yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] patches152:
i can see the statements about the huge widgets, but you can add or remove those as you see fit. i personally don't use any sense widgets on my home screen, but i like that they are scrollable. i use the calendar and people widgets as book ends (far left and right screens within the scene). but i find that sense brings a LOT of good features to android to integrate and make the use of the phone better. the pinch zoom out/tap "home" to show all screens to quickly jump to one instead of having to swipe left or right, etc. i like how it syncs facebook contact info with people, i like the color scheme especially. there are other things i like that i don't have on my work phone (OG Droid). as far as stock apps, i use handcent and gmail. i can say for certain i DO NOT like the stock people or contacts app. it sucks epically.

RE: being able to delete apps you don't use, i actually wrote a letter to corporate about that (don't put bloatware on my phone. put it in the market or if you put it on let me delete it) due to backup assistant, the moron at the store started to set my phone up for me, and was past that stage when he handed me my phone. i've been on android for over a year and before that was with blackberries using google sync also, haven't used backup assistant since my enV.

anyways, i can see some of the "customization" options on having different home screens, but sense is more than just a launcher. you can use 3rd party launchers and still keep the benefits of sense, which is the best of both worlds, if that's what your into. i personally like the sense stock look and once a good and stable root is available i'll root (no roms for me, they all suck one way or another IMO) to get my titanium and screen cap, then delete bloatware. FTW!!!
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mthorn79:
I tried liking adw but even with homescreen button lock on I found myself accidentally dragging the homescreen button off the screen and had to reload the launcher.

Plus adw looks too much like my Droid and I was ready for a change so this fits perfect. Seems like some wanna over customize just for bragging rights. To me Sense has plenty of options put of the box

Sent from my Tbolt from Tapatalk
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] HarlyFan:
Sense seems to run alright on the bolt, so I am dealing with it until there is a better and tried alternative
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TheZuneLune:
Coming from OG Droid, I thought I would hate sense, but I really like it. It is intuitive, fast, and sleek on the thunderbolt. A lot of the things people don't like (friendstream default look and feel, clock) you can customize with skins, scenes and widgets or remove. I have no expereince with ol.d Sense, but this version is so good, I have held off rooting.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bmcclure937:
No. I do not customize for bragging rights :rolleyes:

I customize the look and feel of my device for me... not anybody else. I agree that some may like customizing for bragging rights or to show off their setups. But, at the same time, many people enjoy customizing so they can create a unique look and feel that they like. Personalization is a big part of Android.

It may seem that some people are doing it to show off... but a big part of customizing is sharing your setups with the community and sharing your ideas because they may spark the interest of others. Sharing ideas with the community helps to generate more creativity :D
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] javajoe1981:
I came from an OG droid as well, and at first was quite pleased with sense. I just didn't like the lack of customization that you can get with app's like Launcher Pro or ADW
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Tidbits:
yay first post... <chuckle>

I personally like Sense. I don't have to do extra downloads for widgets or applications. Most of it is right there for me to do. I don't think it looks all that bad either. It's just a matter of preference. Most people so far that I have see who want to take it off want as much space as possible for other things or not all that into the social aspects of the custom UI's.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] aznxjz:
I like having 5 columns and 6 rows (ADW Launcher) instead of the 4 x 4 on Sense
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vitsdroid:
I have been using moto for the last 2 years and hate blur, even though I never used it because I went strait to ADW launcher. I actually like Sense its a breath of fresh air after having motobur. I can actually recommend htc with sense to friends that dont root or care. Motoblur on the other hand was horrendous. Stock look is nice too but I like sense skins, very fast and easy customization. I think I will miss sense when CM7 comes to Thunderbolt.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Morkai Almandragon:
Sense has MANY nice aspects, but lacks customizability. The dialer and the contacts integration are untouchable, but everything else I could live without.

If I could have a launcher exactly how I want it, I would have the sense social and contact integration and Dialer, Blur voice dialing over BT, ADW icon masking, and Go launcher for the rest (assuming they release the method to make custom skins as they claimed).

Ohhh the sense sound sets would be nice too:)
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kjjb0204:
I like Sense. I think it looks good and has some decent widgets as well. I don't root to get rid of sense. I root for wifi tethering, device backup and bloat removal. I also dabble with custom roms to enhance the performance.

