Hi!
So, I'm using an HTC Evo 3D (aka 3vo, s-off, stock rooted rom, through wifi only now) and an HTC Evo 4G LTE (aka LTEvo, s-off, this is the Sprint HTC One X variant) as my regular phone now.
For those unfamiliar - take a 3vo, change qHD 3D panel to 720p HD panel and change Sprint radios to Verizon radios and you have the Rezound, so I think the story here may be quite valuable or useful to some here.
Whatever technical or marketing issues may exist for Sense 4 being missing, I want to chime in that you wouldn't want it the way HTC delivers it. As I am practically the HTC Poster Boy for those that don't know me, that's saying a lot, I promise.
As delivered, HTC has - on all One models - totally, completely and absolutely borked memory management. Out of the box, my 3vo running Sense 3/Gingerbread runs circles around the stock One X Sense4/ICS in multitasking - the observation is held universally by all upgrading along the 3vo to LTEvo path.
Furthermore, HTC is aware of it and despite user complaints, insists that the sky is blue and has no issues -
HTC Addresses Multitasking Concerns For One X and S – Calls It “Sense” Optimized
Note the article says that Sense 4 isn't as lean and lightweight as they claim. That's 100% true. I develop industrial Linux apps so I very well know my way around that part of Android and I've got some people believing that I know other bits about Android, so trust me, it's not lightweight at all. I did very close monitoring of system transactions and memory-use profiling, and if you do the same, you'll agree, the Sense 4 lightweight story is simply marketing. And I don't have a problem with that, I don't much care for the Sense-bashing blogosphere with writers who've tried Sense 1 on an old cramped phone and continue to lecture the rest of us about synthetic benchmarks. Sense rocks.
So - if you want to enjoy Sense 4, you need to try it rooted where some dev (or yourself) goes to the trouble get rational memory management restored from their new and improved way.
Had HTC released Sense 4 for the 3vo and Rezound, you'd be crying murder for your missing multitasking power - and had they gotten it right for the older models, the One owners would be crying murder for being left out of the right way - and HTC is standing firm on not changing it.
So - does Sense 4 really require a newer processor and the dev community is wrong? I didn't bother to check on my 3vo, I'll let you be the judge.
Is the Sense 3.6 thing a ruse to get you to update to a newer phone? I honestly have no opinion one way or the other.
But are you lucky to not get it in its present form and are you dodging a bullet?
In my opinion, that's a huge yes.
If all you want is the new Sense 4 clock, get Droid27's 3D Flip Clock and Weather and go to town on the custom skins. It includes font choice and you can get the Sense 4 look in a heartbeat, no root required, and get an exact match to the HTC one - best part - it's free.
Other best part - that works 100% with the ICS-required Nova launcher (root not required for that, either).
I've switched to the Nova launcher on my LTEvo - my first time committing to non-Rosie (Sense) launcher for my daily driver in two years.
Seriously, once you're down with ICS, just try Nova for a few days, check out all of the features - you may still like Sense, but with ICS, you just may not.
Ok, many thanks for reading, I hope I've cleared some stuff up rather than made things worse. I'm subscribed to this thread and will pop back to answer questions.
In any case, these are my opinions, your mileage may vary and there's not a thing wrong with that because Android is all about choice.
