Geekzone Technology Community

11 reasons to attend HP Discover 2012 in Las Vegas

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:16:00 PDT

We are attending the HP Discover 2012 in Las Vegas and arranged for a good discount offer for any IT Pro planning to attend the event.

snom UC edition business phones now managed by Microsoft Lync

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:10:00 PDT

snom BETA release "Apollo" speeds and simplifies enterprise-wide setup, configuration and management of snom UC SIP endpoints with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Voice.

Zoho Launches Zoho Sites, Website Builder for Businesses (with video)

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:49:00 PDT

Zoho Sites Website Builder makes it extremely easy to build professional-looking websites that are also mobile-ready. Service uses drag-and-drop user interface, code-free development.

AMD unleashes second-generation AMD A-Series APUs

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:27:00 PDT

Second-generation AMD A-Series APUs enable best-in-class PC mobility, entertainment and gaming experience in single chip with up to 12 hours of battery life and double the performance-per-watt compared to previous generation.

Digicel launches NFC-based mobile wallet payments with VeriFone

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:33:00 PDT

The mobile company has developed the world's first integrated NFC capable Wallet service that doesn't require a bank account, credit card, or smart phone.

SMBs adopting virtualization, cloud and mobility for improved disaster preparedness

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:24:00 PDT

A recent Symantec survey shows how SMBs are adopting these technologies, often with improved disaster preparedness as a goal, and how the move is paying off for them.

Revera signs with SMX for cloud email security

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:22:00 PDT

Cloud-based email security provider SMX has signed a licensing and support agreement with Revera, a leading New Zealand-owned data centre and computing infrastructure provider.

Telecom announces 4G customer trial

Sun, 13 May 2012 13:40:00 PDT

Telecom announced today that it will be conducting live customer trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile technology later this year in preparation for the evolution of its XT network to 4G.

Adobe Creative Cloud now available

Sat, 12 May 2012 03:21:00 PDT

Two new touch apps for iOS and Adobe Muse also shipping.

SBS signs Wynyard Group for financial crime detection solution

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:15:00 PDT

Wynyard solution helps financial organisations comply with new Anti-Money Laundering legislation.

HP moves HP Cloud Services to Public Beta

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:16:00 PDT

HP Cloud Services deliver an open-source-based public cloud infrastructure with business-oriented features that enable developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises of all sizes to build the next generation of web applications.

Countdown launches supermarket shopping app

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:00:00 PDT

New shopping app features barcode scanning technology, prices, recipes and an online shopping function.

Auckland company win international eCommerce award

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:21:00 PDT

At the Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference 2012, Exceed Online, an eCommerce Agency based in Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia, was honoured with the prestigious Magento Partner Excellence Award.

NVIDIA contributes CUDA compiler to open source community

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:29:00 PDT

Widely used LLVM compiler's support opens GPU computing to broad range of programming languages.

Amazon Web Services unleash Microsoft SQL, .Net support

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:42:00 PDT

AWS Elastic Beanstalk now supports Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Microsoft SQL Server and ASP.NET.

NZ Tech Podcast: Fyx no longer provides a fix, Telecom 4G trial, HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy SIII

paulspain — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:39:00 PDT

This week we discuss what happened to the Fyx Internet service, Telecom NZ's 4G trial, our first experiences with the HTC One X and Galaxy SIII Android phones, accessing Netflix in NZ, hands on with the new 2degrees and Snapper mobile payment system... (more in the full post)

HTC One X: E.T. phone home

TelecomTech — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:51:00 PDT

As I entered the second week of owning the HTC One X, I felt it was time to explore the communication side. After all, what good is a phone if it’s difficult to work out how to make a call?Dialling a number is as simple as hitting the phone icon, which brings up a nice large dial-pad and recent calls list. The call quality on the Telecom XT network is very clear and very rarely suffers from drop-outs or fading.

If you begin to input a number that you’ve saved in your contacts list, the phone directory will recognise it and automatically start populating the rest of the number. This is extremely helpful and a great ICS feature. If you want to search contacts manually, you can select “People” from the phone dialling app or use the contacts app on the home screen.