Anyhow, I like Sense and will flip from Sense to LauncherPro to a custom rom as the mood strikes. (Haven't rooted the TB yet - I'm patient enough to wait for Unrevoked and don't trust myself with ADB or the other methods found thus far. Both previous droids were rooted though.)
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] khanam:
for me, sense esp 2.0 has way too much extra functionality over aosp roms. most of the apps/widgets you get with sense have no equivalents in aosp roms. i do try aosp roms (or rather did on my inc) but i keep coming back to sense. finally, htc actually does a good job with its UI, unlike the garbage moto and samsung create (have a galaxy tab and i dont like the looks and moto roms look too bare naked).

having said that, i will try CM7 and MIUI and liquid metal for the bolt because I am a rom philanderer
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TSerge:
As a first-time android user with the Tbolt, my experience with the Tbolt's install of Sense was my first experience with Android as a whole.

Honestly, I have only moved away from sense for performance reasons. I'm all about a minimalistic software installation that focuses on performance, especially for a phone. If there's one thing I've seen in Sense that I'd really like to keep, it's the notification screen's "recently used apps" bar, and the HTC clock widget (specifically, that fancy flip clock with the weather). Most of the other stuff they put in was kinda clunky, and as such I've gone with a "debloated" ROM that has the VZW and most of the HTC stuff removed.

I plan to go to Cyanogen mod when a Thunderbolt version is ready. I've heard nothing but good things about it and I love that it's goal is to be android without any manufacturer/carrier bloat. It's a blank canvas that users can modify end-to-end to suit their taste.

Honestly, the Sense UI is not bad at all, it's a great package for people that just want their android phone to work. I just prefer a customized look and feel to my software.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] spigatelli:
I hate the sense dialer, give me a contacts button and get rid of all of my FB contacts in the top, a lot of those assholes don't even have phone numbers. WTF is that mess up there anyway?

The dock bar, do I need a customize button? How many people change the wallpaper more often than they access messaging or gmail?

Why do I need a phone button that is 1/4 of my screen or a clock the size of Texas?

I use ADW, but I am old school. My first HTC Android phone was the first Android phone. G1 baby!
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RogerPodacter:
the one thing i never understood about Sense UI is, why is there a permanent icon spot wasted for adding widget to the homescreen. certainly once homescreens are setup, its rarely touched for months at a time?
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] zerocool79346:
Go into People>Menu>View>Check the box next to only display those with phone numbers, the Moto Droids do the same thing, isn't a Sense-only quirk. I HATED Sense on my Eris because it was so slow, but on the Inc (albeit with some custom UI layout mods) it's much better. I really envy yall for having 2.0.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] aostl:
I think sense is great. Its polished and adds function. I root so I can tether, overclock, etc. I ran sense 2.0 Tom's on my Inc and now I get to run them on the tbolt. The whole UI focusing on the user is a great concept. And benchmarks be damned...I think sense is fast.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ddgarcia05:
I like sense but will probably jump ship for a little but when miui is released for the device.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Hyperdoggy:
Sense runs great for me, as this is my first time owning an android phone i really don't have much to say about the other launchers. However, I'm already feeling constrained by sense as I'm running out of space to put to apps on my main page and sense has no options to change that.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] spigatelli:
That works for your contact list, but not for that mess up in the top of the dialer.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mseliga:
When I got the Eris with Sense 1.0 it was slow as all hell. The T Bolt with Sense 2.0 is muuuuuch faster so I don't mind it as much. but back on the Eris Sense was a major issue. I never disliked it, but I still prefer vanilla Android over a custom skin.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dsvoda:
I enjoy sense, it looks good and has good integration. The only thing i would change is like in the above post do something different with the customize button. No point in having it there when it is right there in settings also. I think that would be a nice button for whatever the default browser app is.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] movielover76:
I like it

I used LauncherPro on my old samsung captivate, because touchwiz was ugly as sin and didn't do anything laucherrpro couldn't do better.

However I don't think I'll be leaving Sense, it's got lots of little nice additions that make the phone just feel more unified, I'm loving it.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] glorysk87:
i dont think it's "hate" as much as it is just the fact that there are much better alternatives.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ilogik:
Sense is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I just can't get enough of this phone, when I wake up in the morning I lock myself in the bathroom for about 20 minutes and just admire it, caress it, stroke it.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] psychomaniac189:
Sense IMO sucks. Its slower than the original android. I hate how it changes EVERYTHING even the settings menu. The only thing they got going for them is the phone dialer and the camera. If we could get just the camera ported to cyanogenmod it would be 10x better.

Also I don't like because when i flash a sense rom for some reason it doesnt automatically download my apps on first boot of a new rom.

Also same here. I started with original android on my touch pro2. started out with that port to see how android was.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] aostl:
I believe the new sense does dl your apps on first boot. It did on my Inc. And when I flashed perfect storm it did to
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] konjiki7:
I came for the OG moto Droid to the Thunder bolt and i find myself loving sense. The only thing i didn't like ways the contact search dial pad... other then that I'm content.

I'm currently rooted running DAS BAMF w/ sense and i love it. This phone wasn't that bad stock performance wise.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] patches152:
i can see redundancy in the UI and settings as a complaint.

