There’s a new Hero, he’s an Android, and he’s got Sense. On Tuesday, handset manufacturer HTC introduced its third Android-based smartphone, Hero, which sports a new interface called Sense.
The handset features a touch-sensitive, 3.2-inch HVGA display, GPS, a digital compass, a gravity sensor, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five-megapixel autofocus camera, and expandable microSD memory. A dedicated search button is contextual, so it works for basic search, searching a contact list, finding e-mails, and other uses.
‘A More Simple and Natural Way’
Hero’s new HTC Sense interface, the company said, puts people in the center of an experience that works “in a more simple and natural way.”
HTC said Sense was designed around three basic principles: Make It Mine, Stay Close, and Discover the Unexpected.
The first principle encourages personalization, such as “glance view widgets” that push favorite content to the top level. The Stay Close approach emphasizes people in one’s life, so all communications relating to an individual can be integrated into one view, with a friend’s Facebook status updates, Flickr photos, call history, and e-mails all grouped under that person’s name.
Under Discover the Unexpected, HTC includes the ability to turn the phone over to silence its ringtone, making calls quicker with a smart dialer, and other ways to view content.
Innovations in user interaction have been seen as a possible benefit of Android’s open-source software, since manufacturers can customize the interface as they like. China Mobile, for instance, has announced it will be customizing an Android phone it’s releasing, as has Rogers Communications in Canada, but HTC Sense moves the ball much more in the direction of innovation.
‘HTC Delivers’
Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, has previously wondered when Android would begin to show the innovation Google and others had said to expect.
HTC’s Sense, he said, is…