Help Sense 5/6 discussion / setup (Blink feed, etc.)

Anyone try it out yet? I've seen a few ROMs over at XDA i've been itching to try. What are your opinions on the newest version?

Thanks to HTC's new 2 years of support guarantee it's only a matter of time before it heads to your 2013 HTC One.

If you want more info on 6th sense and how it looks you might want to ask over here:

HTC One M8 - Android Forums


Although this is for the New HTC One M8, it will be a similar experience.

Does anyone know how to uninstall Sense 6.0 and go back to 5.5? Not happy with some of the changes that were implemented in 6.0. Unless there's a way to adjust settings on the following.

Phone application: the way it looked and worked in 5.5 with the pixelated picture , larger contact pic and smaller numbers

Text preview: in 5.5 if you got a text it would preview on the screen in a black box and you could swipe it up and you would go right to that text. Now it's just in white lettering (very hard to see) and you can't swipe to go directly to the text.

I know these are small things but some of the things that I really like about the phone. If anyone has any info I would appreciate it. Otherwise...factory reset

Thank you

So not even a factory reset helps huh? I'd rather not root but I hate Sense 6.0 already. Can you root, get 5.5 then unroot?

I like the Sense 6 on my M7. I use ARHD 71.1

I hope HTC get it offiically to M7.

I just updated my Sprint One to Sense 6. Everything went fine, and I am pleased with most of the tweaks they made. The one thing I am annoyed by though, is they removed/changed the sound scheme. I know, it is minor. I can get whatever sounds I want, but it was annoying the first day after the update, when my alarm to wake me up, was some terrible and quiet sound. I didn't expect the built in sounds to delete the prior ones.

Oh well. Like I said, minor gripe. The benefits outweigh them. Battery life seems better, but that might just be because signal in my area seems to have improved, and not related to the latest update.

Updated to Sense 6 on Sprint yesterday. All seemed ok until I looked at my messaging app and saw only numbers, no names or pics. Thinking that was odd I looked at my contacts...all gone! Here's the interesting part...when I go to Accounts & Sync under Settings, there are icons (red circles with arrows) next to Exchange ActiveSync and Google, and at the bottom there is a message saying "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly". What does this mean exactly? I would really like my contacts back. lol

EarlyMon said:

Spoiler

I've had this happen and it seems to be connected to a lot of stuff syncing at once tangling things up.

What's worked for me -

Settings, Accounts, tap into your ActiveSync account - uncheck any items that are hung up (for me, it's always mail). Back, into Google, uncheck and check the contacts, sync all.

Play with it a few times inside the Google account settings, it will finally get your contacts.

Back out to ActiveSync, check back on what was off, sync again.

See if that helps.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried a few different things to no avail, but ultimately removing and re-adding my email accounts resolved the issue. Bit of a pain, but I'm happy to have my contacts back.

Anybody else have any luck getting their syncing issues resolved? I've tried removing and reinstalling accounts, no help. This update has been a disaster. I've got no contacts (it won't sync with Google, for god's sake, or my Exchange server at work). Notifications have stopped for most apps, Maps refuses to let me log in and takes forever to do anything...did anyone test this POS before releasing it on the masses?

All of those and counting. I was able to finally get my Exchange connection restored, but connections using my Google account are still not working right. the latest one I have discovered is that it isn't allowing me to connect to my Play account. This thing has been pretty stable for the last year that I've owned it, but something about this last update did not sit well with it.

For those having sync problems.

I noticed that my google+ photos weren't syncing. I searched and found that the new Sense6 update had designated my home wifi as a mobile hotspot, and some apps aren't allowed to sync over a mobile hotspot. Once I unchecked "mobile hotspot" for my home wifi, it now syncs fine.

Go to [settings]->[more]->[data usage]->[...]->[mobile hotspot]
and uncheck any wifi ssid's that you know are safe and not like starbucks.

Then your phone will sync on your home network again, like it did before the Sense6 update.

I updated to 5.11.401.10 with Sense 6.0 a few days ago. The only problem I've experienced is a completely new set of sounds which resulted, in some cases eg stock email, defaulting to silent which meant going through all my sound/notification settings re-enabling and selecting new sounds. A pain in the proverbial but easily fixable if a little time consuming.

I certainly haven't experienced any of the obviously more serious problems listed by others, although I have had minor problems after earlier updates. I got into the habit of doing a 'wipe cache partition' after an update which has been successful and may be worth trying before a full reset - wipe cache partition does not affect any data or settings. In fact some advocate doing it on a regular basis to clean things up.

Wipe Cache Partition

Before booting into Recovery, ensure that fast boot has been turned off:

1. Tap Menu

2. Tap Settings

3. Tap Power

4. Uncheck the box for Fast boot.


Once fast boot has been turned off, reboot into Recovery to wipe cache partition:

1. Power off the device
2. While holding down the Volume Down button, press the Power button. The device will boot into the bootloader which is a white screen with 3 Androids at the bottom screen.
3. Using the Volume Down button, select RECOVERY
4. Press the Power button to select the option. Device will reboot into a black screen with a red exclamation mark in a red triangle atop a device.
5. Press Volume Up and Power button to get into the Recovery menu.
6. Using Volume Down button, highlight the Wipe cache partition option.

