To Sense or not to Sense, that is something you’ve really got to think about. I’ll go over things briefly so new people can catch up. Android has a user interface, obviously. The problem with it is (or can be) that it’s a bit like an interface designed by Google. Very functional and not much else, although in all honesty Android is the nicest UI on any Google product. However some phone makers like to put their own stamp on their devices and alter the stock Android UI. Motorola have one called Motoblur and HTC have one called Sense. Sony have one too but I don’t know what it’s called.

The first time I heard that phone makers could do this I expected to see a whole range of absolutely useless UIs, however it didn’t work out like that. Motoblur is actually quite good from what I hear, and Sony’s offering isn’t too bad either. But it is HTC Sense UI that seems to be by far the most popular.

Of all the ROMs I have tried so far, none of them had Sense, instead opting for the stock Android fare. Like I say, it isn’t too bad, just functional. That’s all well and good but there’s a whole world of ROMs that are based around the Sense UI that offer features that you just don’t get anywhere else.

Don’t get me wrong, Sense isn’t perfect. There are a few problems. First of all if you don’t like bloatware (that’s pre-installed software that you wouldn’t ever consider installing yourself) then you’re going to be upset, Sense is absolutely loaded with it. To be fair HTC seem to have done this with the most honorable intentions. The HTC interface is there to help people who might not be as tech savvy as the rest of us. For somebody with relatively little technical knowledge, everything is there already. Twitter, Facebook and Flickr integration is damn near perfect in the current 2.1 version. A new user doesn’t have to worry about finding a Twitter app or suffer the hell that is the Android Facebook app, it’s all there when your phone starts up for the first time. Unfortunately HTC assumes we do other things besides social networking and insists on giving us apps to handle it. They assume, like Apple does, that we all have a stock portfolio that we need to constantly monitor. At least with the iPhone you can put the Stocks app in a folder and forget about it. The HTC Stocks app runs constantly whether you use it or not, and you can’t get rid of it.

The as yet unreleased 2.2 version adds to the bloatware with Plurk integration. That’s right, Plurk! I know you were sat there wishing for just such an app and now you have it. Luckily these custom ROMs tend to do away with this sort of thing. Put it this way, if the one you’ve got doesn’t dump the bloat then find one that does. There are plenty of good ones.

At the moment I’m trying Pays-ROM which you can download here. So far it looks like it has all the best features of the new Sense UI with none of the Stocks or Plurk apps. There’s the 720p video recording, the stock Android Contacts app which I prefer to the Sense equivalent. It has HTCs Flashlight app that uses the camera flash, and the HTC Wi-Fi hotspot app that turns your phone into a Mi-Fi like device.

With the addition of Launcher Pro this seems to be a brilliant set up. I hope I can stay with it for at least a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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