Love it or hate it, HTC is fully behind their Android skin, Sense. With each upgrade it is promised to be slimmer and easier to use, but still people complain about it getting in the way of their phone. Sense 5 debuted with their newest flagship the HTC One this year, but according to an HTC ROM developer, Sense 5 is upcoming for last year’s device, the One X. 

If this is true, HTC also plans to bring two of the highest profile features from this year’s device back to the One X as well. The curated social news-stream BlinkFeed and the awesome camera feature Zoes are planned to be included in this update as well. With an update of this size however, it could be a while before we see it on the international version of the One X and even longer before any US versions of the device see it. If we hear anything, we will be sure to keep you posted.

Via: Phone Arena

HTC One X to Receive BlinkFeed and Zoes in Upcoming Sense 5.0 Update is a post from: Droid Life

With HTC’s new Sense 5, they introduced a ton of new wallpapers and someone finally ripped them from the device. With a few classy black and whites, some colorful tones, and even some Jelly Bean-looking patterns, these are our favorite Sense papers we have seen in a while. 

Have at ‘em and feel free to go pimp your phone with them.

Via: Android Spin

Download: HTC’s Sense 5 Wallpapers is a post from: Droid Life

After seeing the picture of Sense 5.0 up and running on a DROID DNA, XDA member mdeejay brought up the fact that the phone is actually running a ported build from a Sprint M7 which has the new Sense on it. He claims to have it working nicely, but can’t release it at this time. Thankfully, he was able to at least share some screenshots from it, so that we can see some of the changes in store in this latest version of HTC’s Sense. 

First, you can see the new lock screen which appears to have finally ditched that obnoxious ring-unlock mechanism. We’re also getting a much less cluttered and minimal clock and icon set, but we have seen those before. On one of his home screens, he has a number of apps laid out, along with the arrangement for folder icons. We are definitely seeing new icons across the board for mail, calendar, people, gallery, etc. There is a view of the in-call menu, which also appears to be simplified.

Down below, you have a somewhat back-end look for settings. It looks re-themed, but that’s about all there is to say.

If you want to keep up with a potential ROM release of this new Sense from mdeejay, I suggest you stay close to the XDA thread below.

Via:  XDA

New Set of HTC Sense 5 Screenshots Emerge is a post from: Droid Life

Over the weekend, we caught our first glimpse of HTC’s new custom skin for Android, Sense 5.0. The two appearances lead us to believe that HTC is going with a more minimal approach to Sense, but also one with an interesting take on home screen sections that look similar to what Microsoft has done with Windows Phone. It has pretty moments, like with the icons, but the rest seems like a step in the wrong direction – but that’s coming from a minimalist like myself. 

That’s not what we’re here to talk about, though. The above image is, since it shows a Verizon-branded DROID DNA running this latest version of Sense. Not that we ever thought for a second that HTC’s current flagship device wouldn’t see an update to a new version of Sense or anything, but this seems to have come earlier than expected.

We have no idea when the DNA could see an update to Sense 5.0 (assuming that’s what it’s called), because we first need HTC to announce it (and they have yet to do that). Don’t forget that they’ll likely launch a phone along with the new version of Sense – the HTC M7.

The image above was posted at a leaked ROMs site, so keep an eye on your favorite forum over the next few days. You might find yourself a gift.

Via:  HTCSource

HTC Sense 5.0 Pops Up on the DROID DNA is a post from: Droid Life

Since CES was a complete bust in terms of seeing HTC’s next superphone, the M7, it feels natural that we would see some leaked goodies shortly after. Although, I have to admit, this is some of the worst leaked shots I’ve ever seen, of anything. So, let us take a second and go over what we have.

Thanks to Pocket Now and HTC Source, we have our first glimpse of the actual device, albeit really doesn’t give us much of anything beside the fact it will have a front facing camera, and a few shots of Sense 5. Pictured above is the first leaked shot of the device, with everything blurred out except the camera and HTC logo. Seems legit, yeah?

