Thursday, January 26, 2012

HTC Sense 4.0 Reveals New Features For HTC’s Custom UI


htc_sense
We’re still about 30 days out from Mobile World Congress and the unveiling of HTC’s new Android lineup, but the guys over at PocketNow claim to have already gotten a sneak peek at a non-final build of HTC Sense 4.0 which will be running on top of Android 4.0 for the HTC Ville and Supreme. If you think that custom skins are too intrusive, we’re sure you’ll be pleased to hear that HTC Sense 4.0 is a “step in the right direction.”
Since no images of Sense 4.0 are currently available, we can’t tell you if the UI looks much different than current iterations. Here are some of the highlights of the improvements featured in HTC Sense 4.0:
  • Landscape support for the home screen
  • Bubbly sliders have been replaced with squared buttons
  • Sense buttons now feature descriptive text which accompanies the button icon
  • Lock screen will be able to display task or to-do lists, favorite contacts for quick dialing and direct access to notification bar
  • Updated email client with threaded messages and improved layout
  • Smart Sync technology which syncs your email based on your usage habits
  • Reader feature in browser strips away ads and other useless web clutter
  • Read/Watch Later feature in browser saves content in a widget which can be accessed at a later time (even offline)
  • Guest Mode Scene disables phone functionality and access to personal data
  • Beats Audio profile updated to work with third party applications
  • Full DropBox integration with 50GB of free cloud storage
As we’ve already seen from a few different leaked images, HTC phones will not have on-screen buttons like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Instead, HTC will be reducing its configuration of four capacitive buttons down to three buttons which matches the ICS on-screen layout.
Honestly, we can’t wait to get our hands on HTC Sense 4.0 and HTC’s new hardware. Google has done a great job of introducing new features and UI elements in Android 4.0 and we’re hoping that HTC’s latest skin will build off of them while adding additional functionality for the user.
If you want to read more about the new features included in HTC Sense 4.0, we’d suggest you head on over to PocketNow and read about their hands-on experience. Now that people are getting to spend some quality time with HTC’s new software, it’s only a matter of time before images and videos of the new UI hit the web.

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