[HTC Sensation] Deleted member 1963517:
A "quick" guide to HTC Sense

I will try to make this as simple as I can. Feel free to fill in the gaps if I miss something.

Initial Setup

It's nice of HTC to include a personalised version of that Android initial setup, but I recommend you skip through as much as you can.

- Select you language --- pretty straight forward, right?

- Transfer my stuff --- it's a really great tool if you need to use it

- Internet connection --- choose "Mobile network or Wi-Fi"; I don't know if this is the case with the Sensation, but on older HTC phones this setting actually forces the phone to get the correct settings for APNs

- Scheduled sync --- choose "Automatically sync data"; don't worry, you can turn this off later if you want too, it will just help sync your data if you add an account later in the setup

- Set up Wi-Fi network --- choose your Wi-Fi network

- Use Google location --- it's all up to you here, but it does help to let your apps know your location. I recommend you leave those on

- Tell HTC --- as you can read on the screen, Tell HTC is software that runs in the background. It's something similar to reporting errors on Windows

- Set up accounts --- you can always add accounts later, so I recommend you skip this step

Google account

As this is Android, you will have to sign in to your Google account. When you do this, your email will be synced to Gmail, your contact will show up in the People app from HTC and your calendar will be synced to the Calendar app also from HTC. You can always choose what items from your Google account you want to sync from Setting - Accounts & Sync - Google. I personally use all their services, so I leave all on.

HTC Mail app

HTC have made their own mail app so you can easily view all your account (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Exchange or other POP3 services). This is pretty useful and it works great. I only have the Hotmail and Yahoo accounts connected here, since Gmail does the rest.

HTC People app

All your contacts in one place. Nice, right? Not quite... It took me about a week to figure this one out, but I finally got it to work just right. I keep my contact on Google, you know, family, close friends, work people... and all the detailes I need are there, but when you start to use Facebook, Facebook for HTC, Tweeter, Yahoo and so on, you get all these messeges to sync your contacts. Fine, I did that, now my People app is full of "friends" I haven't spoken in years. They just lay there. And above it all you get all kinds of messages in the status bar to let you know you can "link" you contacts. A huge list if I might add :P. So whats the deal here?

Sure, linking your contact is useful. Say you don't have a friends email adress, but he posted it on Facebook, or his birthday, or something else. You can get them from linking his accounts and you can find all this info in his Contact Info page. Beside that, you have quick access to conversation history (txt or email), updates, gallery or call history. HTC Sense is great at that :D And even though Facebook and Facebook for HTC Sense target both the same service, there are a few diferences. For instance, the simple Facebook only syncs contact, while Facebook for HTC Sense syncs live feeds and calendars too for you to use on the Friend Stream app/widget or in the Calendar. The same goes for Twitter.

But when you start linking people, you see that their photo is being changed to whatever profile picture they have on Facebook, Tweeter or other services... and even their name can change too. To resolve this you just go into a persons contact info page, tap the chain icon at the top right hand corner, from there, tap the picture and choose from the list. The same for the name. Sure, you get previews of posts or text messages next to someone in the People app, but you get rid of those "stupid pictures" :D

Also, I found that having people actualy stored on the phone and not on Google, makes this process a little bit harder, because every time Facebook for HTC synced, contact photos changed. Very annoying.

I find it useful to sync contact from all services, what the hell, let's go crazy, but I sure don't like seing them all in the People app, so just tap the menu button, then tap View. Here you can scroll down to Options and pick what you want to be displayed. You won't lose contacts you don't pick, or the links between them, they just don't appear anymore. Jobe done.

As for creating contacts, be careful. By default, the contact type field is set to whatever category you are viewing in People. If you chose "Phone" here, the contact information will ONLY be present on your phone and it WILL NOT SYNC to other services like Gmail. I'm talking about information that you put there, not the one that is being synced. So in the end you must back them up if you plan to install a custom ROM, or you will lose them.

Accounts & sync

Don't be scared to dive deep in these settings and choose only what you want to sync. Every account has it's own settings, so be pationd.

Here I have my Google account syncing everything, Facebook is syncing contacts, Facebook for HTC Sense is also syncing everything but once a day, HTC Sense (yes, I have an account set up, and it doesn't drain the batery) has only Update when opened checked and update schedule is manual, News, Show Me and Stocks are all manualy updated too since I don't use them at all, Twitter syncs all but manual, Weather is syncing automatically every hour (not much trafic there). All these settings where mare having in mind that I have Auto-Sync enabled. Yes, I know, not so good, but the ammount of data being used is very little because it only has to do the hard job of getting all the stuff to my phone once, then it keeps track if that is up to date.

I hope I've touched every aspect and doubt that you might have had about HTC Sense. Chears.