The start was very common and usual: HTC smartphones based on Windows Mobile were no different from other devices, except the badge of the manufacturer and design. However, over the time, differences began to appear shortly – with each new device different programs, plug-ins for the Today screen and small utilities were added in smartphones.

The breakthrough was the announcement of HTC Touch Diamond and the new company UI, the TouchFLO 3D. The interface of the smartphone was welcomed by users, and Diamond eventually became one of the mass products. This is, of course, thanks largely to TouchFLO.

Its first versions were subject to constant criticism and fortunately healthy ones. It was said that developers paid too much attention to design, while functionality was on the second place. But over time the UI was rather improved, and the critics fell silent. Yes, TouchFLO 3D remained clumsy and overloaded with animation, but at all the functionally it is ahead of all existing interfaces for Windows Mobile.

Now, it’s time to say goodbye to this  older UI. HTC has a new interface with higher quality. The successor is named HTC Sense, and the first time it appeared on the device HTC Hero – the second HTC device with the Android OS.

SEVEN IN ONE
The interface is first judged by its first look. In this regard, HTC Sense is surprisingly simple, it is not impressing, as it was a couple years ago with TouchFLO 3D. It’s doesn’t have the same smooth and sharp animation, multiple transition effects between screens, and other excesses. New UI is mainly sustained for Android style – not mottled and bright, and very similar to the standard form of the OS.

The desktop in Sense is divided into seven separate screens; each of which can add widgets from Google. There are total of about 10 widgets, plus 15 brand widgets of HTC. Thus, a lot of additional modules can be added to the screens: the weather, bookmarks, clocks, calendar, stock quotes, photos. Nice and large selection of beautiful pictures for your desktop background HTC Sense are available by default.

You can put any items on any of the seven screens. In addition, branded widgets from HTC, you can choose not only the type of content (weather, stocks, etc.), but also in size. For example, you want a single screen desktop to see the weather forecast and calendar events, and the standard widgets occupy these types of content on each screen. In this case you can not accommodate full-screen widgets, and their reduced versions.

ADDRESS BOOK
Address Book of HTC Sense is also altered beyond recognition. If the Android OS has a simple list of contacts and search for them, then the device with HTC Sense address book brings together all the information about the user in a menu. This means that from the window with data about a contact you can not only call your friend on a mobile phone and send him a text or email message, but also make a comment on his Facebook profile. Besides, you can see all the pictures of the contact, and explore the history of calls to this subscriber.

Another feature of the interface is an opportunity to place an icon with a contact to one of the screens on your desktop. You can place a call icon on the screen, but you can have a separate icon for the phone call, and for a text message.

Keyboard
Standard on-screen QWERTY-keyboard in Android is too simple. You can get used to it, but it just can not be named handy. HTC Sense has a much better keyboard, which works not only in the vertical, but horizontal display mode.

Intelligent Keyboard of HTC Sense can help you type the words you enter, even if you make two or three mistakes apparently.

Additional symbols are the trouble of any small keypad. In Sense this problem is solved as usual and elegantly – if you want to put a colon or parentheses, there is no need to switch for the special characters input mode. If you hold one of the buttons, another sign is written instead of a letter.

Keyboard of HTC Sense is noticeably better than  the standard one. It stores the words and then offers them with input.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SERVICES
Android, like the iPhone OS, is an operating system, tightly tied to Internet services. In addition to email clients and contacts, which interact with related projects of Google, there are a couple of interesting possibilities.
• List of sites where you can upload your photos
• Full-screen widget to work with Twitter
• Video clips can be downloaded to Twitter, and you can send them by mail

For example, each contact can be connected to a profile in Facebook social network.
There is a widget to work with Twitter blog. It can take either the whole screen, or half, and shows the last message from the tape. Reduced version of the widget allows you to only send Tweets.

The photos taken by the camera can be sent not only by mail, but also sent to Twitter, uploaded to Picasa, Flickr or Facebook. This list of features is not found on any platform.

CONCLUSION
Today it is difficult to imagine a HTC smartphone running based Windows Mobile without the TouchFLO 3D. Many users do not even know that their Diamond or Touch Pro runs on some OS, but know perfectly well that this is HTC. The company wants to do the same trick with the Android: to bring TO the system maximum of their innovations. It can’t be said that HTC managed to do this with the Hero, yet this is the first device with Sense, which is far from perfect. But the software of the HTC is already very strong. Of course, the interface Sense is not perfect, but it has radically changed the experience of using Android OS.

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