The contacts list will bring up a list of all phone, email, Facebook, Linked-In, Exchange, Gmail, and Google Plus contacts. However, you can customise the way contact information is displayed so only those with phone numbers, or only selected accounts display. It also gives you an option to link contacts with matching details. If a contact has a Google account as well as a Facebook account, it will pick up the details and ask you if you want to link them together. This creates a single contact for 2+ accounts, which is another great automated feature.

Txt2Park with the HTC Sense Keyboard

Texting on the HTC One X is a breeze. Even those with large fingers - like me - will have no issues hitting the right keys. In “Landscape” mode the keys are even larger still. The HTC sense keyboard is great, plus you have the option to install any keyboard from the Play Market. I ended up using SlideIT, which compliments the screen perfectly.

After testing texting and calling, I decided to tinker round inside the call settings. After changing a few settings, I came across “SIP” and decided to explore further (SIP is a voice over IP protocol).

Having used VoIP for several years at home, I decided to put my settings in and see how it went; bearing in mind that I tried it a few years ago when XT first came out and the quality was quite terrible. I found that the quality has now improved dramatically. No longer does it echo, or experience cuts. This feature means I can now answer my home phone while on the move; or dial out from my home phone number and the billing will get charged to my home account.

You will need a Telecom data-pack to use VoIP, and it will drain the battery faster, as it is constantly listening for calls. However, it is entirely worth it, and a lot easier than setting up call forwarding on a home phone. Please note, however, that while the VOIP quality was good while I was testing it, Telecom doesn’t guarantee it always will be. This means that VOIP won’t be suitable for everyone.

From the Telecom XT Terms and Conditions:

“Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is not supported, and we cannot guarantee that access or performance levels will be maintained.”

There is similar wording in the Vodafone Terms and Conditions. 2Degrees’ Terms and Conditions state that it can restrict or prevent VoIP use as it sees fit.

To summarise, calling on both the XT Network, and HTC One X, are exceptionally good. Even over unsupported VoIP, it never skipped a beat.

About the author

I am Vincent Garcia: an ICT Specialist by day; technology geek and DIY handyman by night. I enjoy playing with gadgets, old and new. Taking most of them through the paces, and to within an inch of their lives! I also enjoy tinkering with things; spending most of my weekends repairing my motorcycles, or renovating my house. I live in the windy city of Wellington, with my lovely wife Nicola, and my cat Morange. When I was offered the opportunity to review the new HTC One X series, I jumped at the chance. The short aeroplane trip to Auckland was all part of the fun! If you want to ask any questions, please add a comment below, or email telecomtech@vincentgarcia.net

Riverbed Performance Summit in Sydney

freitasm — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:35:00 PDT

I just got an email from Riverbed announcing their Riverbed Performance Summit in Sydney. This half day event is happening 5th June (Tuesday) from 12:30pm to 5:30pm. Click here for the agenda (pdf). [quote] Learn how the Riverbed performance platform... (more in the full post)

The Write Stuff with HTC One X

TelecomTech — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:22:00 PDT

I communicate with my family a lot via SMS, so having an easy way to send TXT messages is key for me when choosing a phone. I’ve really come to love the conversation view that iOS uses to present TXT messages, as it makes it so much easier to retain context. So it was a relief to see that this same UI paradigm is retained on the HTC One X.

Couple that with a few different ways to enter my messages, and we have a device that meets my primary mobile communication needs very well.

There are a few ways to initiate a TXT message. Firstly you can select the Compose option from the Messages app. You then have the option to enter in a number or name in the To field, which will present a drop down of all people matching the text as you enter it.

Or you can tap on the ‘People’ icon to present a list of all your contacts in a scrollable list. This list will allow you to select multiple recipients, making it easy to send group messages.

Alternatively you could initiate a new message directly from one of your contacts in the People app, or any of the other places that you can interact with your contacts throughout the OS and via the HTC Sense UI overlay. If you have an existing conversation with this contact, you will be taken to the end of that, rather than to an empty conversation window.

As an example of this, there are a few Message and contact widgets which you can take advantage of, and one of these is installed by default. This particular widget presents all your message conversations as a stack, allowing you to easily rotate between each conversation with a flick up or down. Selecting one of these will take you directly to the conversation, allowing you to continue where you left off.

