Gadgetory

hey guys it's brandon minimun from pocket now calm and this is one of several software tours for the HTC hd2 this device has the largest touchscreen of any smartphone on the market it also is a capacitive multi-touch display which is the first for windows mobile so in this video we're going to cover HTC Sense which is really HTC's interface for this device previously known as touchflo 3d or manila as some people know it we've shown this to you a few times on the touch pro 2 but now with the Snapdragon processor and the final release of the hd2 we've really get to see it in its full glory so let's start let's turn on the device and this is just the standard windows mobile 6.5 lock screen although they actually change the icons a little bit we're going to slide this over and zoom in on the screen and get started with the tour of HTC Sense so starting off we have the nice weather clock which is on some newer HTC devices if we tap on the clock we're taken to the world clock we can add multiple locations or we can set the alarm clock pretty basic stuff if we tap on the picture of the the rain cloud will be taken right to the weather tab now this device automatically knows where you are so if you're traveling it will automatically adjust the location the time the weather to exactly where you are and you can also have many different backgrounds on the screen so we can have the weather background and to give you a demo of what that looks like I can go down here to weather demo and you'll see this appear behind the time and all of the things on your main screen so you can flick through when it's raining nice big windshield wiper will come down if it's snowing you'll have frost on the screen we've shown this to you before you've probably seen it many times and we'll just finish up here if it's windy leaves are flying by so it really kind of immerses you in your environment which is really unique for a smartphone if it's snowing you get the snowflakes and finally if it's thundering outside you will get some flashes of lightning on your screen pretty cool stuff you can also change the wallpaper to be animated here's the setting for whether wallpaper or we can just choose a static picture so we can choose say this one which we've probably seen before and you'll see in a minute things start to fly around on the if that's a little too distracting for you you can get a static wallpaper although oddly it's not listed as static wallpaper you have to go to animated wallpaper and then you have to go to albums and all and then we see all of the kind of static wallpaper let's choose the simple brown one and it will sort of fade in and look really nice going down the home screen we have the calendar so if we click on here we will be taken to our calendar actually the calendar tab on HTC Sense and we're going to cover that more detail momentarily down here are some quick links and these are really great because these can be either links to websites or links to programs or links to contacts so here I have a contact that I like to call a regular basis ifd browser and I've pocketnow.com and it actually gives you a little thumbnail of the website kind of like you get on the iPhone launching programs is super fast you've probably seen that already just moving around on the screen everything is extremely responsive and as you see more software videos from us you're really going to get a sense for that so let's say we want to add a new bookmark this comes right from opera mobile so I'm going to add TechnoBuffalo and you can see a little screenshot of the site there let's add a program so you can really customize this to all the programs you use the most so you're not really digging through the start menu trying to find programs that you use on a regular basis let's see if there's anything else in here that we want to take a look at we can remove the Quick Links if you don't want to have the calculator anymore quite simply and we can also change the weather settings and adjust the homescreen tabs we want to disable some of these tabs or move them around like so although this was present in previous versions of touchflo 3d somebody hit cancel and let's go on to the next step this is really cool this is the people tab and this is kind of a revamped version of what you had before in touch flo 3d so instead of having kind of like a cover flow like contact tab now it's just a grid which is much easier to use and what's really cool is that if you get an email from anyone here or text message or an mms you'll get a little indicator so right now i can see that i have a new email from alana tapping on that i can go right to her integrated Contacts tab which lets me see her texan her emails her facebook status updates and her calls and I'm taken right to the email tab a really convenient way to sort of be able to tell who is communicating with you out of the people that you communicate with on a regular basis this can be great for business users or for people that really like to keep in touch and if we go into menu let's see what we can do here we can add a favorite or just remove a favorite or we can go to the all people tab and we'll talk more about that in future videos the next tab we have just the standard text messaging screen and we can flick up and down we've seen this before and it takes you right into the message so I'm going to go back going over to the email screen now we get a bigger view of the emails that we have in the inbox so as whereas before in touch flo 3d you only got to see a few lines now you get to see pretty much the entire top part of the message and tapping on the email obviously bring it into its full screen glory and you can switch between multiple accounts over here or make a new account or write a new message I should say by pressing on this button let's go over to the internet tab which is kind of made to look like the Contacts tab so now they're all arranged in grids and if you have any favorites that you want to add it will save it as a little thumbnail which is a very nice visual representation you can quickly launch the browser by tapping on this icon or you can get to a google search by just typing in a query up here and pressing on the the search button we're going to talk more about the Internet experience especially compared to other devices like the touch pro two on the iphone in future videos over here in the calendar tab is the completely revamped calendar application so if we go to month we're taken to this beautiful month display we can go to next month or the previous month tapping on a day will bring up the agenda for that day and we can kind of tap through to the different views that they have this one's especially useful the agenda view so you can see sort of quickly in a linear fashion what you what you need to be doing if we go to menu we have some extra views we can go to the year view and HTC has integrated this very well with Windows Mobile so if we go to menu and new appointment we're taken into a beautiful looking way to add a new appointment it's not the standard windows mobile the interface it's very much spruced up with this gray and the HTC style buttons so a very deep integration of the calendar i'm going to hit cancel there and go to the next step stocks tab really hasn't been changed much since previous versions of clutch flow 3d so we're not going to cover that and now we get into the really really cool stuff so ignore that picture of