Gadgetory

dear HTC here's how to fix HTC Sense hey guides i'm brandon minimun from pocketnow.com and in this video I'm going to talk about HTC Sense and why it's loved and hated so much and more importantly how HTC can fix it HTC really wants you to love sense because when you go to buy your next smart phone you're not going to be able to buy a Motorola with sense or an LG with sense you're only going to be able to buy an HTC device with that Sense experience they want it to be a household brand that people request at the cellphone stores they want to make it that good the problem with HTC Sense all along from back in the days of the HTC hd2 and even before that when it was called touch flow on the Windows Mobile HTC touch diamond2 Touch pro2 and the touch broening all of those legacy phones is that it was way too heavy it was very focused on being pretty which in a day when Windows Mobile was ugly made a lot of sense but today Android has gotten so much better Ice Cream Sandwich has a beautiful interface that's fast fluid and really pleasing on the eye that really doesn't need much dress-up and modification but HDC HDC still wants to do sense they still want to make it a selling point but again they kind of missed the mark the HTC One X 1s and 1 v all have the latest versions of sense version 4.0 it brings a lot of improvements but it still misses the mark in a lot of ways let's take a look at how so here we have stock Ice Cream Sandwich on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus it has the experience that Google intended it's fast its fluid its efficient it's beautiful and it really just works very well to maximize screen space to feel fast to have a consistent look and feel it even has its own font the Roboto font which is part of Android Ice Cream Sandwich now let's bring in the HTC One X and by the way check out our review on that we'll put a link up at the top which really changes everything it's got a lot of eye candy to be honest so we're going to unlock the screen here we've got a lock screen that you can drag various items into the ring get right to a program and let's take something like folders for example so we've got folders on Ice Cream Sandwich without an inner interface then we've got Sense 4.0 see the difference I'll open them at the same time which one is faster stocke Ice Cream Sandwich is faster and it's a lot less fluffy here in Sense 4.0 we've got all this extra padding around these items and we've got this big Add button over here in stock Ice Cream Sandwich it's just so efficient we have nothing but the icons inside of the folder we don't have a big plus button because it doesn't really make sense to have to go through and check off different apps that you want enough older people don't use folders like that they just drag items into a folder and that's that so that's one area where I think HTC is really messed up Ice Cream Sandwich the folder experience a second place HTC really needs to focus on here is settings so if we go into settings on both of these devices look at the difference between these two the one on the right has a lot more eye candy and to be honest it kind of looks like it was designed for a kindergartner it has lots of colors lots of textures fun animations but on Android 4.0 stock it's fast fluid and efficient when you get to the end of a list you get this gentle blue animation whereas here in sense 4.0 you've got this effect that just seems to unnecessarily toll the processor why do you need this accordion effect when Ice Cream Sandwich just does a very subtle job here at fading this beautiful little blue line up there so that's another example where HTC Sense 4.0 just has too much fluff another great example is the multitask UI so we're going to bring them up at the same time and they're about the same speed but check out the difference in since 4.0 you get this very kind of pretty fluffy interface where you flip through these cards but by default here you can only see one two apps open an Ice Cream Sandwich which has a great interface for multitasking we get to see one two three four open apps at one time it's much more efficient it works why did HTC have to take away something that already worked very well you know it used to be that in earlier versions of Android we could say Android 2.3 and below the interface wasn't good enough so HTC had to do something to spruce it up but Ice Cream Sandwich is fast it's beautiful let's look at the program tray and let's actually see which one opens faster so about the same speed they both have animations here in HTC Sense we get these tabs along the bottom some people might find them useful but to be honest I think this works much better because you get to see more apps on the screen at one time and it's just all in one place so we can go to edit tabs actually and remove some of these can't remove that one can remove that one and what that will actually do is take away the tabs but that's not immediately obvious and some people are going to be stuck with those tabs along the bottom and you can actually see there's still a placeholder for the tabs it hasn't disappeared completely which HTC has had stuck with the default application tray in Ice Cream Sandwich another place where HTC has come in and done things to make it heavier and fluffier with more eye candy is adding widgets to the homescreen so in Ice Cream Sandwich stock we go over here to widgets we take something we like and we drag when we drop it to a home screen boom no more room on this home screen that's unfortunate okay so we can go over to here let's go over here and drop it there and since 4.0 Wow look what they've done some people might like this but some people might find it way too much in terms of the visual intensity so we can scroll through all these widgets we can press the tons of buttons and navigate around and you know slide things and turn things and twist things and all day long and then you can add items to your homescreen but it's a lot less efficient than what Google does has done in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich by default so the problem with Sense 4.0 is that it's still too heavy it's still too fluffy and Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 the stock interface is gorgeous and it's beautiful that said HTC has actually done some good things in Sense and allow me to show you some of those one of the places that HTC has done killer job evolving much beyond what stock Android does is the email client so email application is one place where sense really shines where HTC is really added value by making a part of the operating system that you use a lot really pretty really functional so here we are an email and as you can see there are these beautiful check boxes you can easily action on items text menus without archaic icons if we bring in Ice Cream Sandwich and we try to do the same thing we get these icons that aren't exactly clear on what they do another great feature of Sense 4.0 email is that you can actually look at threaded messages in kind of a 3d way so we have a down arrow here we can expose all of the content there and just have a really visual idea of what kind of threaded messages that you have now let's make a new message here so we're going to press compose and compose and we'll compare the two different screens and we run into a place here where sense 4.0 is again too much so here in an Ice Cream Sandwich we've got this keyboard it's small it lets you see a lot of content on the screen at one time in Sense 4.0 HTC has added these directional arrows along the bottom again too much so that we have less content up here kind of frustrating something that is some people might find valuable if you're moving around a list but you can't turn it off it's just too fluffy but overall the email experience between stock Ice Cream Sandwich Sense 4.0 is definitely improved and it looks much better so for most people HTC Sense 4.0 is a good thing it's pretty it's functional it adds a lot to the operating system for power users they just want things to be fast efficient and streamlined and HTC Sense is none of that even in its latest iteration that seems to add fluff in places that don't need fluff so HTC if you want to fix the HTC Sense make it less fluffy like make it less intrusive allow what Google has done to shine through some more don't mess with folders so that they become these animated padded things that are just inefficient uses of space use what Ice Cream Sandwich has done well and fix what Ice Cream Sandwich doesn't do that well to really enhance upon the features of the phone let us know what you think about HTC Sense and how HTC can make sense better please leave a comment and please thumbs up the video if you liked it thanks for watching that's it for now Oh