Android News

Android 2.0 versus Sense — fight!

November 21, 2009 | by Evan Selleck

Android OS, Featured post, HTC, Motorola, Verizon

Android 2.0 versus Sense — fight!

Yes, it’s called Sense UI. But in the case of this piece, I’m not referring mainly to the User Interface. HTC’s Sense is what I’m discussing, in reference to the updated Android 2.0 Operating System. So, from this point on, within this segment, Sense UI will be known as Sense.

The wait for Android 2.0 has been almost painful for those with an HTC Hero. For whatever reason, it’s still not here. And like it or not, it’s pretty much common practice for HTC to keep silent about what’s coming, up until the very hour something gets released. There are rumors that the upcoming Passion/Dragon, also from HTC, will showcase Android 2.0 with the Sense UI (subsequently called Sense 2.0); but those rumors also slate the phone for a mid-December release, so seeing an update to our existing Sense-infused handsets before then seems pretty faint.

So, I got to thinking about it. I’ve been playing around with the DROID since its release, checking out the features that Verizon and Motorola have been swooning over, and I realized something: I already have those features on my Hero. In fact, in some ways, I have more features, or more robust usability. Of course, I don’t have Bluetooth 2.1, and I don’t have voice-activated Google Navigation (or Navigation at all, for that matter); but I’m not going to cover what I don’t have, versus what the DROID does (no pun intended). Instead, I want to point out that I’m excited for an update, which consists of features, the majority of which, I already utilize.

First, Facebook sync. The first time you start up your DROID device, it will run through the standard Google set-up process. But then it will ask you to synchronize your Facebook profile, with the contacts on your phone. This automatically adds the contacts from your Facebook profile to your phone, and adds phone numbers appropriately. However! If you do not have a contact in your phone already, and want to edit a contact added from Facebook . . . Well, you can’t. You’ll have to go through an extra step to add the contact manually, input the name and number (and whatever other pieces of information you want to add), and then save what you’ve changed. Of course, it will automatically combine with the appropriate Facebook contact, so it’s not that big of a deal. What I don’t like about this, though, is that it does add your Facebook contacts onto your phone. Personally, I don’t need all of them in there, because I don’t frequently talk or text or even chat with them.

Hero Facebook

The difference? I set up my phone the same way as the DROID, including synchronizing my Facebook profile with the device. But instead of every Facebook contact being added to my phone; the phone will correlate contacts saved on the phone, pulled from the cloud via Google Contacts (accessed usually by Gmail), or those you put on the phone manually, and then aggregate that information to match contact names with Facebook profile names. Contact information basically gets synchronized with a picture, and then furthermore to the profile on Facebook. No additional contacts added to the phone proper. And so my small amount of contacts get nicely updated, and I’m not forced to have a load of people in my phone that I don’t talk to right from the start.

That wasn’t enough for HTC though. They also included Twitter, which corresponds with the native Twitter application present on the phone (affectionately called Peep). And then again, you have Flickr, which can be synced to the phone as well. I don’t even use Flickr, but it’s there, just in case I ever do want to use it.

Another feature would be quick access to different means of communication with a contact. It’s called Quick Contact, and it basically allows the user a faster means of getting to a text message. By pressing on a contact’s picture (or name), you can bring up a list of options: call, SMS, email by default. It’s a great feature, and a welcomed one to Android, but one that HTC already gave me with Sense. And I use it a lot. The compiled communications, seeing SMS, emails, and calls via the contact card, make it a lot easier and practical to use those Quick Contact features than ever before.

Okay, that’s just a quick look at what those with a Hero, or an Eris, already have versus what’s coming with the Android 2.0 update. And yes, there are a lot more features integrated into Sense that are being introduced with Android 2.0, but I wanted to focus on some of the bigger features. But, here’s a list of what’s different, and what we should be excited about:

Google Navigation with voice search
Voice search
Updated Android Market (which now includes screenshots of the applications)
A new unlock screen (this hasn’t been confirmed to change on the Hero, Hero for Sprint, or Droid Eris)
Faster browser
Bluetooth 2.1
Updated calendar features, including the ability to invite

Some of those are pretty big changes, and it just shows me all over again why I’m still excited for an update that, for all intents and purposes, will probably do nothing more than refine features already on my phone. So maybe this is why HTC didn’t jump on getting Android 2.0 ready for their Sense UI.  There are other theories out there right now, but this seems to make the most sense to me. Pushing out an update, one as major as an Operating System overhaul, is quite the task with something like Sense layered over it, so why put the time and effort and money into updating a system that you’ve already managed to provide?