HTC Sense 2.1 (Gingerbread) Overview [VIDEO]
It seems that with each new version of Android, HTC adds more to their custom layer, HTC Sense. The same was true for several new Android 2.3 phones HTC announced today which include the Incredible S, Desire S, and the Wildfire S. I figured it was worth taking another look at Sense to see what surprises awaited me.
One thing I loved was that HTC put settings togglers inside the notification pain. Before, you just had your recently used apps and your list of notifications, if any. Now, you can flip between notifications and settings by hitting the tabs on the bottom. This does away with the need to add those toggle widgets to your home-screen.
It’s 10 times better than any homescreen widget method considering you can access them anywhere at anytime. HTC still inludes the toggle widgets for those who may still want them. (But why would they?)
They also made some changes to the app drawer. Firstly, it’s no longer a kinetic scrolling mechanism. You still scroll vertically, but you go section by section. It’s a change that many OEMs have decided to implement for their custom overlays, and it isn’t bad.
Also new are a couple of sorting options: you can look at your most frequently used applications, your market applications, or just all of them. Not totally flexible, but options are options, and you didn’t have this one before.
A few of the widgets have gotten a bit more polish, too. I didn’t check all of them out, but one notable change is to the clock widget – It’ll now pull in the latest Facebook status update if you have set an account up on your phone. I failed to see the point, though, as you can’t scroll through a list of statuses and touching the status doesn’t open Facebook, it just opens more weather and clock options. HTC says this new version of Sense isn’t final, however, so that may change.
That’s about it as far as anything new goes. Would have liked to be able to try out a lot more stuff, but it’s hard to do anything on a phone with no internet connection. We’re sure phones with this version of Sense will be popping up soon enough, and you can bet we’ll go even deeper when they do.
PS: No, I didn’t see that big “REMOVE” button when trying to delete the calendar widget.