Concern for EMW - answers here might help

Am getting the Hero as soon as I can sort out the BS with the pricing between Best Buy and Sprint for a Sprint Premiere member who has been putting off his upgrade now for 6 months.  I deplore Sprint.

There is no doubt that EMW's emitted from phones are a dangerous threats to both the young and old.  The $$$$size of the industry will assure that it might be some time before the government forces regulations on them.

My question is:  Can the Hero be used with the phone feature completely shut off?  In other words, can I check the web, emails...and, particularly, listen to music without being bombarded by EMW's?

Last, what kind of battery duration are owners of the Hero experiencing when using the Hero for non-phone functions?

You won't be banned. I will protest by staging a sit in:)  As far as using the features of my phone with the phone turned off. I never turn my phone off because I bought it to  be a phone in addition to the other cool things it can do.

EMW...yet another overrated topic to scare people. Gotta love it!

i'm joining f3 in the sit-in, i enjoy your responses

here's what I say (for what it's worth):

if you are worried about EMI from a cell phone, therefore might not purchase it, then you probably shouldn't eat food, because you *can* get e coli, salmonella, mad cow disease, food poisoning, etc.  I'm not trying to get on a soapbox, but it seems silly to worry about EMI, if you aren't worried about EVERYTHING ELSE that could cause disease or death.  Which is pretty much what i said, EVERYTHING ELSE.

Folks,

I enjoyed your replies.  Yes, I am concerned about everything else.  Being a radiologist (even have an MD diploma which must frighten all of you) I carry a UV-C light wand with me to restaurants and the gym and never eat meat except some Elk and Lamb now and then. So, you might conculde that I do know something about EMW's and the line about rubbing a balloon was funny.

This wasn't intended to be spam.  In fact, I found a private owner of a Sprint store by accident today and he was armed with both a Hero and A Blackberry (either Tour or 8530).  He told me I would enjoy the Blackberry more if I had to stay in touch with the two hospitals do my work at as well as serious emailing and a better media player.

To listen to music on either you simply put the unit in Airplane mode if you do not want the phone pinging signals out.

The Hero appears to be very slick and the fact that they and Google are diametrically opposed to the proprietary features of Apple product is good by me.  That said, my wife has a new 27 inch iMac - what a display!

Thanks for writing.  Any feedback that will push me towards the Hero will be apppreciated.

Use the 30 day Sprint exchange/return policy if needed. You just never know whether a phone is going to work better/worse than the previous one when it comes to reception.