
The era of Android customization has begun with HTC’s Sense UI, a customized overlay for Android that adds HTC’s stunning graphical interface to the sturdy Android OS. The UI will run on the new Hero, a 3.2-inch touchscreen phone running at 528MHz with MicroSD slot.
More specs on the phone:
With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content, while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including AGPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.
The new Android UI will have something called “Perspectives,” a new method for connecting email, contacts, and social media automatically. This version will also be the first to support Flash natively.
So here’s my assessment:
Sorry, Palm: this is the new hotness. The HTC Hero with Sense does everything WebOS can do but it uses Android, a platform that is already popular with the geekerati and has a great install base. There wasn’t much to see in these versions – a short hands-on appears below – but you’re looking at what promises to make Android the real killed feature-phone OS: customizability with an eye on processor intensive “data linking.”
The parts we saw of the OS promise contact linking, which will allow you to add social media aspects to contacts. Instead of a name and address you can add Flickr streams, Twitter info, and other goodies. The changeable UI based on activities – the weekend vs. weekday screens – promises fewer distractions during key points in your life (i.e. when going out with the kids you can hide your email). Most importantly, however, this is Android. It has a full app store.
Oh, and it has Flash.
As I’ve said, Android is the next WinMo. It’s the more powerful smartphone OS for business and casual users and because it is open it can be customized to your liking in seconds. OEMs will lap it up because it’s free. More in a bit.
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