HTC Hero & HTC Sense User interface announced

Today HTC announced the next, but much anticipated Android powered device called “HTC Hero”.
Despite the fact that this device contains some excellent improvements and innovations in hardware, like the teflon coating. The main bulk of innovations is software related. HTC brings for instance multi touch to the Android devices, but the most rocking and groundbreaking is the new user interface which will be on every new HTC device (not limited to one platform), and has been given the great name HTC Sense.This article is a short but powerful summary based on the live coverage of the HTC event in London, thepress release of the HTC Hero and the early publications on our friends’ websites. Have fun and read on after the break.

HTC Hero

The HTC Hero is a new Android based smartphone with some nice features.

The most important Specs:

• 3.2″ Multiouch captive HVGA touchscreen.
• 3.5mm Headset Jack
• GPS
• Digital Compas
• G-sensor
• 5 Megapixel Camera
• Adobe Flash (also supports fullscreen)

Some nice other features are “Excellent facebook integration” and teflon coating for a better protection against fingerprints and other dust.

All together the HTC hero can be very much compared to the HTC Touch Diamond 2 but then with the Android Operating System.

From the Press-release:

Building on their design forward heritage, the HTC Hero melds a sleek, comfortable form factor with new and innovative features.  For example, a 3.2 inch HVGA touchscreen is complemented with an anti-fingerprint coating for improved smudge resistance and longer lasting display. The white HTC Hero comes with an additional Teflon coating providing enhanced durability and comfort, a first in the mobile industry. Other features such as a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and a 3.5mm stereo headset jack make this a powerful and convenient device.

HTC Sense

The HTC Sense User Interface will be provided on all new Windows Mobile and Android devices from HTC. HTC Sense is based on thee principles:

“Make it mine” – make changes to your phone in a way the user will experience as if the phone is designed and created for you.

Make It Mine, is about feeling your HTC phone was created for and by you.  To do this, HTC encourages you to dictate and organize how you want to access the people and content in your life in a way that fits best for you. For some, this means adding glance view widgets that push content like twitter feeds, weather and other content to the surface while others may want quick access to business-focused information like email, calendar and world-times

“Stay Close” – Combining various communication channels (Calls, Email, Text messages etc.) into one single view.

HTC Sense takes a different approach by integrating these communication channels and applications into one single view enabling you to stay closer to your important people.  With HTC Sense, friends’ Facebook status updates and photos along with their Flickr photos are included along side their text messages, emails and call history in a single view.

“Discover the Unexpected” – A new way of expieriencing your phone. This ncludes features like smartdial and turning over the phone to mute the ringtone.

HTC Sense also includes perspectives, a new way for viewing your content such as email, photos, Twitter, music and more in different ways.

The video above shows the HTC Hero and HTC Sense User Interface with some features we already know from Touch FLO 3D. A lot of features of the TouchFlo 3D can be found back in HTC Sense, This includes the People-centric communication tab and weather look a lot like the version from the HTC Touch Pro2.

The email application in the above video shows exchange support. Something we didn’t have in a right way on the android platform yet.

Availability & Pricing

The HTC Hero will be available across Europe in July and in Asia “Later this summer”. In Europe the device will be priced at €479,00.