Is This HTC’s Customization Of Windows Phone 7? I Hope So
Never know what to make of a YouTube video that clearly shows some awesome WP7 customization and it’s clearly HTC’s. The corner even says ‘HTC Confidential’ and ‘for internal use only’ and the video isn’t the work of an amateur. With that said, it looks AWESOME. You get the HTC feel like you would from Sense but it’s clearly WP7 all the way. And you get to see the apps they have as well. First up is a 3D notes app that you can sticky as a tile to the home screen. Great 3D effects and really well put together. Of course, we’ll have to see how far the ‘copy’ portion works on day one. Next is a weather app. Again, slick as hell with all sorts of incredible animations that blow Sense away. There’s a stock application that looks great (still just stocks though). And a well made 3D Love Me/Love Me Not game/application. Not sure how that ties in to the rest of this. On the home screen you can also see a tile for “HTC Portal” and a flashlight application. I’ll let you guys speculate wildly on all of this but I really really hope this is the real deal.
OH the video:
How many times did you change your pants during this one? I watched it twice…sad but true.
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@efjay: It’s just a tile – tap and hold it and you can remove the tile from the home screen. And the underlying apps themselves are sandboxed so they won’t run in the background and muck up the OS
@David K:
But if you recall, MS is only allowing 5 custom apps (Tiles) per carrier/manufacturer. I count six in that screen shot alone. And it will have to be separate apps, because they can’t customize the images on the tiles.
I really hope that HTC doesn’t try any of this. Leave Sense to Android. The whole point of Metro is to leave that faux 3D look behind. It looks out of place and ugly.
@sm0k3ydaband1t:
If you look at the image that goes with the article, you will count six HTC tiles. Then you will see the bottoms of the Outlook and Text tiles. That implies that there are six tiles pinned to the normal start menu. Which *can’t* happen. I haven’t watched the movie. It won’t let me. It’s private. I’m going off the included screen shot.
@InfiniteLuke: I backed up the video…and then uploaded it to our account. I saw this coming
@Max: they may be showing some custom apps as well and those are pinned. That HTC Market thingy may be ‘free’ apps that you can get if you have an HTC phone and that’s a market just for you
@David K:
I thought you weren’t allowed to have custom marketplaces. Fairly sure that’s what the development guidelines said. I’m trying to find the PDF from Microsoft, so I can cite my source, but I don’t see this really flying…
Also, on an unrelated note, didn’t the Dev tools go Gold today?
Sounds like a story, David. Jump on that.
@Max: Dev tools will go gold today…hasn’t happened yet:)
as for the market- it’s not their own market. Vendors are allowed their own sections within the market. Go to ‘marketplace’ and you can see them if it applies to you. It’s MS’s way of letting Verizon, for example, still make money and sell their own apps within MSs Marketplace so it stays cohesive. There’s an Engadget video of this from a long time ago with a made up carrier (begins with the letter ‘C’)
@David K:
Ah. I understand.
Still though, I really hope that the tiles aren’t that ugly. They should stick with the Metro UI. Sense was slick on WM 6.5 where it was needed. It’s not needed here.
if this is real…and i reallllllly hope it is, WP7 will dominate the smartphone market again… and soon.
look at the transitions!
granted this is HTCs customization, but i gotta assume that microsoft would take a couple hints from HTC and do something similar because that looks incredible… or maybe it was HTC that took a hint from MS… one can only hope.
Looks to be real. Maybe it’s not final yet, but can be close.
Looks fake to me. Isnt it in the guidelines that OEM’s cant take over the start screen? Clogging it with numerous tiles seems to go against the whole WP7 idea.
Geeze, will this launch already! 😛 I really, really hope this is all it’s being hyped up to be.
Oooooh, I can upgrade today. Must … wait.
This may be a mock-up of what they want to do, but I don’t think this is really running on a phone or emulator.. Normally the tiles peel away one at a time and the ‘hinge’/axis is farther off to the left side (so the tiles swing more forward).. These tiles all swing at the same as one unit, and the hinge/axis is right on the left side of the screen..
i’ve been using the Aria for about a week now, but i bought it off contract so i could save my upgrade for WP7. i just had to dip my feet in to see what all this android fuss is about. it’s pretty nice, but truth be told, i will probably give it to the wife come the end of the year. it seems like everyday they are revealing more and more WP7 awesomeness!
It says video is private and I can’t view it 🙁
@max, your not understanding, this is ONE of htc’s tiles…. the home screen is a page “back” from the menu tiles you see in the video… this is what opens when you click HTC’s tile basically.
@who dis?!: batteries are removable in WP7. The ‘rumor’ that they were not was an April Fool’s joke. And you get that the UI is unchanged with this, right? This is just showing you some apps that HTC created for WP7. The ability to make apps look this good is what sets WP7 apart.
@who dis?!:
I’m having difficulty figuring out where you’re quoting “blows Sense away” from…
@who dis?!: Hater! That is all.
You know what it will also blow away? Your battery. The one you can’t change, specifically.
As Apple has demonstrated time and again, the way to succeed in this biz is to focus on the steak and not the sizzle.
But if you want to go the sizzle route, the next time you post a WP7 video how about putting some lipstick on the pig with a music track?
Isn’t all that animation going to just kill the battery like crazy?? Yeah it looks good but I am really worried about my battery life. I am still going to get WP7 but i am just worried about the battery. I dont mind charging every night but I want to make sure it will last me a whole day at least.
@David K:
The only thing Microsoft has so far proven they can set themselves apart from is the rest of the major players’ healthy share of the mobile market.
They should have named this platform Custer as this is Microsoft’s last stand in this arena.
Suits.
@whodis, did you really just gripe about battery life… AND not having a removable battery…
why do you use apple products again?
^^^ completely rhetorical btw… i dont care for your reasons.
This is almost too good to be true. These types of eye candy tiles would be great and totally smack the iFollowers upside the head. It would instantly vault HTC to the top pick for my first WP7 phone.
@who dis?! clearly you are trying to defend “yourself” with your arguments instead of explaining your “reasoning”. why dont you just admit you dont really know what your are talking about. you are forgetting that the windows mobile 6.5.x phone os was ranked pretty high by some reviewers. we arnt talking about popularity, but aesthetic appeal and performance.
All form, no function. What did we see here? A notes application slightly less functional than Outlook notes (which is pretty bad), weather, and (seriously?) he-loves-me/he-loves-me-not??? If this is Sense for WP7, this just seals the deal for Android as my next phone.
Don’t get me wrong — the animations are gorgeous. But that will get really old after a week or two. I’d rather actually get something done.
Animations look great, but I have a feeling that I’d be looking for ways to turn them off, just like I did on WM6.5 w/Sense
Where interface UI is? it is just animation app. OS development is not apps as these. by now shown demo movie is just app. i hope to see its real form.