In addition to the various ways there are to initiate SMS conversations, there are also different ways in which to enter the content of these messages. Of course there is the traditional touch keyboard, but one of the first tweaks I made was to enable the Trace keyboard feature. This allows you to spell out words by tracing your way across the keyboard. It does a pretty good job of deciphering what can often appear to be unintelligible or ambiguous scribbles.

Once you’ve got used to this method of input, it really is quite a bit quicker than typing out the words in the more traditional manner.

Another option, although probably more novelty than actually useful, is voice dictation. While this can work reasonably well for short messages, if you’re trying to communicate anything more complex than “See you soon”, you’ll find yourself constantly correcting misinterpreted words. Thats the price we pay for having an accent too awesome for developers to parse accurately, I guess.

The one feature I do miss from my iPhone is the ability to assign a custom tone to received TXT messages. You can chose from a list of canned ones, but I like to assign my favourite riffs to such events. I’m also struggling a little with selecting single words in messages, as the implementation seems to be quite fussy about the double-tap required to do so. But with practice I’m sure I’ll prevail over this.

In summary, the HTC One X works well at serving my primary mobile communication needs. The Trace keyboard feature is an excellent addition to my TXTing arsenal, and for this reason alone I’d probably rate this over my iPhone as my SMS weapon of choice.

About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.

Are you attending the HP Discover 2012 in Las Vegas? I have a discount code for you...

freitasm — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:00:00 PDT

I am attending HP Discover 2012 Las Vegas (4th - 7th June). This is the second time I am invited to this event, with other bloggers from around the world - this time Ben Kepes will be another Kiwi blogger joining me to hear from HP's management (he b... (more in the full post)

HTC One X Initial Setup

TelecomTech — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:35:00 PDT

The setup of my HTC One X was one of the most annoying things. Nothing to do with the HTC One X itself, but just the amount of stuff that I have on my existing phone! I had probably about 200 applications installed on the SGS2, and deciding what I did and didn't want to put on the HTC ONE X was the main task.

The problem with getting a new phone, is that it's not my phone yet. None of my accounts are on it, none of my apps, none of my wifi networks, VPN servers etc.

HTC did supply an app that would Bluetooth over to my existing phone and suck the contacts off it, but as that is one of the few things that does work thru the Google accounts without issues it is largly redundant from another Android. I can see that it would be a great start if you are moving from a feature phone or other smartphone platform however.

I was always under the impression that the Google account was supposed to bring across my wifi details, passwords and apps. That did not happen. But probably a good thing since the SGS2 is full of junk I installed and lost interest in. Sorry Zynga Poker - not getting a spot on the HTC ;)

I use lastpass to store all my website passwords, paying for the premium service so I get the Android app. This has proven to be worthwhile for setting up the the phone as I am able to copy and paste my passwords from lastpass into the various apps on the phone. But I can't help feel that there could be more done by Google to help people moving between Android phones in this respect, vs having to copy and paste from a third party app.

Throughout the first week I constantly found myself cursing at the phone as I couldn't find apps where they should be on the homescreen as I gradually laid the phone out closer to the way I used the last one.

So anyway, about a week on and the phone is now my phone, and it is working for me instead of the other way around.

Since setting it up I have found the scene options, which gives me even more scope to separate work from play from other stuff, so more playing around is in order.

Data Usage
One big deal that I did have is that in the in between process of getting the new SIM card in the phone and finally getting things setup and then going to the Your Telecom link is that I had well burned thru the casual rate data and had ended up going thru about NZ$30 of credit. So basically I had paid most of the price of a 2 GB pack of data at the casual rate. This wont be an issue if you are setting up on a plan with data, but if you are on prepay then perhaps think about getting it on a 2 GB addon before doing the setup.

About the author

I am 34 years old with most of that spent playing with technology of some sort from an old Sinclair thru an Apple II clone finally onto a long course of Windows machines and recently getting a couple of other vintage machines to play with, I have quite a background in computers. Initially started off doing a b.tech in electronic and computer engineering at Manukau tech I gave up on that when I saw how much more fun having money from a job was than being a struggling student. A few years at an ISP was fun till it was sold to Australians and lost the magic, and by that stage internet was just another service like power and water so after moved on. Decided to partially leave IT and did a bachelor of product design at Unitec. Hobbywise I am still into the electronics side of things and the recent purchase of some arduinos and hopefully a raspberry pi has reignited my interests in this. I am quite a fan of the opensource hardware movement lead by adafruit, seeed and sparkfun etc and hope to be able to contribute to it soon.

