** HTC Sense ROM Review: A Sneak Peek into the Future**

As I delve into the world of custom ROMs, I'm excited to share my experience with the HTC Sense ROM for the Nexus One. This is not an official release from HTC, but rather a community-driven project that showcases the capabilities of the device's hardware and software.

**The Process of Installing the ROM**

Installing the ROM was quite a hassle, but it was worth it in the end. The process involved flashing the ROM using a custom recovery, such as ClockworkMod, which can be downloaded from various sources online. I must admit that I wasn't familiar with this process before, and Carlos's guidance was invaluable in helping me navigate the setup.

**The Interface: A Flickering Facebook Widget**

Once the ROM is installed, you'll notice a unique interface that features a flickering Facebook widget on the home screen. This is where things get interesting, as it allows you to easily access your social media feeds and share updates with friends. The widget can be customized to show different types of information, including news, weather, and even your email inbox.

**Other Widgets: A Showcase of HTC's Features**

The ROM comes pre-installed with a range of widgets that showcase the device's features. You'll find bookmarks, calendars, clocks, and even a photo album that allows you to view thumbnails of your friends' pictures. The widgets are designed to be intuitive and easy to use, making it simple to access the information you need.

**Android Marketplace: A Native Experience**

One of my biggest concerns when flashing this ROM was whether Android Marketplace would still work with the custom build. Happily, it did, and I was able to browse and download apps just as I would on a stock Android device. The experience was seamless, and I was impressed by how native everything felt.

**Internet Browsing: A Smooth Experience**

When it comes to browsing the internet, this ROM delivers. I used the built-in browser to check out some websites, including TechnoBuffalo's own site, and was pleased with the results. The loading speeds were quick, and pinch-to-zoom worked smoothly. Even in landscape orientation, everything rendered quickly and responsively.

**Lock Screen: A Different Experience**

The lock screen on this ROM is definitely different from what you're used to with Android 2.1. It features a unique HTC Sense design that includes cloud shapes and water droplets. If it's raining or snowy outside, the effects are enhanced accordingly. I must admit, it took some getting used to, but once I adjusted to the new look, I found it quite visually appealing.

**Battery Life: Still to be Tested**

As with any custom ROM, there's always a risk of battery drain. I've only had the device for a few hours, so I'm not sure yet whether this will be an issue. However, based on my initial experience, things seem to be running smoothly, and I haven't noticed any significant battery drain.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I'm impressed with the HTC Sense ROM for the Nexus One. It's clear that the community has put a lot of effort into creating a custom build that showcases the device's capabilities. While it may not be perfect – there are still some quirks and issues to work out – I think this is an excellent starting point for those looking to customize their Android experience.

**Additional Tips**

If you're considering doing something like this on your own, be warned: it's not for the faint of heart. I didn't hesitate to ask for help along the way, and Carlos's guidance was invaluable in getting me through the process. Additionally, keep an eye out for future releases from the community, as they will likely address some of the current issues.

**Technical Details**

For those interested in technical details, here are a few specs that you should know:

* Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon AP45

* RAM: 256 MB (expandable to 512 MB)

* Storage: 8 GB (expandable to 32 GB)

* Operating System: Android 2.1 (customized)

**Community Involvement**

The community behind this ROM is active and engaged, with many contributors working together to refine the build. If you're interested in contributing or learning more about the project, be sure to check out the official forums and discussion channels.