my feet so here we are in photos and video we've seen this before but if we rotate the device into landscape watch what happens this is beautiful we get into this beautiful landscape 3d photo gallery and we're going to start talking about multi-touch in a minute but let's get to a picture let's tap on this picture it comes up it fades up beautifully we can pinch to zoom wow it's very surprising to to actually be doing that the windows mobile device the pinch to zoom works fantastically well it redraws the picture very quickly we can swipe to go to the next picture this is probably the best viewing experience for photos I've ever seen the screen looks fantastic it's very easy to be super precise precise with the pinching and the dragging and tapping to double double tapping the zoom also works we go to the right and see all of the beautiful pictures that are in here and there are some options on all of the pictures so if we tap here and we go to this one we can save it as a screen image save as a contact delete it set as a footprint which we're going to talk about in a minute or here's a quick way to email it send it as a message or put it up on facebook speaking of facebook let's get back to the the portrait display let's take a look at the new photo album view so if we go down to albums and albums down here we even new tab here F for facebook if you're logged into Facebook watch what you can do this is just awesome so here I have all of my Facebook friends and I can view their photos as if they existed on my device so let's just take anyone here i'm going to take myself and here are all my photo albums and i'm going to click on cruise to the bahamas and it's going to load all of my photos from facebook so I or from this particular folder so I'm going to be able to tap on any of them and bring it up just as if i was browsing it on my device and i can pinch to zoom just like i had these stored on the device it's really an amazing experience and it's really just a fantastic way to view photos so let's get out of that tap on the screen great let's go to the next tab the music tab which has also been redesigned so just like the Photos tab if I tilt the device this way I'll get this gorgeous animation wow this is in my opinion much nicer than what you get on the iPhone or iPod touch so we can browse through our music with this beautiful cover flow the 3d reflection below if we want to play some music let's say we want to play this way sir we tap on there Beverly Hills will start playing when I press the play button I can go to the next song I can find it and browse through more music it's really a really a fantastic way to listen to music and really experience it in a huge screen with very fluid graphics let's get back into portrait and there's some other things you can do up here there's a button here that will actually query for album art so that if you have some albums that don't have art associated with them yet it will reach out to the internet and get them there's some other buttons here up here there are some other buttons up here as well like repeat and if we go into library we are taken into the HTC music library that we've seen on other devices so you get full album art or you can go to songs or genres or just flick along the bottom in this touchflo 3d like display that we have seen before but it's just especially fluid on the hd2 I have no idea so this is it came on the device I promise okay let's go over now to the weather tab but weather tab is mostly unchanged from previous versions except now there are easier ways to remove locations so look I have to first add a location before I can remove one so let's type here Paris and by the way we're going to talk about the on-screen keyboard in future videos here's Paris comes up very fast and now let's say we want to remove Paris well before we had to do it one by one but now if we go to menu and we go remove location we can uncheck so pretend you have you know 10 locations that you've added or in my case when I turn on the device for the first time there were six or seven cities that I'd never visit so I just went down the list check check check I hit done and then I was only left with my home area right here okay so let's move to the next tab this is the Twitter tab this is HTC's inbuilt Twitter client which is okay it's a little bit clunky I much prefer to use a program like touched wit or TWiki knee so I can go to all tweets and that's really where you're going to spend most of your time you can flick through all of your tweets the last 50 tweets you can change the setting you can go into the ad replies so you can see all of your mentions recently your direct message is there and your favorites are there now let's say you want to make a tweet then it gets kind of cool so we tap up here what are you doing and we can add a photo we can add our location or just type out a quick to tweet it's a very easy way to sort of not have to open up the Twitter client you can do it all from really the main screen with HTC sense so of course if I tap on a picture there I can choose a picture to upload and says uploading photo it does it all in one step okay and it has uploaded the photo but I'm going to click back and not send out that tweet so a pretty good Twitter client there are some settings if we go into settings we can change how many tweets that should download and by defaults on 50 can also change how often it downloads new tweets and you can get to as low as 5 minutes if you are on Twitter lot you can also choose your URL shortening hosting your photo post so pretty good level of control it's not as robust as other Twitter clients that I've mentioned few seconds ago to the right we have HTC footprints and we've seen this before but the graphics are amazing watch this I tap on this picture this beautiful animation comes up the idea of footprints is that if you travel a lot you can take a picture of a monument you see or a restaurant you like you can add geo coordinates to it so you can get back to that location plus you can add some or a voice note so for example if i press the + button it's going to bring up the camera and so i'll take a picture of the of the HTC case here hot on one sec okay that wasn't the best picture and it says gps still searching because it's trying to reach out get gps coordinates but i'm indoors of course right now so i'm going to click stop gps search and by the way there's some really cool stuff that this does with gps and the digital compass that's coming up in a future video so i'm going to click done and see what my footprint looks like there it is if I tap on it doesn't have much information doesn't have a phone number or geo coordinates or a voice note or anything like that because I just set that up quickly a good thing for travellers and finally on the right we have settings and we're not going to cover settings in this video because there's a lot of news settings and I'm sure many of you want to see how the capacitive screen kind of interplays with the standard windows mobile stuff and we're going to show that soon but that was just a look at the new HTC Sense which does a fantastic job and really bringing the device to life and taking advantage of the one gigahertz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor so we have a lot more coming up on the HTC hd2 be sure to follow us on Twitter to know right when the new video hits twitter.com slash pocket now tweets that's it for now