Database Info

HTC native browser vs vanilla ICS browser questions

Hi All,
I am currently an iPhone user, but this phone may make me change league. Just a few questions regarding this particular device running HTC Sense 4.
One of the reason I considering change league is because ICS finally support full OpenGL ES rendering in the browser and all over the UI.
As far as I know, HTC devices use their own branded theme HTC Sense, which bundled with its own browser rather than the vanilla ICS browser. I noticed that the vanilla ICS browser has the option to enable full OpenGL ES render path. This make the browser work a lot faster and better surfing exp. I wonder if HTC's native browser has the same setting(s). Or is it already coded to enable OpenGL ES rendering?
If not, can I change the default browser to something, say the vanilla ICS chrome browser? or Dolphin? (not sure if Dolphin support OpenGL ES rendering though.)
Thanks.

It's still the same Ice Cream Sandwich browser just with HTC Sense themed over it, but the code inside the browser should be a bit different for the Tegra 3.
As long as you enable 'Full 2D GPU Rendering' or something in the developer setting, other browser should have it.

Thanks,
Is there any easy way to disable the Sense Theme then? or even run vanilla ICS? Coz in previous HTC releases, Sense of earlier versions really slow the UI experience or even lagging, that put me off a bit even they have some of the highest-end hardware in the market.
Or Does it mean that unlock bootloader, root access or even custom ROM will be needed??

[email protected] said:
Thanks,
Is there any easy way to disable the Sense Theme then? or even run vanilla ICS? Coz in previous HTC releases, Sense of earlier versions really slow the UI experience or even lagging, that put me off a bit even they have some of the highest-end hardware in the market.
Or Does it mean that unlock bootloader, root access or even custom ROM will be needed??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as removing Sense (I did it on my Sensation), you will probably need to do all 3 (unlock bootloader, root access and installing a custom ROM) in my case i used Android Revolution HD, with the noSense script applied directly after installing ROM.
My guess is that it will be the same sort of thing to do it to the One S.
Hope that helps

mtgray said:
As far as removing Sense (I did it on my Sensation), you will probably need to do all 3 (unlock bootloader, root access and installing a custom ROM) in my case i used Android Revolution HD, with the noSense script applied directly after installing ROM.
My guess is that it will be the same sort of thing to do it to the One S.
Hope that helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks mate,
Although I may not like the Sense theme applied to the UI and browser, I found that the HTC's touch on the camera app is quite well received. I wonder if there is any possible ways to keep the camera app HTC way and just stop the Sense theme from working over the UI and Browser?
Cheers.

You can always change launcher to GO launcher, ADW or Launcher pro. That wont take sense away completely but a big part of it. That can be done without root.

virtq said:
You can always change launcher to GO launcher, ADW or Launcher pro. That wont take sense away completely but a big part of it. That can be done without root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's brilliant, thank you.
In terms of rooting the device and unlocking the bootloader, how hard will that be? As I know Sony's Xperia range even offer official unlock bootloader support, how good is this for the HTC's? Sorry for the noob questions.

You can unlock the bootloader via the HTC Dev website and there is already a method for rooting in the developer section of this forum.
The only true way to get rid of sense is to flash an AOSP rom, CM9 for example. AOSP is basically the stock android OS but when and if AOSP roms show up for this phone is hard to say. A lot of people buy HTC for sense so sense roms tend to be more popular.
AOSP means you will lose the HTC camera app which means you will lose all the cool features like burst mode. As mentioned you can use a different launcher, some like Apex launcher are based on the stock android launcher so it will be a good way to get the stock feel whilst keeping all the HTC apps. This is probably what I will do, as much as I prefer AOSP in general I don't want to lose the camera app.

Sarsippius said:
You can unlock the bootloader via the HTC Dev website and there is already a method for rooting in the developer section of this forum.
The only true way to get rid of sense is to flash an AOSP rom, CM9 for example. AOSP is basically the stock android OS but when and if AOSP roms show up for this phone is hard to say. A lot of people buy HTC for sense so sense roms tend to be more popular.
AOSP means you will lose the HTC camera app which means you will lose all the cool features like burst mode. As mentioned you can use a different launcher, some like Apex launcher are based on the stock android launcher so it will be a good way to get the stock feel whilst keeping all the HTC apps. This is probably what I will do, as much as I prefer AOSP in general I don't want to lose the camera app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks mate,
but using the launcher method will mean that I only get rid of the UI Sense home, but still need to stick with other HTC Sense features like HTC style multitasking, etc. where I prefer the original ICS.
What a shame! This phone is really a beauty in built and form factor is perfect for me. But many little flaws put me off a bit and a second thought is really in my mind...
e.g. The camera's output is too soft, the HTC sense in a burden for ICS, etc.

