How to Make HTC Sense of the New Android Phones

The recent announcements of the expected myTouch 3G – aka The G2 for the United States – and the Hero – effectively a G2.5 – the most interesting is the new HTC Android UI called Sense.

HTC Sense is a new User Interface for Android from HTC which was previously called Rosie and originated from TouchFlo.

Sense is graphically impressive along with being relatively simple thus making “sense” as it provides:

• Breadth of inherent widgets
• Customized content profiles
• Combining your contacts IM, text messages, calls, status, photos, and social media into a single view
• FLASH Support

This last item is the MOST interesting in my view as its what most people have been clamoring for and makes for a true counterweight over the iPhone.

Processing power and depth of RAM is key for FLASH since its a huge drain of resources and why its taken so long to be ported effectively to mobile devices.

One of the hopes conveyed at Google I/O is that the advancement of HTML5 will remove the need for the processing burden of FLASH, Silverlight, & Flash FX for a full web experience.

Now, in my opinion, the best mobile web experience is enhanced by the 2 new Android phones recently announced – The myTouch 3G & Hero.

For clarity the myTouch 3G is just another name for the 2nd generation Android phone which also has other names:

• G2 (Android Engineers HATE this term)
• Sapphire (Initial name of the device that Android Engineers have been accustomed to using)
• Google Ion (Version given away by Google at Google IO 2009)
• Magic (Most common reference to the phone outside the United States)

Its like a Mattress store calling the same thing different names so its tough to compare prices from store to store.

The Hero is essentially a prettied up G1 minus the keyboard while the myTouch 3G is a smaller rounder device.

The myTouch 3G is nearly an ounce lighter than the Hero, while the Hero has a 3.5mm audio jack and nearly 2 megapixels higher camera along with its HTC Sense Android UI.

Under the hood they both have the same Qualcomm MSM7200A 528 MHz processor, 512 ROM, 288 RAM, and essentially the same battery of approximately 1350 mAh.

I questioned HTC why these phones have a MSM7200A processor which seems like a downgrade from the MSM7201A processor on the G1 – I was simply told there is no noticeable performance difference but not properly explained why the name change.

So HTC Sense makes “sense” on post G1 devices while as Android Engineers feared the G1 with its 256 ROM & 192 RAM will struggle.

In the end my “sense” is that for FLASH to be in a true usable state with Android the processing power NEEDS to be further advanced and increasing the RAM to at least 1GB.