**Final Thoughts**

I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peek into the world of HTC Sense. As always, I'm happy to chat about technology with all of you, so feel free to reach out in the comments section below. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more tech news and reviews!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys John ringer from techno Buffalo here and I want to show you something you may have not seen before that is HTC's sense UI running on the Nexus one now before I start and giving you a tour of what's new and what's here there are a few people that I need to thank uh first and foremost I want to thank carlosg Graves you can follow him on Twitter carlosg Graves from Droid dog.com a fantastic Android resource for really holding my hand through this whole process I am a novice when it comes to rooting and a bit of hacking and he was really patient walked me through it so Carlos thank you this is the HTC Desire ROM it's a new phone coming out from HTC it's essentially the same guts as the Nexus one but just with the sensui sitting on top of it uh this ROM came from Modo a Paul one of their admins posted it and if you want to do this yourself which is not for the faint of heart I promise you uh you can follow some instructions that the good Folks at Redmond Pi posted and I'll put a link to all these in the sidebar including links to Carlos's Twitter page and Droid dog so let's go ahead and get started here you'll notice this looks very different than Android 2.1 that you seen in the past um first let me show you that this is in fact still running Android 2.1 it's not a skinned version of 2.0 so we'll jump right into um settings and you notice a a new settings menu menu here as well go to about phone and we'll check the software information you can see right there it still is running the newest version of Android 2.1 update 1 the update one was the update that gave it multi-touch capabilities which are still present uh throughout this now this ROM is just a alpha release this is by no means a final ROM and there are still some bugs in it uh but for the most part it's been really stable and really reliable really the one the one bugs I have seen is that light right the indicator light seems to always stay on so let's go ahead and get started one of the biggest things that that I lik about Android 2.1 was the live wallpapers and with censi you can actually still have those live wallpapers let me show you so we'll go back into settings we'll go up to the top and go to personalize you got a whole bunch of new wallpapers here and you can pick different scenes that you like in the background and you still have the option for live wallpaper so if you're wondering we'll go ahead and set that ctii itself is a bit of a battery killer and of course live wallpapers are as well but they still do work and I'll show you what that is in just a minute still works just as normal life wallpapers did in the past and you guys got sort of a sneak peek at one of the really cool Innovations that's in HTC's new sensui and that's pinch to zoom in the operating system previously we've seen pinch to zoom utilize uh in web pages and picture galleries but now it's actually follows through without the Opera throughout the operating system so let me show you take two fingers and actually pinch in and you get almost a Mac like expose of all of your different home screens of which there are now seven there's one down there that I'm not using um but you can jump right to any of these so if I want to go back to the home or check out weather I can jump right on over to weather if I want to get back to any of them I can hop right in or I can just zoom right out Zoom right out seems sometimes doesn't always work there you saw some it was a little bit inaccurate but it really is a nice way to jump around home screens with standard Android 2.1 you have the little icons in the bottom uh that you can jump to here on sense you can move via that new pinch to zoom or you can see that little bar on the bottom right there start to move along as I scroll and again there are now seven home screens so let's go ahead and show you some of the other cool new features that are found in sense UI let's jump right to the camera and you also notice a a sort of a new menu tray as well you don't have sort of 3D folding back effect you have a 2.1 you also notice a lot of new programs and applications in here you've got peep it's a built in Twitter client you've got um new setup stocks application in Quick Office you've got an FM radio tuner in here which I tried to test and it does not work I thought maybe the next one had a hidden FM tuner in there uh even with the headset plugged into you as an antenna uh it doesn't work and you still get the HTC's Teeter game which is sort of like a a labyrinth Marvel game so let's jump into camera go go and find that for you and I'll show you what the camera icon looks like and there's some uh some new tweaks here which are pretty hell handy I think so standard camera let's go ahead and show you what you can do here go ahead and pull out that drawer and go to photo or video hit that icon right down below we actually get a whole bunch of effects now that you can do Aqua effects solarize negative sepion nothing that fancy but uh you know they are sort of Handy sort of turns things um a bit blue as you can see and there are a few other that have the standard features um you can have a few more settings I can go through and show you everything this could be a probably a 4our long video but just want to show you that some of the camera functionality at least will be different um on CI go ahead and quit out of here and I'll go ahead and uh continue sort of the tour um Android has a fantastic keyboard HTC decided to put their own on here and they've had sort of their own keyboard since we first saw sense and the HTC Hero so let me show you what that keyboard looks like in case you haven't seen it there you go it's very easy to use quick and easy to type on and um supports landscape orientation as well and it still has the same auto correction features that you've sort of known to to love in Android they show across the top you can just tap them and you are Off to the Races so let me continue uh the tour here there are a lot of widgets that you can choose from a lot of HTC custom widgets I'll show you some of the few that I have uh right here running on the Nexus one I'll show you what some of the other ones are as well so here's your built-in Twitter application you can