Microsoft's not going to allow
HTC to cover
Windows Phone 7 Series with its
Sense UI overlay (which is going to be
an interesting thing to watch in and of itself), but there's no question that the homegrown user interface has made a-many
Windows Mobile phones look and feel a whole lot better than stock. Sense is also gaining traction in the
Android realm, a sector where it's far more likely to either make a huge impact or be overlooked entirely. So, the question we're posing here today is this: if you were granted an HTC badge for a day, how would you change Sense? Are you satisfied with the quickness? Does anything simply get in the way? Any quirks that you just can't figure out? Any tweaks that you'd love to see made? We aren't always serious when we say that these companies are listening to you, but trust us when we say that design folks from HTC might just give your comments a once over. Here's your chance. Don't screw it up.
posted March 19th 2010 11:19PM
7 pages seems like overkill - take it down a notch or two? Otherwise its quite amazing software and a great GUI
@Steve J Seven pages just makes it a resource hog. It uses too many resources, too much memory, and changes the Android frameworks too much (though I could levy some of the same criticisms against Launcher2 in Android 2.1), making HTC lag way behind when it comes to updating their Sense UI phones to the latest version of Android.
HTC could have gotten what they needed to get done without changing Android so extensively. This would make Sense a lot easier for them to port to a newer Android version too.
@Steve J idk about you but i use all seven of my screens. An option to choose how many you want would've been the best of both worlds tho. How about the ability to run the widgets without sense being running that would be nice
@saf100792 I certainly concur, hence some ability to take it down to five or four homescreens would be great
@saf100792
I use all seven of my home screens as well. I love using the ones that take up a whole screen, and I love having each page have some sort of theme.
I have my 2 central screens with commonly used apps/date/time/weather followed by Pandora and fun productivity apps. Then to the left and right I have email and text messages. Then further left, I have the Calendar, and finally, for the two right, I have settings switches and bookmarks.
I wish there was an option for MORE screens, as well as an option to shrink the number.
Other than that, I really wish that random programs would stop popping up in the background. Thankfully, I use Advanced Task Killer, but I'm almost certain that the issue lies within HTC SenseUI.
@Steve J
7 pages is far from overkill. I wish I had 9.
@Steve J
a better multi tasking system would be to put an extra side bar button on the notification panel and would allow us to seemingly switch from app to app from any app as long as the notification panel is showing, unlike games which will take up the whole screen.
@Steve J I love my 7 home screens on my Eris. I use 3 of them for app shortcuts, and use HTC Peep widget fo simple twitter updates, calenda widget, and the pandora, taskiller, google search and settings widgets on one of them. I use these everyday and sometimes wish there were more. Sure beats the iPhone, in that respect.
@Steve J
The GUI is nice apart from the glossy gradients. I've got a HTC Tattoo (on 1.6), and the Sense on there has these horrible glossy gradients everywhere and clunky icons.
Assuming this is the same SenseUI, I want smooth, matte colours (you can do that with the current black theme and make it look great) and rich icons that are designed to fit their environment (e.g. the "3G" status icon on the iPhone is beveled to make the text stand out more). And better fonts.
@Steve J Man I was really confused as to why everyone was posting and saying that there were too many screens when you have the option to kill a lot of the selections...but then I realized that you guys were talking about Sense UI for Android.
You can customize the number of screens on the Windows Mobile version of Sense UI. And to be honest I like the full-screen look for a lot of the screens better than the widgety version on Android.
@Steve J
they should make the clock flip again!!
i miss that... it looked so cool. i was devastated when i found out it wasn't on the sprint hero...
@saf100792
Really, HTC sense should give you the option how many screen to use (e.g. setup>HTC Sense>Home Screen Pages> 3, 5, 7 or 9)
@Steve J
Yup, I also use all seven screens and wish we had an option to add more.
Also, am I alone in NEVER using the Scenes feature? Sounds like an incredible feature, but one that I can honestly say I've never had the need for.
@saf100792 I love dedicated keys, and I really love when they’re not touch keys but real physical press and click keys. I also like a dedicated volume control and a dedicated power/lock button. I just don’t see any possible negatives to having those. For the sense, I think allowing few more page screens to be added would be nice like the htc desire: http://bit.ly/htc-desire-trail-of-updates
@Steve J it should be customizable, 3-9 pages, and possible more in the future.
@tekdemon
Am i the only 1 who thinks the windows sense UI looks much better than the android one?
Also combine windows and android senses and include a few ideas from metro UI (obviousli not for 7series)
@coolbho3000
unless you're just being a troll, how does sense change the android framework AT ALL? All they do is provide replacement activities to some of the default ones. And they certainly don't provide their own APIs for external development, thus they don't even cause fragmentation in the market.
As far as the original question of how to change Sense is concerned. They can always make it more efficient. Other than this, landscape support for all Sense activities would be nice
@saf100792 If you use seven screens you might as well use the pull out drawer. Sheesh.
My solution would be eliminate HTC Sense. I want an Android device, that can run the latest version and is completely compatible with other Android phones. Sense just creates splintering.