Below is where it actually gets a bit exciting. There a few shots that are being labeled as Sense 5, which was said to be a huge improvement in terms of looks and feel over previous versions. From what we do see, it certainly gives off a little more of a minimalist look, with clean textures and less of a glossy feel.

So, I have one initial problem with this picture. HTC still can’t seem to move away from the legacy menu, which is a real eye sore, given we are waiting for them to ditch hardware buttons, and for developers to start getting rid of it as well. Either way, I’ll be happy when those days are behind us and there is a fluid UI experience between my multiple Android devices.

In terms of looks, the new Sense is looking pretty hot. I enjoy the matte feel, so I’m easily more excited today than I was yesterday for the M7 and Sense 5.

Your thoughts?

Via: PocketNow | HTCSource

First Shots of HTC M7 Emerge, Plus Our First Look at ‘Sense 5′ is a post from: Droid Life

In a recent interview with Laptop Mag, HTC’s AVP of user experience Drew Bamford, was asked to spill his guts on the development of the new Sense 4.0 and how they were able to “tone it down.” As most folks here may know, we have had the general belief that the Sense UI, when placed atop vanilla Android, was bloating and made our devices lag all across the board while not adding anything that was incredibly needed by some. HTC have been listening and took many steps to minimize Sense down and make it more usable and an intuitive experience. 

When asked what inspired the newest version of Sense and its cleaner look, Drew had this to say:

We took inspiration from matte finishes that have become very popular in high-end automobiles, such as Mercedes and BMW. We also took a warmer approach to the color palette to make it feel more inviting and friendly.

Later in the discussion, he was asked how long his team had to work with ICS before having to create the final Sense 4.0 for the masses. Not surprisingly, they had very little time:

There was not a lot of time between when we saw Ice Cream Sandwich and when we released our Sense 4. In fact, we were designing things like our recent apps UI well in advance of when Ice Cream Sandwich came out. So really this represents our spacing on the best way to do it; it’s not an intentional rebuttal of the Ice Cream Sandwich design. It’s just a different approach that we eventually came up with.

If you have been reading our recent reviews of the new HTC One X and the One S, then you would have noticed our opinions of the Sense UI have changed greatly since our first encounters with it back in the DROID Incredible days. It’s cleaner, easier on the eyes, and actually works the way you would hope an overlay would. It adds good features while not taking too much away from the stock feel of Android.

To read the full interview, which I would recommend, follow the via link below. Have you been able to play with the new Sense UI? What are your thoughts?

Via: LaptopMag

Cheers Mark!

Man Behind HTC’s Sense 4.0 Interviewed, Talks Inspiration and Toning Down is a post from: Droid Life

HTC Rezound owners, more custom ROMs are on the horizon for you. This newest Sense 4.0 ROM is almost completely in working order after two months of stressful work by developer, newtoroot. It has a very short list of bugs, most notably being the lack of working Bluetooth. With full working 4G data, GPS and sound, this is the most complete 4.0 ROM we have seen so far.

For downloads and instructions on flashing this ROM, follow the via link below and read up on everything you will need. If you own an already rooted and unlocked ROM, your task is quite simple. For the rest of folks, let’s hope you know some adb commands.

Via: XDA

New Custom Sense 4.0 ROM Released for the HTC Rezound, Only Bluetooth Missing is a post from: Droid Life

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video from the folks at The Verge that is floating around today, is simply put, hilarious. During the clip from their podcast, they interview a guy who goes by the name “Big Poppa Joe” and claims to be the biggest Samsung TouchWiz fan on Earth. Yeah, you may need to read that again. Someone who admits publicly to loving TouchWiz. He may just be a brilliant troll, but if you needed a good laugh as we head into the weekend, this one is worth a watch.

With that said, we would love to hear your thoughts on the rest of the OEM skins out there. I’m curious to know which you would choose if there was no other choice but to have a skin. Stock Android is gone for good, which skin would you choose and why? HTC’s Sense, Motorola’s Blur, Samsung’s TouchWiz or something else?

