What is HTC Sense 4.0?: Key features of the new UI

The HTC One X, HTC One S and HTC One V announced earlier all ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running out of the box and of course, HTC Sense 4.0. But what new features do we get from HTC Sense 4.0? Lets take a closer look

HTC has clearly taken a more measured approach with Sense 4.0. Graham Wheeler, Director of Product Communication told us that if “there’s nothing that doesn’t add to the experience, then it’s not included. If there’s an animation that takes too long and detracts from the overall experience, we’ve taken it away.”

HTC Sense 4.0, put simply, looks beautiful running on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. The trademark Sense pinch-to-zoom/leap mode function is all present and correct and features like FriendStream and the floating 3D widgets return.

One neat twist to the Ice Cream Sandwich experience is that when you tap the menu button to launch a list of currently running apps, instead of the generic Ice Cream Sandwich display, you’re taken to a separate menu where you can sweep through the running processes and with an upward flick of your finger, disable a process. It’s visually impressive and reminded us a bit of the old cards system on HP’s WebOS.

Taking a step back from the design overload of HTC Sense 3.0, the ostentatious weather animations of the past have been reigned in (no pun intended) in accord with a new design philosophy.

Finally, we can now officially confirm and lay to rest two persistent rumours we’ve heard about HTC Sense 4.0 since a leak earlier this year.

Firstly, Beats Audio enhanced sound profiles will now work with third party music and video apps. Spotify, Tune-In Radio, Last.fm, Deezer – everything will be supported from now on.

Secondly, DropBox integration. We touched on this earlier but thought that it’s worth mentioning again that he HTC One X, HTC One S and HTC One V (pic) will all give you 25GB worth of cloud storage provided by DropBox.

As well as giving you a generous amount of storage – on par with Microsoft’s SkyDrive – there’s also an auto-sync feature, so your pictures will be uploaded to the DropBox folder the second you take them. You’ll be taken through how to access this when you set your phone up for the first time, as it’s a feature that’s directly wired into Sense 4.0 and the HTC One Series.

HTC Sense 4.0 launches with the HTC One X, HTC One S and HTC One V, there’s no news on the when it will be arriving on the other handsets, but we’d imagine it to be when the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update lands.