[Q] Stock ICS Status bar + Notification Shade?

Alright, so with the recent Root for the AT&T HTC One X I was wondering if there is a way for me to replace the current (ugly) status bar HTC put on this beautiful phone with the stock ICS status bar and notification shade. There are some apps in the Play Store that let you alter the appearance on the status bar, but they run in the background and seem to just run over the status bar (sometimes it flashes and you see the default one). I'm still not up to par with all this rooting stuff (coming from a jailbroken iPhone and messing with Windows Phone 7 only gives me minimal experience with Androids take on things) and am not sure if this is possible with a locked bootloader. if you could go one step further and tell me how to strip Sense from the UI altogether without an unlocked bootloader I would be forever in your debt.
So if you thought tl;dr then: Can/how do I replace the stock status bar+notification shade with the stock ICS versions?
Thank you so much for any help you can provide!
Edit to add: I saw in some of the other threads for the international One X that there are transparent status bar tweaks, but those require flashing. Am I to assume the original question I posed is impossible without the ability to flash as well?

Unfortunately, were going to have to wait until the bootloader is unlocked, to allow custom ROMs to be installed, or someone figures how to deodex the stock system to allow developers to easily theme.
As for removing sense, i dont know what APKs you would have to delete for it. I do know that if you download an alternate launcher, such as apex launcher or nova launcher, you will not see sense widgets and you can hide the sense apps in the app drawer in apex and nova launcher pro.

Mosch26 said:
Unfortunately, were going to have to wait until the bootloader is unlocked, to allow custom ROMs to be installed, or someone figures how to deodex the stock system to allow developers to easily theme.
As for removing sense, i dont know what APKs you would have to delete for it. I do know that if you download an alternate launcher, such as apex launcher or nova launcher, you will not see sense widgets and you can hide the sense apps in the app drawer in apex and nova launcher pro.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I figured the bootloader would get in the way I wasn't sure if there was a way to modify the look of the OS (the core UI I should say) without requiring a custom ROM.
Currently I'm using Apex Launcher Pro and its pretty amazing, still Sense abounds outside of the homescreen.

ErikWithNoC said:
I figured the bootloader would get in the way I wasn't sure if there was a way to modify the look of the OS (the core UI I should say) without requiring a custom ROM.
Currently I'm using Apex Launcher Pro and its pretty amazing, still Sense abounds outside of the homescreen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, my best advice is to just give it some time, the phone has only been out on AT&T for 3 days now. I know developers are already working on an unlock for the bootloader now.

Mosch26 said:
Yeah, my best advice is to just give it some time, the phone has only been out on AT&T for 3 days now. I know developers are already working on an unlock for the bootloader now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup I was surprised to see the root to be honest. I appreciate all the work the devs are doing and can't wait to see what they do with this device.

it is possible, actually, without being able to flash. last night i spent time just changing up some icons and replacing those lame emoticons with ICS Android blacked out ones. looks tons better. i used adb to pull/push back to the phone. i'm currently trying to figure out how to theme the HTC Skins...particularly the dock bar. maybe i should take a look in the international HOX threads to see if anyone has done this

[Q] Help with Stock APK

I recent went with the CM10 rom and I dig it but I would love the stock music player from touchwiz to work. I have the APK but it wont install (obviously) and I was wondering if any of you wizards out there could lend me a hand? Also I tried CM10.1 and also I dig it but it wont go into dock mode when I put it in my samsung desktop dock, why?

As far as I know, the Touchwiz Music app relies on on Touchwiz framework, which means it simply can't be used on CM10.1. As for the dock issue, I think that's just a bug with CM10.1 which has yet to be fixed. You might prefer a Touchwiz ROM which likely won't have these issues; check here.

