanks to the CyanogenMod 10 (CM10) ports for both the CDMA and GSM variants, released by XDA Senior Members Shelnutt2 and jordfaz respectively. Things aren’t as rosy here as CM9 at this point, as CM10 is only suggested to be used and tried out by advanced users willing to provide some feedback or even help out with the development itself.

It’s amazing how the development community continues to keep older devices alive and kicking with these ROMs, and owners of these devices should be nothing but thankful to them for doing so. Hit the links below to go to the respective development pages for the Android 4.0/Android 4.1 ROMs for the GSM/CDMA Hero if you want to try them out and breathe some life into that Hero of yours. Don’t forget to at least leave a thanks message to the developers for all their hard work!

Hero GSM: Ice Cream Sandwich | Jelly Bean

Hero CDMA: Ice Cream Sandwich | Jelly Bean