HTC isn’t just building an Android skin, it’s building a whole platform

I'll say this about HTC:<p>The last phone I bought was a Legend...and I'm still rocking it. It's my daily use, so it's been dropped, forgotten places, thrown around, banged around, kidnapped by a dog, you name it. Sure, the specs are dated and it's only running 2.2. But I walk around with my laptop, so all I need my phone for is calling, texting, emailing and tethering, which it does easily. The styling has even held up; it gets a look or two from iPhone users and their ubiquitous rectangle.<p>All this is to say, I'm in the market for a new phone and haven't <i>really</i> come across anything that makes me want to retire this thing. Mostly too big, too "cheap" feeling, too expensive; just too much going on in general. But based on my experience with this phone, if HTC can do something impressive with the software, I'll buy again. Hell, having a decent DSP is enough.<p>/end infomercial?

I have an HTC Desire which I used to love because it was fast and easy to use, however that all changed about few months back when the latest version of Sense got auto installed.<p>Now, if you want to unlock the phone instead of just swiping down on the screen, you have to put your finger over a "ring" and drag this up past a certain point on the screen and then let go. At this point your homescreen will come into view by doing a 360 degree spin which last about 2 seconds (there is no way to skip it).<p>Then once you have unlocked it if you want to navigate between screens you have a compiz cube style effect which seems to really slow the interface down.<p>Not to mention that when you get an incoming call you are back to the "ring" interface and you must drag and drop the ring onto answer or reject. Of course if you want to reject a call and you drop the ring even a millimeter shy of the reject button it will answer the call.<p>Oh, and there's no way to turn these features off or go back to the previous version of sense..<p>The problem can be mitigated somewhat by installed the "widgetlocker" program, but the answer issue can't as far as I can tell.<p>I really have no idea why they would decide to ruin the UI like this! If they hadn't messed this up I would quite happily have bought another HTC when I was looking for a new phone, but after this there is just no way I could recommend one.

Acquiring and dealing isn't building. This rings of the acquisition sprees that RIM and Nokia went on in the run-up to their dramatic declines. It's embarrassing to read Extremetech dress up the Beats acquisition as something of a coup - their industry reputation is somewhere between Monster and Bose (ie competent if unimpressive technology with overbearing marketing).

If HTC wants to integrate these services into the core experience of their devices, then they are going to have to manipulate the android source in a substantial way that will contribute to the fragmentation issue. I think these manufacturers are expecting something out of android that it cannot deliver. These "kindle-esque" forks are going to be android's undoing.<p>We'll have to wait and see, but I think every major manufacturer is going to to try and build a platform/ecosystem similar to what Amazon and B&#38;N have done.

HTC is adding the Beats DSP, Dropbox integration, a streaming music service, and LogMeIn remote phone access to Sense.

The margins on software and services are many multiples greater than consumer electronics hardware.<p>If they make $20 net revenue per phone sold just imagine if they can make another $20 net from revenue shares by way of Dropbox, LogMeIn, and other ancillary bundled services.<p>That secondary $20 would double their net per phone which would be transformative for their business.<p>Additionally, services create data and service lock-in as users move from older devices to newer devices if their platform makes migration within the HTC brand seamless.

This is what is wrong with android. If device manufacturers/carriers want to add shit to the OS it should be done in the form of downloadable applications that are presented as options when setting up the phone. The OS experience is way too fragmented when moving from phone to phone. This leads to older phones never getting core OS updates because they would have to update sense for the 40 phones they produced in the last few years which will never happen.

Looks like customer experience is on the list of things they are willing to step on in their quest to differentiate.