We recently learned that HTC would be skipping the 1.6 update for European Hero owners; bringing them straight from 1.5 to 2.0. Now, Gearlog reports that Sprint is working on upgrades for the HTC Hero and Samsung moment, among some other cool things that may or may not include an Android with a built-in Mi-Fi-esque router. There’s no word on a time frame for the updates or which version they will be, or even if they will be the same version, for that matter. However, HTC’s decision to skip 1.6 in Europe could foreshadow their plans in the States.

In my recent Moment unboxing, I said that Moment should hit shelves with 1.6. I thought so because that was the word for some time and I hadn’t seen an official announcement that indicated otherwise. My review unit came with 1.5. Considering Sprint’s positioning of Hero and Moment as Sense vs. Vanilla, both quality Androids, it seems doubtful that they would want one running 1.6 and the other, 2.0. How much say Sprint has in the matter, I do not know. My guess is that both phones will go straight to 2.0, and with the Eclair-packing Droid dropping on November 6th, I don’t think Sprint can afford to put the update off for too long.

EDIT: Thanks to Randy for sending in the following email response from Sprint:

Dear Randy XXXXXX,

Thank you for contacting Sprint regarding the Samsung Moment.

The Samsung Moment phone currently has android 1.6 with android user
interface. If it comes with 2.0 android, we will display the information
on the website.

Check out an Eclair FAQ by Ed Burnett of ZDNet and the 2.0 discussion over at gdgt.