HTC One X first impressions

TelecomTech — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:25:00 PDT

Being selected for the Geekzone HTC One X blog reviews was an amazing honour. I’m going to be doing at least 2 posts a week on various aspects of the phone, the first week will be my first impressions (this) and my experiences setting the phone up (next)

It’s been a week or so since receiving the HTC ONE X for this blog, so I have got my first impressions of it so far.

We received the phone in a plain white box with minimal documentation so a detailed writeup of this wouldn't mean anything as the retail packaging will be different.

Shape and form
The first thing that hits you when you see the HTC ONE X, is how they have made it so slim. The slight curves of the front glass extend all the way to the edge of the phone, with the 3 touch sensitive buttons being at one end of the display, opposite the handsets speaker.

There is a gentle curve to the back of the phone, the only thing on the back detracting from this is the camera lens which protrudes a couple of mm from the surface. The lens itself is flush with the end of the bezel so it doesn't offer any protection for the lens. This is something that concerns me, as a damaged lens will render the camera permanently impaired.

The curve on the back and the slight screen glass curve make it look even slimmer than it is. this thing looks tiny.

The loudspeaker is on the back along with five pogopin connectors that I have yet to find any accessories for, I am assuming that it will be for a car dock or loudspeakers or similar, vs using the USB connector.

Supplied accessories
The supplied charger is a bit of a disappointment to be honest. Where samsung supplied a separate USB sync cable and a AC charger with the cable attached to it, HTC have supplied a short USB sync cable, and a charger that has a USB output. For a high value phone, this is quite a major corner to cut. In Fact the supplied USB cable is so short that I can barely use the phone when on charge in bed with it plugged into a wall outlet, needing to use a powerstrip to get the charger closer. Thankfully as the phone uses a standard micro USB cable I am able to use my existing charger on the phone.

The form of the charger is also larger than other chargers, with the 240v plug size being considerably larger so the charger sits fatter in any bag etc you are carrying it in.

There were earbuds supplied with the phone, but as I can't wear earbuds for any length of time without discomfort I have not put them thru their paces.

Screen
The HTC ONE X has a 720P screen on it, slightly larger than the one on the galaxy S2 I have been using up till now, Its not the size that is a big deal, its the resolution. You can zoom a standard desktop website out to the width of the phone in landscape and its crisp, clear and easy to read. The black level seems to be a little grey, but across all angles and in most lighting conditions there are no problems reading or seeing the screen, no sign of the image losing contrast or getting that “solarized” look that you often see on LCD’s.

Now, the shape of the screen has meant that both my attempts at putting a screen protector on has been fruitless, since the screen curves off the edge of the phone, it leaves the edge of the screen protector sitting where it just lifts a little, gets some pocket lint under it and then starts to peel off. Just not worth trying with a screen protector.

Casing
The phone is white. I would never have chosen a white phone after playing with a white iPhone 4 - but on the HTC the screen glass is black, so that is what you are really seeing when you use it. The white has made it quite distinctive with many people recognizing the phone and asking questions about it when I have been using it. Perhaps that is why we all got white ones?

Made of polycarbonate it does feel quite tough despite its slimness.The matt finish doesnt show any swirls or scratches, it does get dirty easier, but cleaning it is no problem.

I still have relented and put a case on the phone though, old habits die hard.

About the author

I am 34 years old with most of that spent playing with technology of some sort from an old Sinclair thru an Apple II clone finally onto a long course of Windows machines and recently getting a couple of other vintage machines to play with, I have quite a background in computers. Initially started off doing a b.tech in electronic and computer engineering at Manukau tech I gave up on that when I saw how much more fun having money from a job was than being a struggling student. A few years at an ISP was fun till it was sold to Australians and lost the magic, and by that stage internet was just another service like power and water so after moved on. Decided to partially leave IT and did a bachelor of product design at Unitec. Hobbywise I am still into the electronics side of things and the recent purchase of some arduinos and hopefully a raspberry pi has reignited my interests in this. I am quite a fan of the opensource hardware movement lead by adafruit, seeed and sparkfun etc and hope to be able to contribute to it soon.