As of today, I would go with Blur. While it was complete garbage for a a year or two there, the latest version is not all that bad (assuming you like the color blue). With its built in MotoCast software, semi-customizable launcher, gradually improving camera software, and new lockscreen, it’s not half bad. My opinion may quickly change on this once I get my hands on the HTC One X and see Sense 4.0, but until then, as surprising as it may sound, I would go Blur.

If You had to Choose a Skin for Android, Which would It be? is a post from: Droid Life

HTC’s chief product officer Kouji Kodera sat down with Pocket-Lint this week to admit that their Sense UI had gotten far too complicated and cluttered in the last couple of releases. From the time Sense originated, HTC had always wanted to keep things simple and easy to understand, but as their skin grew with features, so did the bloat. Going forward with Sense 4.0 and their new One Series, they will attempt to slim things back down:

“There where too many things in there,” Kodera continues. “Even on the home screen we had four or five icons before consumers got a chance to add things themselves. For the HTC One range we have taken it down to Sense 2 again.”

And in case you were wondering, they are attempting to keep Ice Cream Sandwich as untouched as possible. While I find that sort of an overstatement after seeing a couple of Sense 4.0 videos and screenshots, we should at least expect to see less in your face 3D transitions, spinning wheels, and other performance decreasing UI tweaks:

“What we’ve done right now is a good mixture of keeping Sense and Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich element in a good balance. We haven’t tried to change everything here. We have kept a lot of the ICS element but still added the Sense flavour on top of it.”

As someone that was once a fan of Sense, but found it less appealing in the 3.0+ phases, I’m actually pleased to hear this news. HTC needs to go back to their clean and easy-to-understand UI. Looking forward to the One Series or whatever it is they plan to release on Verizon to try to compete with it.

Via:  Pocket-Lint

HTC: Our Sense UI Got Too Bloated, Time to Bring Simple Back is a post from: Droid Life

A month before Mobile World Congress kicks off and we have the first mega-leak to drool over. The HTC Ville was caught in a lengthy video this morning, showing off its official spec list, Sense 4.0 over Ice Cream Sandwich, and an ultra thin body. This is a device that we have covered for a while now over at Android Life as it is rumored to be heading to T-Mobile, but with this being one of the first polished sightings of Sense 4.0, we wanted to make sure that everyone saw it.

So what is the Ville? It’s HTC’s thinnest smartphone ever at roughly 8mm thick, but will rival some of the other players for the “thinnest smartphone in the world” tag. As you can see from the front, HTC is moving to a 3-button approach to match up with Android 4.0, however, they are still using hardware soft keys instead of on-screen soft keys. The design itself looks like most of HTC’s previous work, but again, this sucker is ultra thin.

Hit up the break to see the full spec list and a quick run-through of the device.  

Specs:

• 4.3″ qHD display
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 8MP rear camera
• VGA front camera
• Bluetooth 4.0
• HTC Sense 4.0
• Android 4.0.1

Update:  Video has apparently been pulled already. That was fast.

Update 2:  A new version is available to watch.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via:  HTC-Hub

HTC Ville Caught on Video Running Ice Cream Sandwich, Sense 4.0 and Looking Ultra-Slim is a post from: Droid Life

Up until now, we have seen XDA provide us with ROMs that have Beats by Dre cooked into them for your music listening pleasure, but the problem still stood, what if you liked your current ROM? Well we now have a fix for that.

There is a flashable zip a the source link below that will allow Beats to work with any Sense 3.0 and up-based ROM. The installation is as easy as booting into recovery and flashing the file and rebooting. User smokin1337, who came up with this file warns you that the first boot might take a while and as always, make a backup before you flash something like this.

Via: XDA

XDA Makes Beats By Dre Flashable To Any Sense 3.0 Or 3.5 ROM is a post from: Droid Life

In addition to the free 2GB of storage that users receive when signing up for popular cloud storage service Dropbox, owners of new HTC Sense 3.5 devices – like the Rhyme – will get an additional 3GB for free. There are a variety of cloud services tied to other operating systems and phones, so this newly formed partnership between Dropbox and HTC simply makes sense.  While it’s not the 25GB that Windows Phone 7 users get with Skydrive, it’s at least a step in the right direction.  Our lives are revolving more and more around cloud storage these days; it’s about time an Android phone manufacturer did something on this front.