scroll right through and see all your different tweets if you want to open one in particular you can just click on it and you get sort of a functionality across the bottom you can scroll and see your tweets your mentions direct messages favorites um and all the like and notifications will show up in the drop down menu as well we'll go ahead and close out of that we'll continue with some of the widgets that I've got right here we've got a friend feed it sort of pulls in all your friends tweets um I don't know how useful it is but it's something kind of fun to have and I wanted to show demonstrate it you've got weather of course and you can sort of scroll through different locations London Paris um and here I am in Irvine now one thing that that I should mention is that when you set this up you do have of course English options but there is not an option for United States English uh the closest was uh the UK so some of the words have sort of the UK spelling of things and um I'm still playing around figuring out how to get this from Celsius to Fahrenheit I was able to get the clock from 24-hour Time to Standard 12 uh at least 12 standard in the US so let me show you some of the other widgets that we've got here's HTC stock widget so here we have uh pictures in the picture gallery let me show you how this is handled um standard Android 2.1 had a really cool sort of 3D picture effect uh CI doesn't have sort of the same cool effects but but it's pretty useful here are some pictures I took just of outside you still have to pinch to zoom and to go to the next picture you just sort of do a sample swipe and videos show up right in there as well here's a sample video I took just sort of outside of my balcony plays pretty nice it was very short um with video and it'll play right in that same uh that same screen and if you like as well go to uh go back to one of the pictures S free flowing there so here's a picture of uh cat Mercedes and do have some options for uh for sharing this click that one more time so if you want to send this wherever you'd like you can send it to Facebook Facebook for HTC Sense sort of a custom Facebook uh widget for HTC Sense flicker Gmail whatever mail account you have set up message if you want to send it as an MMS Picassa or if it's a video you can upload it directly to YouTube and this is all sort of one touch you set up the account you click it and it would automatically upload and for YouTube it will upload in the background so you don't have to keep the YouTube window open here all the time something that annoyed me with a few other devices go ahead and close that here so that was pictures then we've got sort of a blank screen here on the 7th and let me show you what some of the other widgets are go to widgets and you've got sort of your array of HTC options bookmarks calendar clock Facebook Footprints which is Geo tagging friend stream I showed you mail just pulls in your mail messages music s you get the Android music and HTC music news it'll pull in all your news feeds uh people it's sort of a quick dial shows you a thumbnail of their picture if you like you can call them photo album I'll just stample what that looks like let's go back stocks settings if you want to sync things uh weather and YouTube so let me show you one or two other things um that I've noticed that have been kind of interesting one of my big concerns when I flashed this ROM which again was quite a hassle was Android Marketplace Android Marketplace still going to work with the sort of cooked ROM and it does work and works just um as you expect it with this was as if this was native so Android Marketplace Works no problem and things are here uh somewhere in dollars somewhere in pounds so let's go ahead and check out the internet since it does use a looks like a bit of a different browser so here we've got on techno Buffalo load speeds were just as fast as you'd expect with um T-Mobile who I'm using on here 3G network um or Wi-Fi pinch to zoom is certainly still there landscape orientation there as well it's actually relatively quick as far as the rotating speeds um it's renders fast Scrolls fast and pinch to zoom works very quickly let's go ah and quit out of here a few other sort of different things uh to be aware instead of having it say 3G it's going to have an H for hsdpa sort of the icons across the top are going to look a bit different than what you may have been used to with Android 2.1 uh the lock screen you guys saw when I first turned this on is definitely different as well it's sort of the HTC Sense lock screen you just slide that down and your home screen is revealed now I'm sure there are a lot you can see the Cloudy you can see the cloud sort of go across the home screen uh we saw that with the HTC HD2 if it's raining you'll see water drops that'll show up there if it's cloudy you'll see the clouds like you just saw if it's snow you'll see sort of snowflakes um the HTC uh censi is really full featured and goes all the way down uh through most parts of Android um and something that I've really enjoyed the Nexus 1 has the processor speed and the ram to handle running all these widgets to handle live wallpapers and have things run very smoothly now I have not tested battery drain I assume this is going to be a complete battery suck uh but right now it's been been working pretty well I've had it for uh for a few hours and things seem to be running nicely and again this is just an alpha build of the ROM I assume as sort of the community starts to build and it go from alpha a few other alphas and finally into beta and a release that you're really going to see an improved experience but right now I think I could use this on a daily basis and probably use this quite happily so guys once again if you're considering doing this uh it's certainly not for the faint of heart I I don't think I could have done this on my own without Carlos's help and his definite handholding something to keep in mind and at the very least the sneak preview of what you can expect with the HTC Desire which I'm guessing is set for just a European release judging by the language options anyway guys I hope you enjoyed for more coverage of the sensui on the Nexus One be sure to check out the YouTube channel and of course technobuffalo.com where you can get all your Tech news and even create and monetize your own Tech subblog talk and create friends um talking about technology with our own custombuilt social network anyway John ringer from TechnoBuffalo I hope you enjoyed and I'll will see you in the next video bye-bye\n"