NZ Tech Podcast: Fyx internet, SmallWorlds, 2degrees shared data plans and Mac security

paulspain — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:20:00 PDT

In episode 69 we settle in to recording at our new location with new recording equipment. Topics include Mac OS X security, NZ gaming sensation SmallWorlds, the Gather unconference, 2degrees new shared data plans, how to quickly destroy 30 laptops a... (more in the full post)

Fyx opens up Netflix, Hulu and other restricted content with pay per GB Internet service

paulspain — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:05:00 PDT

A new Internet service has been launched - branded Fyx - and coming from the team at Maxnet. The Fyx service is set disrupt the market with two unique components bundled together: A simple low cost 'pay per Gigabyte' ADSL 2+ Internet plan Global Mo... (more in the full post)

HTC One X: Heat and Battery Life

TelecomTech — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:36:00 PDT

Judging from several threads over at XDA the two most persitant and widespread issues unconvered so far by HTC One X owners would be related to heat and battery life.

While me and the rest of the bloggers here have been told to give HTC a chance to remedy problems and such, I have decided to go ahead with this post. Mainly to inform people of what I have personally experienced so far.

Starting with heat, many users have been complaining about excess and uncomfortable heat around the camera lens. When I play any type of 3D games the upper third of the phone’s back becomes uncomfortably warm over time. One time the rim of the camera lens almost hurt to touch. It does vary from time to time.

Some of this heat then seems to disipitate through the front of the display, I’m not a display genius but it probably isn’t a good thing if half of it is warm while the other half is cool when the phone is actually in use.

When I first got my One X and I was just flicking through the menus and some bundled applications the display was warm to touch and I have no idea as to why. Hopefully this won’t be a persistant issue, although at this stage I won't be surprised.

Now for battery life, as of just 30 mins ago it got noticeably better. The reason? Who knows. In the past week I have almost been able to watch the battery trickle downwards. Just this morning a 15 minute or so session of Reckless Racing HD dropped the battery 10%. This afternoon it’s more like 4%.

The difference? The only modifications I made to the setting were a change of skins and a few tweaks to auto-sync, nothing that I would imagine that would massively increase battery life.

Typically in the last week I’d be down to 35% or less by the time I slept and this only included about 30 to 60 mins of screen time, with the usual auto-sync and auto-brightness settings.

Thinking my battery life was completely buggered I ran HTC's battery test (accessed by dialing *#*#3424#*#*) and by the end of it I was done to 78%, an expected result is around 80% so all seems well here.

Obviously battery life is taking a hit either from Wi-Fi or 3G problems, or my various auto-sync settings. Whatever it might be, the 1.28 update that is currently rolling out to users (and hopefully to Telecom units very soon) should improve battery life.

About the author

I’ll be honest: there was once a day when I got bored and sick of seeing all the smartphone related news in my RSS feeds. This day was literally no more than nine months ago. Well here I stand today; known as Blair the college student in the real world, ArchSerpo in this one. Whilst not even considered an adult by the Government I have established myself as a Android and mobile technology news reporter and in depth reviewer for KitGuru, Android Mobile New Zealand, and now (hopefully) the TelecomTech blog. While bias towards the green team may appear given, I have had experience with all the major mobile operating systems except BlackBerry and MeeGo in the last six months and always keep an open mind.

Playtime with the HTC One X

TelecomTech — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:27:00 PDT

One of the things that my iPhone excels at is being used for bite sized gaming sessions. Being new to the Android scene, I was curious to know whether I’d be able to do the same with the HTC One X, or whether I’d be suffering from a lack of quality games to chose from. Within minutes of searching the Google Play store, it became quite clear that there are more than enough games available to waste my time with.

Many of my favourites are available, and within minutes I was happily flinging furious feathered flyers at barricaded bunches of bacon. In fact, I was impressed with how easy it is to download apps when you’re searching Google Play from your computers web browser. It will check whether an app is compatible with your handset (or handsets, if you have multiple Android devices), and allow you to initiate a download to your phone, which usually starts almost instantly.

The large screen of the HTC One X also makes it great for one of my current gaming addictions, Draw Something. And the impressive display made for a bright and vibrant pocket gaming experience filled with rich colours.