RE: complaints for dialer, i don't see what you're talking about. when i click the "phone" button it brings me to my call log with the dialing pad over top. i don't see anything about facebook, etc. maybe you have a "group" setup with facebook contacts who don't have phone numbers. i know when i delete my call log, it shows my favorites (a custom group i made for frequent contacts) at the top, then starts with the contacts list. is that what you're referring to?

sense runs great on the Inc and the TB, but it stunk on the eris. i don't know how much of that is sense's fault, considering the eris barely ran with anything else on it either.

so for those of you running sense, have you tried loading a different home screen? does it cancel out all of the sense features or just those that are for the "scenes"?
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ufmace:
I don't like Sense. I've replaced every part of it that I could, and I can't wait to replace it all. I'll probably load Cyanogenmod as soon as a reasonably stable ROM with it comes out.

I don't like the home screen. Why should 3/4 of my bottom row be the phone dialer, which I virtually never use, and the add button, which I virtually never use and whose functions I can also get by long-pressing? And why is this big beautiful screen limited to 4 rows? I installed LauncherPro within hours of getting the phone.

I don't like the contacts. It's missing the quick call and quick text buttons from the stock contacts. It also adds all of these extra groups that I don't want, and which also prevent me from getting to the favorites list in one click, which is what I want 90% of the time.

The messaging isn't that bad, but why waste the bottom row with a voicemail slider? I almost never get voicemails, and I don't want them listed with my texts.

The gallery doesn't suck, but it isn't as good as the stock 3D gallery. Why change it out?

The camera app is nice, I will admit.

So pretty much everything in Sense is at best no better than stock, and lots of it is worse as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather they sell me a phone with just stock Cyanogenmod on it, which has extra features that are either helpful, or at least don't get in the way.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] patches152:
in my experience, every single rom has some glaring "deal breaker" bug. there's always something that doesn't work. something small that i use rarely, but when i want to use it i want it to work. usually built out of leaked software, and compiled into whatever it's released as, but those leaks are 99% of the time failed builds. an OS is the sum of its parts, and when those parts are buggy and failed software, the sum will generally suck someway or another. so as much as i can agree with your complaints, or see your point of view....loading ROMs is not a solution to me. i'd just suggest to buy a different phone that comes with vanilla and load the home screen and whatever else you want.

i use a vanilla android phone for work and TB for personal use. i can't stand vanilla. i guess i'm so ingrained into sense that vanilla just seems crappy to me now. i don't really customize as much as most others, and i can get all of the main apps i use regularly onto the home screen, even with the pandora widget on the home screen. i just plain don't like the core apps for the vanilla OS. idk, the integration and user interaction with sense is superior to me. but sometimes the organization of things can be annoying.

what VM slider are you talking about? i use handcent and also rarely get VMs.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Zenwood:
Scene

You can switch between a set of seven pages with a touch of a button. See the Scene button in the personalize menu.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tonyagee:
I am coming from og droid, and i have a epic. I love the widgets from sense and i do like the start typing and find contacts feature of sense and touchwiz. I also like the camera app. Thats about it as for likes.

Now, and this really really really really annoys the living <insert expletive > out of me is the way this phone formats or rather doesn't format phone numbers. I use my phone for work and I need to quickly type phone numbers from incoming calls. You know how difficult it is to type 10 digit number without "-" "(" etc.

Every phone I've ever in my life either formats phone # like this...

(xxx) xxx - xxxx or xxx-xxx-xxxx

Either one would work for me. I don't mean how they are stored on google. I mean how they are displayed on incoming call screen or even call logs themselves.

Second major annoyance with android specifically and with sense. I need to be able to text a phone number to another contact. Often these numbers are not contacts. You can't even do this on the Thunderbolt. On the OG droid. You could at least:

1.long press #

2. edit before call

3. long press #

4. copy all

5. long press home - task switch to msg

6. select contact to msg

7. paste

8. send

On thunderbolt you cant copy and paste from the edit number screen at all. The only way is to make a contact then "edit" contact to select phone #, from there it still "select all" then copy all vs just "copy all"

On my old extinct blackberry this was simple, "select the number" hit menu button then "send number to contact" right there in menu.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Shaquiel Harris:
I've had the Dream, Espresso, and now the vision. I hate espresso honestly.. but I LOVE sense. Sure CM is fast but something about sense is just better to me. ESPECIALLY battery life. But hey my phone Came with Stock Android and Stock sense in europe so I'm supported by both. so I have the best of both worlds anyways :)
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ufmace:
I can understand the annoyance at the bugs that are often in custom ROMs. The thing is, I usually find at least as many bugs in the stock ROM. On the Bolt, I couldn't send MMSes - the app would FC whether I started from the messaging screen or the gallery. It kept doing it after multiple reboots too. And the messaging app had an annoying habit of FCing when just viewing threads after a reboot. This is all before doing any kind of rooting, ROM flashing, or any other kind of hacking. My new ROM also doesn't send MMSes actually, but at least it lets me compose the message and get to where it ought to be sending, and the app never FCs. At least with the custom ROMs, the actual developers will listen to you and fix the bugs.

