Android phones, apps and tablets

How does Sense reduce your productivity?

The calendar lost the depth of information in the monthly view.

The calendar widget wasn't resizable to any dimensions on the home screen.

Those two things alone (both standard in ICS), are enough for me to not see what appointments I have and may be about to miss.

I live by my calendar, for a skin to impair default functionality is a big deal... and the problem I have with both the HTC and Samsung skins is that this happens across the board and you lose the deep elegance behind ICS and what makes it such a great productivity OS.

Example:

HTC Sense on ICS calendar view:

Note that the HTC Sense indicates any appointment on a day simply as a triangle in the top right of the day. Regardless of whether this is a 1 hour appointment, a task, an all-day appointment, a multi-day appointment, or whether multiple calendars are being displayed (type of appointment).

Exactly the same calendar view in Android 4 (ICS) on the Galaxy Nexus:

Note that here the all day appointments are full-day horizontal, that on the 14th December you can see 1 all-day appointment that is part of a 4-day multi-day appointment (same vertical height, runs horizontally for 4 days), that there is an appointment from mid-morning through to mid-afternoon (tallest vertical chunk), followed immediately by a 1 hour appointment, and then after a short break another 1 hour appointment. Further, note that on the 13th December there are 2 appointments of different colours, indicating different calendars and it's plain to see looking up the Tuesday column that both are recurring meetings.

Basically, the skins hide a wealth of instant information, obscuring this requires additional navigation interaction, and if you were attempting to find time for a 4 hour appointment on the HTC Sense for the week beginning 11th December, you'd think that only Monday was free because that would be the only day without a triangle.

If you use such things (calendar) a lot, then every day ends up with appointments, in which case on the HTC the calendar view is now useless as every day would have a now meaningless triangle.

The level of thought put into the ICS skin has not be equalled by attention to detail and thought from neither HTC nor Samsung (who do the same thing to the calendar view in this example). The end result is that I cannot recommend a skin to anyone who wants a OS that offers the best productivity.

Unfortunately if you've always used the skinned phones, you probably don't know how far ICS leapt ahead of every other competitor out there (including iPhone, Blackberry, skinned Androids, and Windows Phone 7).

I'm sorely tempted to root my sensation to ICS without Sense, do anyone have a good guide?

If you really feel the need, you want to look at CyanogenMod.

Version 9 is ICS, and is currently in beta. And the official downloadable version is Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).

Whilst I'm adept at rooting and even compiling the AOSP, I wouldn't recommend it. You make yourself responsible for security updates and keeping things ticking. It's better just to buy a phone that offers the vanilla Android operating system, unfortunately that currently just means Galaxy Nexus.

If you are interested... I went with the S3 in the end :)

'Tis a nice phone.

Just not for me.

Kirth, you are a very silly boy. But, faced with the choices that you had, it is exactly the same choice is would have made. I don't think you will be disappointed for one second.

You'll have to imagine the smiley face.

My S3 should be here soon, very excited.

Seen the news of production problems with the "Pebble Blue" battery covers?

Yeah, should be OK, I think the pre orders are fine, might be trouble getting blue once the 1st batch sell out though.

yeah I ordered the blue as well... Amazon seem to have them ok since the delivery is due 30th.

Is there a new Nexus in the pipeline? I'm due a new phone in Aug/Sep time, fancy a nexus, but if there is a new version due, I may wait

There may well be a whole bunch of them release with android 5 from various manufacturers.

Is there a new Nexus in the pipeline? I'm due a new phone in Aug/Sep time, fancy a nexus, but if there is a new version due, I may wait

In about Sep/Oct you should see a Nexus from every major Android manufacturer.

So something like 5 or 6 takes on what a vanilla Android phone should look like, each one trying to up the game on the hardware front (as that will be the only differentiator that they control).

It promises to be a good time.

I'm saving my other upgrade until then :)

I bet you're first on the Tizen bandwagon.

In fact, with Web OS due for a rumoured return next year, and Tizen on the horizon, and Ubuntu crashing the party, this thread may need a name change in the future.

After 156 pages, this thread won't be renamed... off-topic posts will be bounced out to other threads.

Ah sweet, got some free money due Oct/Nov time so will hold out and buy a handset outright.

snip VB calendar obsession

Why are you using calendar view anyway? I don't see the point of seeing a bunch of lines representing a meeting or something, well anything, when Sense and probably stock? provides an appointment view which shows all your upcoming stuff in much more detail.

I put lots of stuff in my calendar, some important, some not and having it all shown as a bunch of lines rather than informative text would render it pointless. Of course my version is also in English which helps... ;)

Why are you using calendar view anyway?

To find times that are available for appointments.

Agenda view is on my home page, but calendar view is how I schedule appointments.

My only timed appointments are during work (so using work outlook without any mobile sync), polo (same time every week), pub quiz (same time every week)...

I did have touchCalendar installed when I was on a Samsung/Orange version of Gingerbread but haven't really needed any personal scheduling since I got CM9/ICS.

To find times that are available for appointments.
Agenda view is on my home page, but calendar view is how I schedule appointments.

I just let it check for conflicts.

Even the calendar widget differs.

The ICS one indicates "Maybe" appointments clearly and if a location is given the first line of the address is under the appointment so that you don't have to open the appointment to check where you're going (such as when you're on the street and want to just glance and double-check the door number).

You can say HTC Sense is fine for you, but it's certainly not as productive as vanilla ICS. And it's not just on the calendar, but that was something that jarred the most with me. It's everywhere, and Samsung is even worse than HTC with how their skins affect functionality. You wouldn't even know ICS had come to use a Samsung.

I do say it's fine for me but I've not used stock ICS to compare and as far as productivity goes the issue you raised makes zero difference to how I use my phone.

And the G3 is delayed for around a month (in blue)... great. Guess I'll need to find a £10 mobile so at least I can make calls for now

We might get lucky, I reckon some have been shipped, I think it's mainly vodafone and clove with problems, fingers crossed for the rest of the day.

buymobiles.net 's twitter are saying both colours are still expected today, that's where I ordered mine.