It seems that HTC is planning to upgrade the Hero to Android 2.1. This information is not just a rumor, but some kind of information leak.
Let’s remind that recently the company promised to adapt its interface Sense to support Android 2.0 (Eclair). It was expected that it will take some time, since Eclair is very different from the previous release of the operating system.
And now, only a month after this statement was made, a screenshot of the HTC Hero, running Android 2.1 has appeared on the web, though the information is still unofficial anyways.
The date of the official release of the new firmware has not been announced yet.