Thanks to the quad core CPU, GeForce GPU, and 1GB of RAM, the HTC One X is capable of some pretty impressive graphical feats. I installed a game called Dark Meadow: The Pact, which comes close to PC and current generation console levels of graphics, thanks to some impressive lighting effects and textures.

The phone can get quite warm relatively quickly when performing such CPU intensive operations, but thats not overly surprising for a device packing so much grunt in such a slim profile.

All in all, the HTC One X looks to be a more than capable portable gaming device, so thats yet another very important feature with a tick next to it.

About the author

Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.

All my eggs in a basket

juha — Sat, 05 May 2012 02:53:00 PDT

Vietnam is unfortunately covered in cheap plastic like most parts of the world, an environmental mistake of huge proportions that will come back and bite us, hard.

They do however have alternative packaging materials that are more nature friendly. Banana and other leaves are used a great deal, and how about this:

That's ten fresh eggs, in a simply woven straw basket. There's further straw inside the basket to stop the eggs from doing the Humpty Dumpty thing to one another.

The basket is pretty sturdy, and seems to protect the eggs well. I like it.

NZ Tech Podcast: Samsung Galaxy SIII, new Intel CPUs, NFC wireless payments

paulspain — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:50:00 PDT

In episode 67 we land back in the old studio. Topics this week include Samsung's Galaxy SIII smartphone, The Brydge iPad keyboard dock, super fast Wi-Fi, Intel's amazing new CPUs, NFC mobile payments, and cloud storage from Google, Microsoft and Dro... (more in the full post)

NZ Music Month - Tim Walker

nate — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:21:00 PDT

UPDATE: Tim won best international artist at last night's Musicoz Awards in Sydney. Congrats Tim!

Since 2000, May has been New Zealand Music Month. While nearly all of the music played on the commercial stations is sourced from the US, it's always great to hear and support artists from a little closer to home.

Tim Walker is a mate of mine, and also an aspiring Kiwi musician. Anyone in the industry will acknowledge that trying to get commercial airtime is hard and the market is so small that artists often head overseas to make a decent go of it.

I've just received this video that Tim's uploaded, and decided to get him some more exposure by putting it here. Enjoy!

Follow Tim on Twitter or Facebook.

Making sense of Sense

TelecomTech — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:22:00 PDT

Regular readers of my reviews at AndroidNZ and the Clove Blog may have noticed that I tend not to write a great deal about the user interface of the devices I review. Given how thorough (some might say lacking in succinctness) my write-ups tend to be, I can see how that might seem odd.

Let me explain myself.

I’d place myself in a group of smartphone users called “Power-users”. We use our devices heavily, and often for a breadth of purposes that regular users don’t (yet) use theirs for. I say yet, because over time lots of the things we do on our devices now become the things regular users will do on their devices in months or years to come. Because of the diversity of our use, most manufacturer’s visions for the user interface (UI) tend to fall a little short for us.

That’s part of life on the bleeding edge, awesome stuff happens, but you tend to have to find your own ways to get things done. That’s part of the beauty of Android, users are allowed to exert a lot of control over how they interact with their device – even without resorting to Rooting or other more extreme measures.

One of the simple ways to do that is with a Launcher replacement, and there are a myriad of them out there. Launcher replacements usually have a plethora of customization options unavailable in stock Launchers, including a good many that enable much quicker access to the stuff you need than any stock UI.

To give a brief example, below is the homescreen of my Galaxy Note:

What you’ll notice first is that the homescreen is extremely spartan. It’s clean and uncluttered, which is how I like it. That’s not to say it is lacking functionality though – I can directly access 22 different things with a single touch on the homescreen. Here’s the list:

The inbuilt clock/alarm/stopwatch app
The calendar
Weather forecast
Battery usage statistics
App drawer
PowerAMP
Contacts
Dialer
SMS
Gmail
Play Store
Google Maps
ICS+ browser
WiFi hotspot settings screen
Dice Player
YouTube
Camera
Quickpic
Main Settings screen
Soundhound tagging
Screen Filter on/off
…and finally a swipe down anywhere on the screen pulls down the notification drawer, which is ideal since that’s difficult to do one-handed with the Note otherwise

…if you ask virtually any power-user of an Android device whether they use a stock Launcher the answer, almost invariably, is no. That’s why I don’t tend to bother reviewing stock launchers. As a general rule they typically detract from a users’ experience of an Android handset, and don’t represent how many people user their devices in the real world.

