You can turn off HTC Sense!

Yes, very nice to have the option. Now no one can say, "I don't want the Evo because it has Sense UI."

nMIK-3 said:

Sense is following the "Love it or hate it" path.
Some people find it cool others don't. It doesn't get simpler than that.

For example I personally do not want to have 7 home screens with 7 HUGE widgets on them. For me its rediculus, waste of energy and not practical not functional

Click to expand...

+1

HTC just took the 'droid Widget concept and went crazy with it. You seriously do not need to manage 7 home screens. That's like going back to iPhone springboard in my book. I am perfectly happy with 3 screens - this way I know exactly where everything is.. either in front of me, to the left or to the right.

I also don't care for what they did to the basic apps like the Dialer, Camera app and others. They just made them busy and flashy.. Some people may be into it, not me.

And those who says plain 2.1 is "boring" - that's nonsense. You can customize it with widgets of the Market to your hearts content. For example, I use a free widget called Weather Forecast - it's similar to HTC stuff, but done much more tastefully in my opinion..

Unless it slows the phone down significantly, I can't see myself turning it off. But it's nice to know you have that option.

Protip: You can disable the Sense Home on ANY phone with Sense. Just clear the defaults in the apps menu. That is definitely a far fetch from completely removing sense, however, as you still have the custom menus and things like Facebook sync.

TheBiles said:

Protip: You can disable the Sense Home on ANY phone with Sense. Just clear the defaults in the apps menu. That is definitely a far fetch from completely removing sense, however, as you still have the custom menus and things like Facebook sync.

Click to expand...

Wrong, you cannot turn it off on HTC Incredible, I heard there was going to be an update on the Desire were you couldn't disable it either. That one could just be a rumor. But I am 100% as of right now you cannot disable sense on the Incredible. You can clear the defaults all you want, but it immediately loads back up.

Wolfedude88 said:

Wrong, you cannot turn it off on HTC Incredible, I heard there was going to be an update on the Desire were you couldn't disable it either. That one could just be a rumor. But I am 100% as of right now you cannot disable sense on the Incredible. You can clear the defaults all you want, but it immediately loads back up.

Click to expand...

Hm. Well that is news!

TheBiles said:

Hm. Well that is news!

Click to expand...

Yeah it sucks, I would have liked to have the option to disable it every now and again. I did it every so often on my Eris.

Would turning it off actually make much of a difference? Isn't Sense ingrained into OS so much that even when it's off parts of it are still running in the background?

Are there any benchmarks for phones running with Sense on and off?

nMIK-3 said:

For example I personally do not want to have 7 home screens with 7 HUGE widgets on them. For me its rediculus, waste of energy and not practical not functional.

Click to expand...

Three of my home screens are just completely empty. My applications are either one the immediate left or immediate right. I do use the next screen on the left for Sprint TV and a music player wiget. But I otherwise agree and just don't make use of widgets. But 97% of my use is just three home screens. But kinda glad I have more real estate if more "must have" apps come out. But still have room for 12 more apps on one of my main 3 screens, so doubt I will ever use the unused space.

nMIK-3 said:

I do not have problem with the number of home screens but with the HTC Sense widgets. Their weather Widget is HUGE taking up one whole screen, same for their calendar widget, their clock widget etc.

They have completely loose the point of widget. And again thats me. For others this is practical..

Click to expand...

you do know you can change the size right? all of HTC widgets have many options for size. Guess you never owned an android phone with sense have ya?

ZombieRace said:

Though, this video begs the question:

How do you turn it off to begin with?

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He shows that it can be done but it doesn't explain step-by-step how it's done.

Anyone knows how to turn it off/on?

I can't even believe he made this video and didn't explain it.

Flexibility is good to have. I'm actually looking forward to the Sense experience. I've got a similar setup on my Treo 800W using an aftermarket launcher but I'm sure it's going to be way better with a huge screen and android. I'm also looking forward to using the Scenes feature. Especially for when I travel.

