At a media event yesterday in New York, representatives from smartphone maker HTC passed around their latest creation: an Android-based device they’re calling Hero. And… wow.

It bears saying I am not traditionally a fan of HTC products. Their TouchFLO interface for Windows Mobile I find to be an over-engineered abomination that lags and spasms its way through even basic tasks. Their hardware is usually pretty nice–the Touch Diamond is a great little machine, for example–but their first Google phone, the G1, feels like a big dumb ham sandwich in my hand. (Being an iPhone die-hard, I’m not a fan of pop-out keyboards.)

So it was with notable reticence that I took a shine to the Hero. The whole interface is skinned in HTC’s own UI, which they call “Sense,” built on top of Google’s Android operating system, version 1.5 (aka Cupcake). Like other HTC-designed interfaces, it’s beautiful. Unlike others, it works. Fast.

In fact, if there was one thing that left me ready to kidnap the Hero and leave my iPhone behind, it was the speed of the thing. What the iPhone lacks in snappiness (talking about the 3G here; the 3G S is plenty fast) and the G1 lacked in glamour, the Hero has in spades. Switching from app to app was crisp and quick, animations happened flawlessly, buttons were responsive (though the two on the bottom are awkwardly placed) and programs opened without lag. Typing was responsive and comfortable–better even than the iPhone–and spelling corrections dropped in seamlessly. Nearly everything I tried on the phone–which was running a pre-release OS–happened in a flourish of brevity and style. In two minutes, I was smitten. In the demo videos below, you may assume that operations have been sped up for your benefit, as with say, iPhone commercials. They haven’t, really. This thing is snappy.