[Q] TF101 on TeamEos 4 JB4.2

Hey,
I've still got my forum training wheels on, and so I'll just put this Q here (rather than the directly related thread).
I've seen a few people ask this, but haven't yet found a conclusive answer.
I use my TF with this ROM and think it's great, not had any issues to speak of. However, I did love the HC/ICS (4.1) screen layout, where the notifications were in the bottom right along with the clock etc. There was no status bar at the top and Nav buttons were in the lower left. My question is... Is it possible to get this back, whilst still using the 4.2 ROM?
Hopefully somebody knows the answer....
I understand that this would require 4.1 launcher to be ported to 4.2, but I could be wrong.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Cheers

I have that tablet running that ROM, but I've gotten used to 4.2 and haven't looked for a way to change it.
You should ask this in the TF101 forums.
I'm not sure how much a launcher could really do, but I'd Google "get back tablet layout in 4.2" or something to start checking it out on my own.
I'm not sure this is that easy. I use Apex launcher on that tablet and ROM and the layout doesn't change. I'm thinking that's a deeper layer than a launcher works with. I think you'd need a ROM with that baked in.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app

Hi Pennycake,
Thanks for the reply!
I've done lots of forum and Google hunting, but had little success...!
I've no grumbles using the phablet style layout. I just think that it was neater having everything on the navbar (tablet style).
I'll keep on looking and maybe stumble over something.
Cheers

Impossible...!?
So this is looking like it's not really possible without work being done to the SystemUI.
Withing the Eos Control Centre (This comes as part of the TeamEOS 4 ROM for TF101), there is a tablet option, but this leaves the status bar at the top.
I'll keep digging, but i won't hold my breath!!
Case closed...

Sweeeetttt...!!!
News just in...
timduru said:
Well yeah, we still have the code for tabletUI in EOS4 too.
Just that it has not been updated at all and is completely out of sync with all the EOS specific modifications, so most likely will crash.
But I might have a look at either bringing TabletUI back or implementing a new navbar from scratch to go with the phabletui.
That way we get rid of the navbar lag.
I'm also hopping that having to dig through the code even more with cornerstone, I could spot something.
But I've been thinking more and more about rewriting part of the window manager.
The original google code is Sh*t, and the more I look at it the more I come to the conclusion that PhabletUI is not made to work correctly on big screen / tablets.
On top of that code there's the EOS customizations which just make things more complex.
With cornerstone it's adding another spaghetti layer on top of the google spaghetti pile.
So yeah *headache*.
But yep I would say that the way PA has done it and rewriting part of the window manager & policy is the good approach.
Maybe I'll just resume work on Phubuntu instead too, and make a real multiboot that doesn't require flashing all the time.
We might benefit more from that, and it will have multiwindow support
Ahh so many things and so little time ;P
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stay tuned for more details.... :good:

Problems with nightly ROM 111
I have a TF101 and finally decided to root and install the JB ROM. I started with EOS JDQ39 Nightly 108 and gapps_4.2.2_TF101_20130323b. This worked fine but when I updated to the nightly 111 I noticed that I Google play was not working. I would click on the app and it would start to load but disappear. It appears that I am not logged in anymore because gmail does not work either. I have tried to delete data from the gmail app and google play store from settings but the did not work. I have tried installing gapps again. Does not work. I tried another gapps, gapps-jb-20130301-signed and that just freezes my tablet on the EeePad screen.
Any ideas on how to get signed in on the tablet without a factory reset?

[Completed] Settle a debate for me..

We all know Android devices run some version of an Android OS (Insert version number here), regardless what proprietary version it happens to be from whatever manufacturer made said device. But people on Google+ were arguing with me that TouchWiz isn't the launcher on Samsung devices, because when you switch launchers it still displays TouchWiz menus in settings & via the notification pull down window.. like TouchWiz is also the OS, when it's just Samsung's launcher running on their OEM version of the Android OS not getting that the ROM used on any Samsung device is just Samsung's proprietary version of whichever Android OS version it happens to be. Am I wrong in my deduction & logic? Thanks in advance for your replies, regardless if I'm right or not.

Hi,
TouchWiz is a launcher, but it's also the framework. No matter what launcher you install, it's still running in the TouchWiz framework... Hence the settings and what not looking the same.
The only way to change that is installing an AOSP or Cm based rom. Then TouchWiz framework and launcher are gone.
That make sense?

The firmware is Samsung's proprietary version of the Android OS. TouchWiz is not an OS & is often mistakenly thought to be so, per the TouchWiz wiki.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TouchWiz Already answered my own question days ago. Thanks tho!

Yet your thread is less than 24 hours old here...
But glad you got it sorted. :good:
Thread closed.