It’s worth pointing out here also that Google have made large strides forward in the design of the stock Android UI in Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android operating system. In terms of design cohesion and user-friendliness Android has never been better. That puts an even greater onus on manufacturers if they want to add their own skin over the top of Google’s fine work – it has to be worth it to end-users. It has to offer not only a clear value proposition over stock Android, but it also has to compensate users for the delays they’re going to face in getting Android OS updates because of the skin.

By this point you’re probably wondering when I’m going to get down off my soap box, and actually tell you what this editorial has to do with the One X. Fair enough (and if you’re still with me, thanks!).

You see, the One X sports HTC’s “Sense UI, version 4.0”, its’ homegrown UI overlay for Android. Sense actually has quite a long history, going back to HTC’s days as a Windows Mobile device manufacturer if you trace it to its’ beginnings. Possibly that goes back a little further than some readers recall, but suffice to say that the Windows Mobile UI was a dog. Truly terrible. HTC’s “Touch Flo” UI, as it was known back then, was a breath of fresh air. It brought a visual flair and usability to touch screen interfaces that only one other company had yet elucidated. Stated simply: it added value. A whole lot it. Fast forward to HTC’s beginnings as an Android manufacturer in its’ own right, stock Android devices aside, and it wasn’t hard to see that Sense was still adding a lot of value to their brand – just look at the reception the HTC Desire enjoyed.

Design hubris, Sense 3.0 style: wasted space on the dock, functionally useless 3D animation on the clock...

On this background one can understand why HTC became so convinced by, so enamoured with, Sense. It was a big part of what had taken them from being a small Taiwanese phone maker that hardly anyone had heard of, to a major player on the world stage. They were experiencing stellar sales growth, and everything looked rosy.

Like many a company in that position they lost their way a little, they became so caught up with their own success that they couldn’t see past it. If I can draw the analogy, they started to follow a rather Nokia-esque trajectory from that time. By that I mean they started releasing many different handsets, usually with relatively small incremental hardware upgrades. They gave up really pushing the envelope from a technological point of view. I think they failed to take into account how important a part of their rise that was with groundbreaking handsets like the HD2 and Nexus One. Instead they focused a lot of effort into polishing Sense and pushing unwanted services on users. Unfortunately the ‘polish’ tended to take the form of increasingly resource hungry “whizz-bang” graphical flourishes, rather than added functionality.

These two trends continued until we saw their culmination in last years’ flagship the HTC Sensation. They still hadn’t stepped up to using a gigabyte of RAM in their top of the line handsets, and yet Sense was devouring more of the system resources than ever before. I’d had mine barely a day before I started to get out of memory errors, or had to wait for Sense to reload because I’d been playing a game, or browsing with multiple tabs. I cried foul over that, and I wasn’t the only one. Sense had crossed a line, it just didn’t make sense anymore.

So, after all the preamble, the essential question here is “Has HTC made sense of Sense?” For the most part I think the answer is an optimistic yes. HTC have taken stock of their position at the end of last year, and responded to criticisms about their direction. The One X is the first signal from HTC that they’re listening.

Some of the nice little touches in Sense, the app drawer here has more levels of organisation than stock ICS, getting you in touch with the app you want more quickly
At a fundamental level the One X is a polar opposite to the Sensation – it’s a major hardware revision in concert with a minimization of Sense’s drag on system resources. While you can induce still some traces of lag here and there, these are a very minor exception, and not the rule. Sense flies, and even with HTC paring back its’ visual flair it still offers more appealing eye candy than you’ll find most places (fans of Apple’s skeuomorphic school of design may beg to differ here I guess).

Performance and eye candy aside, there still remains the (more?) important question of whether Sense is adding to your experience from a functional point of view.

There is a lot to answering that question, only some of which I’m going to cover here. The myriad improvements HTC makes to numerous stock apps like the browser, contacts, and the media experience, is better covered in review sections dealing with those things specifically. Suffice to say that there HTC add a lot of value overall in these stock apps, as they do almost uniformly to the Launcher experience.

