HTC Hero Announced – Best Phone UI ever?
HTC held a launch in London, England to announce their new phone, the HTC Hero, running Google’s Android. The first thought that ran through my mind is “Oh great, HTC launches a new Android phone, big deal.” That is, until I saw videos of it in action. This phone could be huge.
What really sets this apart is the user interface, which HTC is calling the Sense UI…
In the hardware department, it looks similar to the current HTC Magic, in that it’s a keyboardless 320×480 screen, has the now de rigueur “HTC Chin”. Other hardware specs are respectable… 528MHz processor, MicroSD slot, a Teflon coating on the phone, with the same ‘smudge resistant’ coating on the screen that the iPhone 3Gs sports, and a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera.
Until seeing this phone in action, I always maintained that HTCs Manila interface for Windows Mobile was the best I had ever used on a smart phone (or any phone for that matter).
Even at first glance, the new Sense UI clearly takes many cues from HTC’s long running Manila UI, and pumps it full of steroids.
HTC’s ‘special sauce’ for the Manila interface has been to toss away the idea of using a sea of icons for launching apps, and instead provide a series of panels that provide quick access to information. Whether you want to call a favourite from your contacts list, an easy way to browse through your emails, view photos, listen to music, see the weather or access browser bookmarks, it is all a swipe away. Oh yeah, that sea of icons (a hold over from the classic Palm days), was relegated to it’s own panel.
Using this same concept of sliding panels to quickly access a variety of information, the Sense UI
HTC’s new UI software was designed so people can customize the handset to meet their own needs, from choosing a clock style to putting the most often used functions on the home screen, such as a Wi-Fi switch, weather gauge, or a widget for Twitter feeds or friends’ Facebook status . The software also allows users to customize dozens of other screens for different aspects of life, including work, family and play, and keep them a few taps away on the touchscreen. [from Networkworld]
Having lived with the Android OS for a few days before giving up in frustration, I have to say that the Hero with Sense UI is a tempting reason to jump ship from Windows Mobile, even more so than Palm’s new Pre.
Of course, reading the article above from Networkworld, there are some hints that Sense will also be available elsewhere…
“We’ve been developing this for three years,” said John Wang, chief marketing officer of HTC, in a phone interview. “The point is to enrich the user experience, to make it personal, convenient and give users moments of delight.”
The company calls the new software HTC Sense, and it will be introduced in HTC’s entire portfolio of mobile phones starting with the HTC Hero. The company is the world’s largest maker of Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones, and handsets running that software will also run HTC Sense in the future.
I can’t help but wonder if the widgets will be cross-platform compatible.
this phone is rumoured to be coming to the new Telus network in october…
glad it’s coming to winmo too — it’s basically TF3D 3 — but I guess it works best on a capacitive screen
http://www.tat.se/site/showroom/latest_design.html
these guys did the UI for the HTC Magic/G1, so I am sure they are behind Sense UI….if you look at their videos you can see that the UI design for Sense is conservative by their standards !
I’m not sure if The Amazing Tribe had anything to do with Sense UI, as it’s a refinement of Manila, which is from HTCs own in-house designers, IIRC.
Ya, that’s a really sweet phone!
HTC is the reason why I’m pretty ambivalent about the iPhone. And Palm, and the Blackberry, and pretty much any other smartphone manufacturer out there.
Yeah, I have to agree for the most part. Palm’s webOS does look interesting though, as the ‘cards’ are sort of like the tabs in the HTC interface (and they’re live too).
see while sense ui is good the gadgets and widgets, just like in TF3d are really just a skin over other applications – when you do certain things you’ll still be going into the ‘full’ app – the cards on Palm web OS are not widgets or gadgets, but the full application…web OS still seems from what I have seen the king of UI right now
Well, I’d argue that it’s not JUST a skin in TouchFlo.
For example, the email tab allows you to quickly flick through your emails without opening the Messaging app. When you tap an email it goes directly to that email, or you have the option of opening your inbox for any particular email address.
If you tap one to read it and browse through a few more, when you close it, instead of going back to that accounts Inbox, it goes directly back to the TouchFlo interface.
Similar behaviours have been added to the other tabs. Take the quick contacts for example. You can either tap on the picture to see all the ways to contact a person and select from there, or just tap on the name, and it dials the number you made their ‘main’ number when you added the quick contact in the first place.
Other tabs have similar refinements make TouchFlo way more than a skin, which implies that it’s just a pretty interface (and a lot of people focus on that because TouchFlo is a good looking UI).
It adds a LOT of functionality to most everyday tasks.
I agree that webOS looks great, and it very well could be much better, but I think you’re doing a real disservice to TouchFlo by calling it a ‘skin’. That kind of talk is usually left to the snark of the Engadget crew. 🙂
HTC is definitely delivering some very high end mobile devices and not to mention their software development ability. The HTC and windows mobile relationship has been very strong and based on the new phones this year we will see even more in the future. This is going to get interesting.
I have to admit that part of the reason I’m holding off from upgrading is waiting to see what HTC will do with WM 7 when it comes out. I just hope we don’t have to wait too long for WM 7 hit.
[…] the first phone to make good on the promise to bring the Sense UI, first seen on the Android based HTC Hero, to Windows Mobile. Sense looks like a brilliant UI, and I’ve made no bones about the fact […]
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