Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocket now calm recently HTC unveiled a new version of its Sense interface for Android to debut on the HTC Desire HD which comes out this fall there's a lot of new changes a lot of changes that they didn't even talk about in this new run we've got a copy here of the ROM and we're going to go through all the new features right now let's get to it so right now this is running actually on an HTC hd2 it's very easy to use and it also works very well the phone works Wi-Fi works pretty much everything works I'll put a link up in the description if you want to try it for yourself I'm sure this will be on the Nexus One the Droid Incredible you name it any Android device in just a few weeks once the developers get their hands on so let's talk about this new version of sense it's very different starting off to customize the interface you press this button in the bottom right corner and then you get this new screen which very well organizes all the different things you can do to customize the interface before you just got kind of a dump of widgets and folders and things like that but now you've got pretty much action so here show your favorite content on the home screen with widgets app open any app with one tap so they really make it easy for people especially new users to understand what to do here's something they did not talk about you now get skins in the HTC Desire HD so we've got the blackboard skin the woods skin so this is for people that don't like this curved design on the bottom let's choose the slate theme this one's actually quite cool so you click that by you wait a minute and then you get the new skin and also there's a button to add more skins from HTC Sense comm but that site is not up right now so you can't really do much with that so quite simply what we're going to get is a few redesigned elements this clock has a slate look to it as does down here and some other screens also take on this slate like look which you'll see through the rest of the walkthrough let's go back to the personalize screen we can now change the scene which is a set of pre-configured widgets but now it's kind of 3d it's really cool so you can flip through and say okay well I want to have my social scene so maybe you turn this on on the weekend I don't have my work scene perhaps this is good if you're traveling on business and the play let's go to play and also you see the get more buff it's another way to go to htcsense.com and get more scenes presumably ones that people can upload so here we are going to get the standard the standard play theme which adds a variety of widgets and albums we're going to revert back to the first one just so I can walk through some particular widgets that are new okay so there's a new change to the notification area which is awesome fast app switching so before an Android if you're in settings and then you you go into say messages in order to switch between applications you tap and hold the home button and you use the recent apps switcher to go to another program well in the new version of HTC Sense if you pull down the notification area you get an iPhone for like task switcher so this is just another way to sort of switch between two different applications or three different applications it's kind of reminiscent of the old Windows Mobile recently used list that was up in the Start menu which is really nice to have okay so let's talk about some of these new widgets so over here on favorites favorites now integrates with social networking so I've got my Facebook and Twitter plugged in and down here we can see John Rhett enger' is going fast and if you scroll down further you can see if you have an email from somebody there's a little indicator there that implies that I have an email from John and you get the point from there so a new favorites widget in the new version of HTC Sense of course you can still do the pinch to zoom to bring up this leap feature that lets you go from screen to screen here this is the friend stream so it's going to tap into my Facebook and Twitter both at the same time you get a little icon to let you know which service you're entering and so we've got this HTC Sense like interface down at the bottom we can slide to the right and slide to the left and we get the continuation of that skin the slate skin here if you remember the stock HTC Sense skin has kind of bubbles but here we've got kind of squares okay so here's something new for the email widget you actually get little previews within the HTC Sense widget which is quite nice you can read emails preview them right from your home screen without having to dig into the actual mount application and to go to the mail application you tap on the message it will bring up the message that the person has sent you and will go back okay so here is the weather widget really unchanged you can slick within the widget to get weather for various locations or you can tap on one particular area and it will bring up the weather in that area for the full-screen update let's go back going the other way let's see what we have so this is actually footprints so this ties into the location and I'll show you the pre cached Maps application in a minute that is really awesome and over here is a new feature called HTC like this is for application discovery Android has went like a hundred thousand apps in the App Store right now but how do you know which ones to download HTC is making that slightly easier with the new HTC like application this is something else they didn't talk about at their press event but we're showing it to you here so what you can do is flick through featured apps or you could go down here and go to most popular apps so you can see Google Goggles is very popular Angry Birds go over here to friends comments kind of a social networking feature for applications very nice we have downloads over here and on the right is marked items so HTC like is an HTC's new way of showing you which apps are interesting and so on and so forth and there is a corresponding widget to that so you can always see new applications on your homescreen we're gonna remove that let's add a new widget so should go through the ones that are loaded here so we have the widget application there and most of these are standard a lot of these are unchanged so we have the calendar app which has a variety of different styles but you've seen this before so we can select that and here's the calendar kind of has a squarish look because the theme are using right now is square again tap and hold we can dive into here and change the widgets Facebook widget Google widget HTC likes is the one that we talked about a lot of these are standard things that you've already seen there are minor variations on a lot of them they're improved a little bit spruced up and in some cases you get new layouts for certain widgets so let's go back another thing that is new is a new live wallpaper so if we go - here again the personalise screen we've got a wallpaper we can change the live wallpaper - and by the way you get this new 3d interface like you get for scenes and for skins and this is a new one it's called slideshow and it's not going to work on this device because I don't have any photos but presumably pictures will sort of fly in onto your home screen really cool feature here's something else that's new once you plug in your Facebook or Twitter when you go in the notification area you'll see something says matched contact suggestions so from here it will suggest who you should be linking to your Facebook so it sees that I have a twitter contact Adams Elaine and a Facebook contact Adam Lang so wants me to link those together very smart so that throughout the operating system when Adam calls I will be able to see his updates in the now calling screen really cool way to just tie everything together and that was a look at some of the changes in the new version of HTC Sense for the desire hd they've really taken the homescreen interface to the next level here it's really great to be able to switch between applications through the notification area a great use of space and all of the new widgets and the skins and the 3d way to look at scenes is really fantastic coming up soon we'll talk about the locations feature which preloads map data so you don't get the waiting checkerboard so that is a characteristic of Google Maps mobile please if you like this video give it a thumbs up and thanks for watching that's it for now