@urandom If HTC Sense did not change the framework "AT ALL," then you could simply pull the Sense APKs and put them on to a regular AOSP build and call it a day. This is absolutely not the case. It is not as simple as a couple of replaced activities. I've torn Sense apart, and there are absolutely significant framework changes required to make it work. A TextEdit field, for example, is not available to AppWidgets in the default framework, yet HTC Sense can have them.
Compatibility issues do exist: http://www.google.com/m/url?cd=1&client=ms-android-google&ct=res&ei=9-ikS7CiGdWitwffsO7qAg&oi=blended&q=http%3A%2F%2Fcode.google.com%2Fp%2Fandroid%2Fissues%2Fdetail%3Fid%3D3933&resnum=1&sa=X&source=android-home&usg=AFQjCNFnJHhaUxTy-9izrDKuJkBgDUgn9Q
The effect on fragmentation is mostly secondary. HTC never released a Sense update to 1.6, bar the Tattoo (where it is needed for the QVGA screen) and to this day, most Sense devices are stuck at 1.5. Framework changes take time to port to a new Android version, and HTC has lagged behind in this regard. At the same time, both the G1 and myTouch are sitting comfortably at 1.6, able to use stuff like navigation and the new Android Market.
@Steve J - I'm fine with the 7 homescreens i just try to use the less amount of apps/widgets on them, but something i really wwant to change is the media player, which is something i feel android/htc havent done so well on.
thanks
@Mike10010100 apps will continue to do that because that's how Android works if one app thinks it might need to interact with another app it wakes it up and keeps it in memeory so it will open faster or be able to use it's resources faster like GPS/Location
@ Steve J
I would turn Sense UI into Sense OS but that's just me.
@dtom2444 i have never used the scene option either. Again, seems like a good idea, the ability to change the entire layout on the fly seems like a useful option. I have used it once and never again. I would like to see a task manager built into sense so I can just see what is running in the background. I don't use a task killer but I would like to know what is running.
more home screens...?
@RidEtHeLiGhTNiNg
better multitasking integration would be better more useful than an extra home screen
@glenskey
How about both? A widget that can take up an entire screen that is a task manager. Add on an extra home screen, and you satisfy the people who want another homescreen as well as the people who want a better task manager.
(since I'm already posting) What I would like to see is (in WinMo Sense) deeper integration. Right now Sense is running on top of WinMo. Instead of doing it that way, how about rully replacing things. Like the messaging application. when I click to see "all messages" it brings me to WinMos messaging app, which is totally different looking. Same thing goes for email. HTC should develop a better "box" (inbox, outbox, drafts, etc) view.
Or they can just take the HTC Smart's idea and beef it up. Make it an actual smartphone OS.
@BigJayDogg3
Try the new 6.5 ROMs with Sense 2.5 (now officially from HTC) - stock WinMo is buried deeper and new HTC SMS application completely replaces the stock WinMo when clicking "All messages" (although they haven't yet for Email, beyond the fancy 'preview' mode).
I like the appearance of sense but it simply runs too slow on the eris. I can't wait for the 2.1 update.
@forHim247 download the friggin leaked 2.1 man, I don't know how fast a phone has to be before you stop crying
I would make it conflict with widgets and backgrounds less. It force closes far to often on my Eris when I have the HTC weather or message widgets open, or if I change my background. Beats the hell out of me why changing the background to a different picture would make the UI force close.
@forHim247
Unless that software update included modern hardware, 2.1 isn't going to help the fact that, while they build the eris with a great form factor, they put 3 year old guts in it.
I have a copy of 2.1 running on my sprint hero. It runs really fast! Don't knock it before you try it.
the one thing I did not like on Android 1.5 is the slow internet browsing. well they fixed that!
I like the zoom out cards.
sense does kill some memory.
@steel Android 1.5 is much slower and laggier than all subsequent versions, especially when multitasking.
@forHim247 it is not Sense's fault people c'mon!, the processor and the memory just can't keep up. Sense runs very snappy on the Legend, Desire and N1.
1 Ghz processor.
@69camaroSS
Oh Sense, yes I need to read more carefully before I post.
@69camaroSS
I think you need to worry about getting through the title before you move on to tackling the post.
I would use it before I commented
@uck icwhatyoudidthar
I'd make it run on hardware that has a tegra 2 chip, 4.8 inch capacitive screen, slide out keyboard touch pro 2 style, 8 mp camera with a decent sensor... Wait, what were we talking about?
i just want the supersonic already
@donnysoldier
At the risk of sounding hypocritical, did you just post to hear your own voice???
@donnysoldier
I'm sorry... Were you commenting on how you would improve the Sense UI?
@donnysoldier
If it wasnt made clear by the 2 previous posters .... you do understand this is about UI and not hardware, correct?
If you cant listen any faster we'll talk slower.
Allow the user to assign as many or as few pages/screens hey want, instead of simply having blank screens there. Make sense UI easier to turn off. Sometimes it can be a memory hog and sluggish, optimize it to better use those rescources .
@Junemas I agree. Sense would be great if you had the option to turn it off. Some days I may want it and others I may not. Having that option would greatly improve it.
@hurts feelings well have a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Amcaot1Us this will solve your problems i guess;)
@hurts feelings
You CAN turn off Sense by not adding the the Sense widgets. Just change the "Scene" and you can start fresh.
Allow custom icons.