And not that we have confirmation on this, but it’s pretty unlikely that older phones like the Thunderbolt or Incredible 2 will receive this added bonus or Sense 3.5.  HTC definitely hasn’t show that it is the type of company to work backwards with its Sense skin.  The funny thing is, Sense 3.5 is clearly able to run on lower-end phones (single-core processor, 768MB of RAM, etc), but will likely only see it on new phones going forward.

Via:  Pocket Lint

New HTC Sense 3.5 Devices Like the Rhyme Will Receive Bonus 3GB of Dropbox Storage is a post from: Droid Life

Two of HTC’s newest phones – the Bass (Runnymede) and Rhyme (Bliss) – have been fondled for long enough by the Android developer community to release ROM ports from each.  Since both of these unreleased phones run HTC Sense 3.5 (full walk-through), owners of the original Incredible or Incredible 2 get to be some of the first to give it a spin.  The Runnymede Sense 3.5 is the newest and truest to form, but the Bliss builds will likely have a lot less bugs since devs have had more time with them.

Links to each thread can be found below.  

Incredible Threads:  Runnymede | Bliss

Incredible 2 Threads:  Runnymede | Bliss

Cheers frostincredible!

HTC Bliss and Runnymede Sense 3.5 ROMs Ported to DROID Incredible 1 and 2 is a post from: Droid Life

Most of the time that fragmentation is discussed it is in direct reference to different versions of Android running on different handsets. The cause of this fragmentation is usually identified as the sundry skins that manufacturers develop in order to differentiate their devices from others and create brand awareness and loyalty. Though critics and users have often called for stock Android to be at least an option on Android handsets (if not the standard), manufacturers like Motorola, HTC, and Samsung have continued to create more and more invasive and intricate skins on the devices they offer to consumers. Though a lack of updates is certainly reason enough for users to be upset, a more important issue may be the very different experiences that are presented to consumers because of these skins.

If the average consumer were to pick up the HTC Sensation and then pick up the DROID Bionic, they might be inclined to believe that the phones run totally different operating systems. And in a sense (no pun intended), they do. A phone made by HTC and running Sense offers a completely different experience than a Motorola phone running Blur (or “Android with Motorola Enhancements” as Motorola inclined to call it these days) or a Samsung phone running TouchWiz.

These manufacturer skins have altered Android so much that something as simple as unlocking your screen is a fundamentally different experience on different Android phones. On a stock device like the Nexus S I simply slide the lock tab to unlock the screen, but on a TouchWiz device I push the lock screen away or complete a puzzle, on a Sense device I slide down the lock bar or slide the lock ring upward, and on a Motorola device I slide the lock tab which also varies in location from device to device. In other words, the first screen that a consumer sees in a store when looking at an Android phone can be completely different from the Android phone next to it.  

The Droid X2 is only a few months old, and yet the Droid 3 has a completely different lock screen. On first glance a consumer might be convinced that the Droid X2 and Droid 3 are made by different companies because of how different the lock screens are. On a device with TouchWiz 4.0 there are additional sliders for missed calls or new test messages, yet these features are completely absent from any other Android lock screen. It gets even worse on an HTC device. The image above shows all of the possible lock screens you can select on the HTC Sensation.

I like being able to customize my device, but there comes a point where these skins aren’t just differentiators. They are creating a completely different experience, and by proxy a completely different OS. Sure, I can play Dragon, Fly on my Droid 2 or on my Droid Incredible and get the same experience, but when I hit the home button I’m greeted with a very different home screen on each device. On my Droid 2 I have a row of 4 buttons, three of which are customizable, whereas on my Incredible I have three buttons on the bottom, none of which are customizable. The polish of HTC’s widgets is incomparable with the widgets offered by Motorola or Samsung (or Google for that matter).