You see, it seems that HTC just couldn’t help themselves here and there, they just had to add a bit of gloss to proceedings. I guess it takes more than one handset to completely reform your adoration for functionally deficient eye candy. Case in point? The recent apps/task switcher.

On the left of the image there is a stock(ish) implementation of the stock ICS task switcher, on the right HTC’s take on the same thing. Now I’ll grant you that HTC’s design is much more visually appealing than the stock version – a lovely high res screenshot of the app as you left it, replete with snazzy reflections beneath – but how does it compare functionally? Well, regretably it’s not a patch on stock.

You can see some of the points of difference - one app is visible instead of four and the screenshots are easily confused by orientation switches (or any app that runs in landscape for that matter), both of which make it functionally inferior.

What you can’t see is a crucial design inconsistency, which for me is a clanging bell of discord. In ICS Google did this wonderful (if obvious in a “I wish they’d done that ages ago” sort of way) thing; they unified gestures throughout the OS. In notifications swipe sideways to dismiss a notification, in the task switcher swipe sideways to dismiss an app, in gmail swipe sideways to move between emails, and so on and so forth. It’s intuitive and makes operating disparate parts of the OS easier, because they obey the same design language. In HTC’s task switcher you swipe up to dismiss them. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Certainly doesn’t sound like the egregious design faux pa that I’m making it out to be, does it? The thing is, when our Telecom Tech group first cracked these open an experienced Android user (and all-around clever cookie to boot) asked aloud how to dismiss apps. That exemplifies bad design right there. No value added, only subtracted.

Another area where HTC meddled is the Settings area. You can see here that they’ve changed the order of the items in the Settings menu, giving you Personalize, Accounts & Sync, Location, and Security, where stock ICS gives you Sound, Display, Storage, Battery, and Apps. For my money the stock placement gives you the settings you’re likely to use most right up front where you want ‘em.

It’s not a major by any means, but it’s not isolated either. I don’t want to dwell overly on negatives when the whole is actually really good, but it’s the accumulation of these small user-unfriendly decisions that stops me from whole-heartedly endorsing Sense 4.0 as the next coming in mobile UIs.

So, while Sense 4.0 may not exactly be a return to the kind of value-added UI that Touch Flo heralded all that time ago, it’s certainly a vast improvement over what’s emerged out of HTC’s stables in the last couple of years. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the one manufacturer UI skin that I don’t actively dislike, which coming from a power-user is high praise indeed (and fortunate too, since I feel like I need to stay with stock for the duration of the review). Regular users, with more typical usage patterns, will love Sense for its’ inimitable mix of performance and style – especially now that HTC have pared it back to a level where the style bit isn’t hurting the performance bit.

Rest assured I’ll be talking lots more about HTC’s software improvements in subsequent sessions dealing with multimedia, browsing, the camera and so forth, but for now I’ll just leave you with a few shots of the Launcher elements of Sense 4.0 in action:

Left to Right: The dock allows customisation even to the level of adding folders, HTC's Weather application still looks incredible, and the Clock selection remains as sumptuous as ever (note too the easy to navigate tabs and search button for widgets)

Left to right: The best looking and most functional stock lockscreen in the business, a plethora of options available too whether it be social network updates on your lockscreen or checking your stocks, HTC's pinch-gesture enabled "Leap" view

About the author

My name is Murray Winiata. When I'm not on my own time I work as a medical doctor in General Practice, and when I am on my own time I'm a dad, blogger, obsessive home barista, audio enthusiast and guitarist. Online I'm probably better known by my handle "NZtechfreak" via my participation in many online forums including, but not limited to, Geekzone, XDA-Developers, AndroidForums and Head-Fi. Previously I've blogged for Clove Technologies in the UK, and more recently at my own blog AndroidNZ.net. Like most smartphone owners I'm fully social-media'd up, and you can find me on Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Facebook. If you've got burning questions about the HTC One X you'd like me to try and answer, or you want my up-to-the-minute impressions and experiences with the One X, then Twitter would be the best channel to tune in to. Besides that, I'm always available here at Geekzone, which remains one of the best little corners of the internet (even in spite of my membership!). Naturally I'm thrilled to have been chosen to blog about the HTC One X here at the TelecomTech blog, and plan to bring my trademark objectivity to the fray once again. Catch you here again soon!