NOTE: Be sure that Wipe cache partition is highlighted. Do not choose Wipe data/factory reset as this will result in loss of data!

7. Press the Power button to select the option
8. When the process, is complete, ensure that Reboot system now option is highlighted.
9. Press the Power button to select the option and reboot the device into the OS.


Up to now, I like the Sense 6.0 changes! even the time/weather widget changing from white to black (day/night) - quite entertaining - don't you think??

So I just got the M7 and I'm liking it. One problem so far is BlinkFeed, I don't like it or want it. I'm upgraded to Sense 6 and Android 4.4.2 so it gives me the option to remove it from my home screen. When I go into battery usage it still shows up, it's only a small percentage but it shouldn't be there. I went into the app and tried disabling it again and it reset all my home screens. I had to rebuild my home screens again which was annoying.

Does anyone know how to get rid of it or shut it down? I'm not rooted, never have and never will.

I don't have the answer you are looking for but I also had no use for it when I first got the phone. I use the Nova launcher for my home screen . If it doesn't use much memory its not really costing you much to leave it on the phone. You may have to be rooted to completely remove it, but I know nothing about rooting so someone with more info on that may be able to help. Good luck.

I'm not so much worried about space on the phone as I am with battery life. So far the battery seems to be going a bit quicker than on my LTEVO.

I figured it would be easy to get rid of if I was rooted, but I won't do that. I've also never used a 3rd party launcher. The reason I've stuck with HTC is because I like Sense, and the phone's layout. In short, I won't root my phone.

Don't think you can completely disable it unless you use a custom Rom, not sure why it would be as much of an issue as you make out though......after owning my One for 17 months or so now i can't say i've ever used Blinkfeed other than to try it when i first got the phone, but since then i've either been on a Rom that doesn't have it or just disabled it in any other Rom's and my battery life is just fine.....maybe i'm tired of the phone now and just don't use it as i did, i don't know.

Why would you never Root?

craftycarper said:

Don't think you can completely disable it unless you use a custom Rom, not sure why it would be as much of an issue as you make out though......after owning my One for 17 months or so now i can't say i've ever used Blinkfeed other than to try it when i first got the phone, but since then i've either been on a Rom that doesn't have it or just disabled it in any other Rom's and my battery life is just fine.....maybe i'm tired of the phone now and just don't use it as i did, i don't know.

Why would you never Root?

Click to expand...

Thanks for answering. I figured it couldn't be done without root, but I I want to make sure I didn't miss anything in the options.

As for battery life, it doesn't seem bad on the One so far and I've only had it less than a week but I felt like my LTEVO on the same network, lasted longer with heavy use. When I look in the power consumption I see BlinkFeed using a bit of power and I don't like it. I have it taken off my home screens but it still there in power usage.

I've had HTC devices since the original Hero, 5 or 6 years ago and I've just never rooted them. I've read all about it and it seems too involved for what I would use it for. I like stock HTC software and would only use root to uninstall apps and other minor stuff, so the risk wouldn't be worth it. If I could download an app and press a button to have root access, without fear of bricking, then I would do it.

With Sense 6, the stock HTC Sense launcher was renamed to HTC Blinkfeed. So what you may be seeing in Battery Usage as "HTC Blinkfeed" isn't so much the Blinkfeed widget that aggregates all your web content but the stock launcher that contains all your homescreens & app drawer. I use a third-party launcher by default and Blinkfeed never shows up in my battery usage. I've also removed all shortcuts & widgets from the stock launcher homescreens, including the Blinkfeed widget. Even though I am rooted, none of this requires root, so it can be done on a non-rooted device. And when I go into Settings>Apps>All, HTC Blinkfeed is still enabled, with no option to disable.

So if seeing "Blinkfeed" in your battery usage bothers you, install a third-party launcher like Nova, Apex or Go, set it as your default and remove everything from the stock launcher home screens. In which case, you'll now have that launcher showing up in your battery usage instead of Blinkfeed.

As for rooting, only you can say if it's worth it for you. But I don't believe the risk is as high as you think it is. Perhaps with the earlier devices it was more complex with higher risk. But now that HTC provides a way to unlock the bootloader, there really is not much of a risk of bricking your device as long as you follow the instructions. And while I would never recommend using them, there are toolkits that can walk you through and automate much of the process. But if you feel you don't need any of the things available with root and are happy with how the device performs, then there's no reason to tinker with it. Personally, I think there are too many apps that I find fundamental that require root access that I would never buy a phone that I couldn't root.

That made sense when I read it so I went and looked at my old LTEVO but Sense didn't show up as a battery draw. Android System and Android OS showed up as a power draw on the LTEVO. On the M7, Android System shows up but not Android OS.

You may be right though. Since the power draw is slight and I don't know how to get better answers from this forum, I'll assume you are correct until I can stumble upon a better answer.

I want to add some Apps Llike Twitter to one of the panels but when I scroll thru I am not seeing the one's I want to add. ( I "pinch" the blank panel to bring up the "Press & Drag A Widget/App to the Panel" page, choose Apps, ect). When I go to Settings - Apps - All apps, I can see Twitter there and it is enabled. So I know its installed on my phone. I am running Android Version 4.4.2 and HTC Sense Version 6.0