No, people on XDA developers (phone nerds) use the tern 'NonSense'. HTC sticks to common UI principles, ie:

* Identifiable icons (eg, using a globe, rather than a blue and white sphere, for a web browser)

* Known color schemes, eg, black, green, and white, versus Googles white, blue, orange and green.

* A home screen which can host animations. Google's can't, which is why the widget selection is poor and those that exist don't do as much.

* Always visible phone function, something Google themselves did in 2.2

* Widgets that don't waste space, compared to the default 2 x 4 widgets for Twitter and Facebook with the massive stip between.

I could go on. HTC have UI designers. Android clearly don't - it's not a matter of personal preference, it's a matter of basic design principles.

Edit: Fixed 'Apple' rather than 'Android'.

Do people like HTC's random animations? Do I really need to see lightning flash when I unlock my phone because there was a thunderstorm at the airport an hour ago? I much prefer Google's more tasteful weather widget -- a simple icon representing the weather and the temperature. Then I don't have to use more than half my screen for an extra clock and a huge picture of a cloud. Looks great in advertising materials, looks terrible in real life. (Of course, you can just remove the widget, so that's not a big deal.)

But it does show you the overall idea behind sense -- stupid gimmicks to make phones more exciting to people that can barely afford the monthly contract fee for a smartphone. Good for them, not good for me. So I kill it.

My biggest beef with Sense is that they put so many gimmicks on the keyboard that there isn't any room for the letter keys. I want to type on the keyboard, not be impressed that they have half-working text-to-speech. On the stock android keyboard, I can get a fucking comma without having to go to the alternate keyboard. On the sense keyboard, nope.

If HTC wants to see how to improve, they should look at the Droid X keyboard. That thing is great. (And it's what I use now :)

Anyway, "basic design principles" my ass. "Basic bling principles" maybe.

> But it does show you the overall idea behind sense -- stupid gimmicks to make phones more exciting to people that can barely afford the monthly contract fee for a smartphone.

Sense for me gives me instant access to my friends activities (via FriendStream, which won't work on normal Google home as animation isn't allowed in widgets - see the vanilla Facebook and Twitter one-at-a-time widgets), my investments (same thing), and a visually driven music player that takes advantage of the fact I can find a picture a lot faster than I can a word.

I can do all of these without leaving my home screen. On regular Android, I can't.

Also agreed on space efficiency - their weather widgets are much better done (fortunately tons of alternatives exist in the market).

There are plenty of things that annoyed me though. 1) The UI is slower and any of its minor gains is not worth this trade-off. 2) I dislike the iPhone style time select (android's key input is quicker to use, though it too has flaws (not selecting the existing text automatically)). 3) The clock that is a direct rip off of the iPhone. Its features are quite lacking (a stopwatch without laps, etc.)

Wait, what?

I've also had (and still have) an iPhone 3G/S for a couple of years. While I still think the iPhone is overall a better UI and better app store, the HTC phone is the first Droid-based phone I've owned or played with that didn't come across like an unfinished experiment in cellphone design.

I'm vaguely aware there are other options to the Sense UI, but I do not dislike it enough overall to warrant an investigation into any of the other options.

No. Really, no.

As for the trackball? Still the best precision text selection device I've used on a mobile.

My Sansa E500 thing is easy to manage by touch only (except if I want to see the name of the song playing); my eyes don't leave the road if I want to skip or repeat or pause a song.

Likewise, if I need to make or take a call while driving, and pulling over isn't an option, I want to be able to do a much as I can by touch, and not worry that a misplaced tap or glide on smooth glass has triggered some unwanted behavior.

Now it's squint at the damn phone and tap around. Hanging up is just the tiniest bit more annoying without a hardware button (yes, I'm aware that many smartphones have a physical end-call button).

I've had no problem with the iOS method so far, and haven't been longing for the return of the trackball at all.

Tactile feedback from keyboards/button has always been an issue with me, but I find that a slight vibration from the phone when a softkey is pressed does the job just fine.

I do that pretty regularly to quote in mails and forums on my iOS device. But I think the issue isn't about how often it's used, but how seamless it is. If you can do it without thinking about it, it's good. If you have to stop when you need to select text, it's not.

SenseUI is an excellent interface. I say this as a fairly hardcore user. It's a bit of a UI stepback using my N1 instead of my Magic+. I'm a fairly hardcore user so I like it vanilla for other reasons, but I guarantee that doesn't matter at all for about 95% of consumers.

> I think Apple is leading the way here (with a metal case and a very high-res screen), and that HTC is just going to copy.

HTC Legend was out before the iPhone, largely composed of a single piece of aluminum. HTC has absolutely kicked Apple around when it comes to screen resolution. So how, exactly, is HTC copying Apple? Quite the opposite.