It was about the same story with my old Eris. The stock ROM had the strangest GPS behavior - it would frequently take over 10 minutes to lock and/or give me clearly ridiculous positions and speeds, like saying that I was in New Mexico or moving at 500mph when I'm actually in Houston standing still. The Gingerbread ROM I was using when I finally switched over was bug-free as far as I could tell, and 2 versions above anything Verizon put out for the phone. Heck, I'll probably have to wait for CM7 to be ready to use to have Gingerbread for the TB.

The VM slider is in the Sense messaging app, so you wouldn't see it using Handcent. In the Sense app, there's one of those sliders like the contacts app has at the bottom where you can switch between seeing just SMS/MMS, just Voicemails, and both in one list.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DizzyThermal:
1. Sense is a battery hog

2. HTC Sense device's have SCREWED up bluetooth.. Can't use anything without it complaining..

3. I rather feel the pure AOSP feel

4. LP is way more customizable
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Varelse:
I like sense more than blur, i used launcher pro on my droid and dx,

sense seems a bit more polished to me than blur, but launcher pro has more customization options.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mbrown3460:
I love sense especially coming from windows mobile
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Old MuckenMire:
I had the Nexus One since the day it launched. Loved Vanilla Android....then I loved flashing craploads of ROMs an using LPP and ADW EX with them.... Problem is, when I flashed a Sense ROM, I fell in love. The other problem was that Sense ROMs run like crap on the Nexus and I could never find one that was issue free. So I decided to buy myself a Sense device. I now have a Thunderbolt :) I've still yet to root, mainly because I actually got bored with the constant flashing of ROMs and never really being happy with any of them. None were really better, just different than each other. Except for Sense. I love the weather animations, the lack of any lag(on the TBolt), the widgets. Eventually I'll root just to load Ad-Free, but that's about it. With the amount of memory the TBolt has, the bloatware doesn't even bother me. I'm finally happy with an OS version and skin and it took me a long time and probably 100 ROMs to get here. :)

If I were still running a Nexus One, I'd be running CM7 or Rod's MIUI MOD with LPP and be very bored., I'm very happy with the TBolt and Sense. :)
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Chadashcroft22:
I am one of the few people that do like sense. This is what sealed the deal for me to upgrade early because i did like the droid eris I had even though that is a turtle compared to this beast.

You couldn't pay me to touch moto-lag and how terrible samsung is at updating their phones really made the decision that much easier.

Now if there was good 4g lte windows 7 phone I prob. would have went that route because I like the stuff like netflix and office they have integrated into their phones.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ikon8:
This is my first go-around with Sense after using G1->Nexus1->NexusS. I immediately got rid of the stock launcher and use LPP. There's a couple thing I do like about Sense: I like the dialer and how the contacts app works easily with linking contacts and facebook friends, I also like the lockscreen music controls and album art. Those are the only 2 things I like about Sense, that I can think of, and I can use Dialer One and CM7 has lockscreen music controls so those 2 features don't matter too much.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Bimmer323:
Sense isn't bad, I just only use two screens and only a couple widgets so I don't really need all that real estate. I also really like being able to hide some of my not so used apps from being in the drawer since I use it more than desktop icons.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] psychomaniac189:
i totally agree with everything you said here, the camera app is the only thing i miss from aosp. the messaging app is so slow. you have to leave the window open to get rid of the (1) icon. or if you dont you have to wait till you get another txt and do it again. Did you get rid of the browser and change it to the default browser? how did you do this?
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] BigMcGuire:
I've never used sense or blur. When I got the Thunderbolt, I kinda liked Sense. But now that I'm rooted I went with a de-sensed rom because I just like stock. And because of that my phone seems insanely fast, with a 1.2Ghz kernel and sense, my phone seemed quite a bit slower than a 1ghz kernel and no-sense. So that's why I got rid of it, but definitely didn't hate it.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TheLoonyRebel:
I prefer Launcher Pro simply because it has a more intuitive dock. If Sense itself could be modded to that then I wouldn't mind using it as much.
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] patches152:
for those of you who like sense, can you share what about it you like in this thread?

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1025133
[Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] simp dogg:
I like sense but currently rocking SPB mobile shell, beautiful with live wallpaper going.