The following guide details how to configure basic wireless settings on the HTC Hero (also known to T-Mobile's customers as the G2). The HTC Hero is a data hungry machine, so to help keep your mobile data usage under your acceptable usage cap, it's advisable to use Wi-Fi internet as much as possible.

Firstly, you'll need to ensure Wi-Fi is turned on - HTC provide a widget for toggling the Wi-Fi on and off, if it's not already on one of your homescreens, it's a useful enough toggle that it's worth adding. To add the widget - press on a blank section of your homescreen for a few seconds until the "Add to Home" menu appears. From here, choose "HTC Widget", then "Settings" and touch "Wi-Fi". This will allow you to add the Wi-Fi toggle widget to one of your homescreens. Tapping the toggle will switch the Wi-Fi on and off, with the Wi-Fi's current state being displayed on the widget itself.
With the Wi-Fi turned on, your phone should start to scan for any nearby wireless networks, giving an alert in the notification bar along the top of the screen if any are found. To connect to a Wi-Fi network, do the following:

-From one of your home screens, push the Menu button then, on the screen, tap Wi-Fi Settings

-At the foot of the screen, you should now see a list of the wi-fi networks which have been discovered as being in range by the phone, tap the network you wish to connect to on the screen to connect to it

-If there is any security (WEP or WPA) configured on the network, you will be prompted to enter the correct passcode before the connection is lifted

-These steps need only be completed once, the next time the Wi-Fi network is in range, your Hero should automatically connect to it.

Whilst connected to a Wi-Fi network, your phone will use the Wi-Fi connection, ahead of your GPRS or 3G mobile data connection. However, it's worth noting that, when your Hero or G2 goes in to screen sleep mode, the Wi-Fi is turned off to save power, so any internet connectivity that is required during sleep mode (for example - scheduled checking for email or Twitter updates) will use the phone's GPRS or 3G mobile data connection. There is a method of preventing this from happening, which I'll cover later.

If the wireless network you wish to use is not broadcasting it's SSID, you'll need to configure the connection manually. To do this:-

In the Wi-Fi Settings section mentioned above, if you look at the very bottom of the screen there is an option to Add Wi-Fi network. Tap this on the touch screen:

-You'll then need to enter the wi-fi network's SSID and choose the security method in use (WEP, WPA, etc)

-When the security method has been selected, you will then be able to enter the passcode for the Wi-Fi network. You'll also have the chance to specify any additional wireless settings if needed

-The wireless connection should then be configured and, from then on, your Hero/G2 will connect automatically to this wi-fi network with the specified configuration

There may be some unusual instances where a given wireless access point does not give out IP addresses via DHCP, so any devices that attach to the wireless network need to have static IP addressing set. These are the steps you need to take to specify a static IP:

-On the phone, push the Menu button and then tap Settings- From there, select the Wireless controls section and then Wi-Fi Settings

-Whilst In the Wi-Fi Settings section, push the hard Menu button again and select Advanced

-Tap Use static IP to put a check in the box and then enter the network settings as required

Important- It's worth noting that, having specified a static IP, you won't be able to connect to public wireless hotspots as they will all use DHCP. There doesn't seem to be any way of using one IP profile for one wireless network and a different IP profile for another, but if you uncheck the Static IP section, you'll be able to pick up an IP from DHCP and, thankfully, the Static IP settings you have specified are stored for if/when you revert back.

If you have any issues with connecting the HTC Hero to a wi-fi network, check out this troubleshooting guide.

-Article written by Martin Russell of This Android Life
http://www.thisandroidlife.com