What you see above in my terrible, late-night, Photoshop’d image is how the HTC Desire from Telstra should look like once it receives the Android 2.3.x “Gingerbread” update in August. Telstra and HTC are going to remove Sense UI from the original Desire in order for Gingerbread to work properly, due to the low amount of RAM on the device. Because this is such a dramatic change from Sense UI to stock Android, surely Telstra are going to give people the choice of updating, as the user experience will change substantially.
Either way, we’re going to clarify with HTC just how much of the software is going to change and whether parts of HTC’s Sense UI will be made to work with stock Android.
[Via Engadget]
Source: Telstra.
As users of the http://www.t-mod.org leedroid ROM know Gingerbread 2.3.3 and Sense can coexist very happily on the Desire. What is stopping this from happening in Telstras official offering is the useless, barely functional branded bloatware junk Telstra insist on baking into the OS. Removing this garbage that no one needs/wants/uses would make plenty of room to offer customers the full Gingerbread/Sense experience.
I do agree though that Sense should be optional. I like it but many do not.
So what do you guys recommend here? When this update comes out, should I upgrade or keep 2.2 on my Desire? Don’t know if I wanna lose HTC sense, I really like it.
That’s interesting given that A LOT of Hipster douches that I know are constantly going on about how HTCs are better thaj iPhones “cos they look cool and iPhones are too mainstream …”
I think this will lose that edge for them but given the average IQ of these tools, they’ll probably think they broke it and upgrade to a new phone
I thought Apple trademarked the hipster doushe look?
It seems strange that LeeDroid can get gingerbread (2.3.3) and Sense UI to work but HTC can’t! I’ll stick with T-Mod and LeeDroid I think!
I think a lot of people will hate this – most that own the desire are non-tech savy girls. Removing their sense will just confuse them and take away features they use on a daily basis, forcing them to upgrade to a new phone anyway.
This is the coolest thing ever.
But ill believe it when i see it. A lot of turds go around saying they like sense and I think that’s all HTC hear. Im still betting that they put a cut down version of sense on there (with the worthless call button instead of an app dock)
Better late than never. I don’t see Telstra offering upgrades to new phones as users don’t have to move to Gingerbread – the phone does work as it should and wouldn’t be considered ‘faulty’ by running a Sense-less version of Android. However I wouldn’t say not to Telstra waiving the ETC if recontracting on a new handset.
Its now a nexus one in a diff body
it will be interesting to see how people, who may not know what ‘stock’ android is, react to this; for some it will not be an ‘update’.
Unbelievable, last weekend I rooted and rom’ed a friends HTC Desire, who has now gone from calling it a terrible shitty phone (sitting in a cupboard for a year) to now saying ‘This is way better than an iPhone’ just by going to a stock rom.. well CM7 ;).
Afterwards I was thinking HTC would be a lot better off if they just went down a stock route.. To me, no question, people should do this update.
Agreed and give sense as a download or a diff rom …..stock or sense the the owner should have a choice
Just make there stuff an APK like everything else… (homescreen replacement, widgets, whatever) IMO.
I don’t want to be too hard, like Android is supposed to have a level of freedom assigned to it, but to me HTC Sense is 100MB+ of bloatware.
Interesting you say that… I had flashed my Desire with InsertCoin (Sense rom) about a week ago, and because I could, I flashed CM7 over the weekend.
After playing around with it a bit I went back to InsercCoin (Sense rom) because of a few shortcomings of CM7 (mainly camera and keyboard). CM7 is definitely faster though.
I wonder if this new update will be an unique hybrid of HTC Sense and Stock… because I think that is actually what I want…
I know the keyboard is called ‘htc ime’ and can be installed onto any rom via apk. The camera is different though because of drivers, I remember being pretty bummed out when first switched from Sense cause of the camera/gallery (but if you ask me now what the differences are I have no idea because it has been so long), I believe I tried installing some ported app but it never seemed to work quite right. It ended up not being a deal breaker for me because of the speed of the rom and I personally find a huge battery… Read more »
Erm. They might as well push CM7.0 out as an OTA update…
I kind of like Sense, and was looking forward to having it on Gingerbread. I wonder if they’ll be shipping the widgets or modified mail client and dialer? HTC do a *very* nice agenda widget, and it’d be a pity to lose that.
(Yeah, I know, there are alternatives. I’ve used them. HTC’s is slicker.)
That’s awsm for Desire owners who want speed over fluff.
Is it concerning that the phone will get G’Bread in August when the OS was released in Dec 2010 ? That’s messed up!
Gingerbread did come out in December, but it wasn’t until 2.3.3 that it was actually usable, and that came out in March. Sure, HTC could have, and should have been faster, but it’s not that bad.
This is the Android life though. Manufacturer’s concentrate on quick updates for their flagship devices. Issue is, that the flagship device has a shelf life of 6 months before it’s been replaced by another ‘flagship device’.
Samsung (and google regarding the Nexus) is the only manufacturer that has a flagship lifecycle of 1 year (galaxy s series)