In a community like Droid Life, skins can be somewhat irrelevant because many users hack their phones and use custom ROMs or use a home replacement app like ADW or Launcher Pro to hide the manufacturer’s home screens, but to the average consumer the notion that the HTC Sensation and the Samsung Galaxy SII both run Android is asinine – they do not present the same interface in the least. When someone buys a phone like the Sensation they get Android, but they get the Sense interface too. I’d wager to say that a lot of consumers buy a Sense device because it looks pretty and polished and pass over a phone like the Photon because it doesn’t have a giant, magnificent weather widget for a lock screen.

The community has called out manufacturers for putting skins on their devices that delay updates – the question is, does the problem run deeper than updates? Is there a difference between someone who loves Android on the Samsung Galaxy SII and someone who loves Android on the HTC Evo 3D? Would Android be a better platform if Google stopped allowing customizations like Microsoft has with Windows Phone 7? Does Sense or MotoBlur or TouchWiz make an Android handset better or worse? Should Google stop offering Google services to devices that offer such a vastly different experience? There are no definite answers, but I think the questions are important ones for the community to ponder.

My first smartphone was the HTC Touch Pro2. It ran Windows Mobile 6.1 (though it was eventually updated to WinMo 6.5). Anyone who ran WinMo 6.5 knows that HTC TouchFlo 3D (the precursor to Sense) was near essential to make Windows Mobile useful, though my TP2 did suffer from slowness because of the skin. When Android first came out it needed a lot of polish. How many of us would be comfortable going back to the Éclair interface? My Droid Eris originally ran Android 1.6 – there is no way I would have found Donut’s interface likeable compared to what iOS was offering at the same. In the Donut and Éclair eras, skins like Sense made sense (pun intended). It made sense to make Android look prettier and in many ways easier to use, but can anyone honestly say that Gingerbread is that confusing to use? It’s not my favorite UI, but it is leaps and bounds away from the drudgery that was Android 1.6.

As Google continues to improve the polish of Android I don’t think skins will be necessary anymore. In fact, I think Android skins like Sense, though gorgeous, will be detrimental to Android in the long run. The only commitment that Google has gotten out of manufacturers has been to support devices with updates for up to 18 months, but often those updates are impossible to accomplish because of the skins. When my Droid Eris was updated from Android 1.6 to Android 2.1 I loved the new Sense features, but my phone was doggedly slow (often the phone would ring several times before the screen would respond to my finger’s demand to answer the call). I think Android will be better off if Google begins pushing for a consistent UI across devices. Manufacturers can differentiate through form factors, not skins, that way updates come faster and having an Android phone doesn’t mean dozens of drastically different experiences for consumers.

If the message from consumers to Google and manufacturers has been a demand for updates, then the message to Google from manufacturers has been that the only way they believe they can compete is if they skin Android to the point that their experience is vastly different (and in their eyes, superior) to another manufacturer’s skin. This doesn’t lead to the united front against iOS and Windows Phone 7 that Google wants and Android fans envision – it leads a confused consumer base a system fragmented by both updates and experience.

What do you think? Are skins good or bad for Android? Should Google exert more control over user experience? Does a phone’s skin impact your decision to buy it or not? Sound off in the comments to let us know where you stand on Android skin fragmentation.

Android Fragmentation is Much More Than Just Numbers, It’s About Skins Too [Opinion] is a post from: Droid Life

It was only a matter of time, right?  Last week we saw a version of HTC’s Sense 3.5 ported over to the Desire, so forming a team to work on bringing it to the DROID Incredible just seemed like a logical next step.  And after looking at these screenshots, you can see that the team has made some progress by getting it booted and then fixing a ton of initial bugs in just a short few days.  You won’t find a test build to flash at this time, so try as best as you can to remain patient.  The 13-man team is working hard to get this out to the masses as soon as possible.  

And to get an idea of what to expect from HTC Sense 3.5, watch this video again:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Follow the progress at this XDA thread.

Update:  It looks like a build is already available for the Incredible 2.  Granted, it is a MySense 3.5 port which is part Sense 3.5 and part T-Mobile garbage, but at least it’s a start.  Jump on it!  Support thread here.

Cheers frostincredible!

HTC Sense 3.5 Port Coming to a DROID Incredible Near You (Updated: Incredible 2 Too) is a post from: Droid Life