When HTC
announced their two newest Android phones, the Desire HD and Desire Z, one of the features they showed off was an online hub at
HTCSense.com. From this site, users have access to lots of phone features right from their desktop. The site's features include:
- Remote-locking, and even putting a custom message on the phone if it's lost
- Remote-wiping if the phone is lost
- Viewing all past text messages, and even sending and receiving messages
- Contact management and syncing
- Map viewing and sending
- App discovery and sharing
- Personalization by downloading ringtones, wallpapers, etc.
At the moment, the new HTCSense.com only works with the Desire HD and Desire Z in Europe. It's unknown whether HTC will bring the new features to existing phones in the US, like the Evo, or
Droid Incredible. It's also worth noting, that even though the Desire Z and
G2 are identical devices, the G2 will not have access to the new HTCSense.com since it is running stock Android, and not Sense.
[via HTC]
As much as I dislike custom skins running on top of Android, these features are very cool. They provide a full experience to users, instead of just a smartphone. Most of these features I already have, since I use Gmail, Google Voice, etc. But to have it all in one place like this sounds very appealing. If I were buying a device with a custom skin, it would definitely be Sense.
What?! The G2 doesn't get it because it doesn't have a skin on it? That's messed up. But...all of those features, except the first two (that I know of ) are available already through Google's own products. So I guess it's not a huge loss, but still kind of sucky. And it seems like a lot of effort for it to only be compatible with two phones, so I predict that it will eventually be available to all phones running Sense.
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