I will try the default Android UI but from what I've seen, Sense will be the way to go for me.

VGPOP said:

He shows that it can be done but it doesn't explain step-by-step how it's done.

Anyone knows how to turn it off/on?

I can't even believe he made this video and didn't explain it.

Click to expand...

In most cases here are the steps:

1. Press Menu.
2. Press Settings.
3. Press Applications.
4. Press Manage Applications.
5. Wait for the OS to compute application usage.
6. Scroll down the list until you see HTC Sense and select it to go to the Application Info page.
7. Press the Clear Defaults button.
8. Press home. You will be prompted to select which app to compete the action with. Select Home and choose to make this the default action.

Before I received the Evo 4G from Google I/O, I was convinced that Sense UI was unnecessary and that stock Android would be better. However after having played with it for a few days, I'm starting to like Sense a lot. The homescreen side swiping animation is a lot smoother with HTC Sense than with the stock Launcher.

Like someone said, to disable Sense, find "HTC Sense" under "Manage Applications" and hit the clear the defaults button.

I have a question if you turn off sense and use android 2.1 will you get the adroid lock screen or will you get the htc lock screen? ( i hate the htc lock screen.....)

adrianv said:

I have a question if you turn off sense and use android 2.1 will you get the adroid lock screen or will you get the htc lock screen? ( i hate the htc lock screen.....)

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I still get the HTC Sense UI lockscreen.

Just goes to show that we are not actually "disabling" the entire Sense UI, we are just switching Sense's homescreen to the standard homescreen.

Lame I really hate the htc lock screen does anyone know if there are any apps you can download to change it? I havent really looked at it in the market.

adrianv said:

Lame I really hate the htc lock screen does anyone know if there are any apps you can download to change it? I havent really looked at it in the market.

Click to expand...

Maybe Flyscreen and MyLock?

thank you!

My g/f has the incredible. I tried turning off, which I did, but I never clicked home to select default stock android, and now the "Clear Default" button is shaded.

I don't know if the Incredible can be done or not. But I was able to select "clear default" once and now I can't get it back.

Any way to work this around?

if you turn sense ui off can you use the phone in kickstand mode in landscape mode?

Waflsk8s said:

if you turn sense ui off can you use the phone in kickstand mode in landscape mode?

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No, turning the phone with HTC Sense disabled does not switch the orientation on the homescreen.

This isn't anything to argue about as obviously no one is going to make or lose money if you guys do or don't use Sense UI. Some people just are set against it and that's fine. This post is for the people that may be on the fence or were scared off by some other posts in this thread or else where.

The main complaints I hear about Sense on android are the 7 screens, the big widgets, and not being able to turn it off.

First,

For example I personally do not want to have 7 home screens with 7 HUGE widgets on them. For me its rediculus, waste of energy and not practical not functional

Click to expand...

(I hope I quoted that right)

That is a none issue. No Android phone that I have seen comes with Sense out of the box having seven huge widgets on seven screens. If you saw this somewhere, someone added the widgets to all of the pages.

I personally like having seven screens as i plan to have a lot of apps on my phone and i like to have categories assigned to a screen. Some may feel overwhelmed by 7 but that's where the leap feature come into play. You don't have to scroll, you just pinch from the corners and you see the contents of each of your screens and pick which one to go to.

I don't think people are realizing that Sense on android is highly customizable. While(i don't think) you can change the number of screens, you control what widget is on what screen if any. If you decide you want to take all of the HTC widgets off of your screens you can. Which (in a way) is equivalent to "turning Sense off"

Also if you go to add an HTC widget each of them has several styles that you can use. I think each widget has at least one smaller version.

Other then those concerns i don't see why anyone would want to "turn it off" could someone please share?

And as far as the Incredible, I wouldn't know but I'm sure by saying "you can't turn off Sense" it just means there isn't another launcher that comes preloaded on the phone. You can just remove all of the HTC widgets manually and have 7 clean screens. Another alternative is just downloading another launcher from the market and set it to default.