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Sense Tip for Sense Newbies

S

SuperC142

Member
My Evo 3D is my first phone with Sense and I've been exploring all of the great features (I still can't believe I actually like a non-vanilla android interface). If you're new to it too, I just wanted to point out how great "Scenes" are if used effectively. You're not stuck with the canned scenes as you can rename and reconfigure each of them as much as you like. For instance, I usually use my "main" scene which has all of my stuff sprawled out across all of the home screens. However, I frequent Disneyland, so I created a "Disneyland" scene. On this scene, I made a custom, Disney wallpaper, put my three Disney apps on the main home screen (MouseWait, Ride Hopper, and Disney Inside Out), and even changed the big weather widget to provide weather in Anaheim (I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it even maintains separate settings for the same widgets in each scene). Now, in three clicks, poof: I have a hand-held Disneyland appliance. Three more clicks and poof: it's back to being my regular phone. I'm really impressed with this feature! :-)
 
Cool stuff :) (now there are disney ads all over my browser lol)

Similarly in ADW (the launcher I prefer), you can make "Groups" in your app drawer that only display selected apps

It doesn't change the homepage (that would a pretty cool feature though, didn't know sense did that), but it means when you open your app drawer you only see the apps you want to see (my ghetto method of not dealing with bloatware, just make a group with everything but that lol), but you could just as easily make a "Disney Group" with only apps you'd use on your trip

But yeah, nice find :) hopefully anyone who uses ADW or is interested sees this post and knows that something similar is possible outside of sense
 
rockyyrem said:
That. Is. An. AWESOME. Idea.

Copying you right now. Haha. Can't wait to get my pass!
Click to expand...

Great! I only posted because I was all sorts of happy with myself and hoped someone else would like the concept, too. :)


strat1227 said:
Cool stuff :) (now there are disney ads all over my browser lol)

Similarly in ADW (the launcher I prefer), you can make "Groups" in your app drawer that only display selected apps

It doesn't change the homepage (that would a pretty cool feature though, didn't know sense did that), but it means when you open your app drawer you only see the apps you want to see (my ghetto method of not dealing with bloatware, just make a group with everything but that lol), but you could just as easily make a "Disney Group" with only apps you'd use on your trip

But yeah, nice find :) hopefully anyone who uses ADW or is interested sees this post and knows that something similar is possible outside of sense
Click to expand...

Hahaha, yeah, I see the Disney ads all over too. I think Disney owes me soemthing now. ;-) What you're describing is exactly what I was doing too, but I use "App Organizer" which lets you define "labels", assign apps to labels, and then create shortcuts to those labels on the home screen (you can do the same thing with generic folders, but App Organizer keeps things alphabetized, lets you filter on your starred apps, and lets you define a custom icon for the shortcut). It definitely works, but I thought customizing the whole phone's theme was sorta cool. It all reminds me how nice Android is, in general. There are so many ways of doing things, and it's just up to the user to pick what works best. That's how an operating system should work, IMO.

When you contemplate it, there's a lot you can do with the whole scenes concept. If you frequently travel to a remote office for your job, you could have a scene with two clocks, one for the local time and one for your home time, etc. It can be pretty powerful.

I've never used ADW (only read about it), but I'm curious. Does it preclude the use of sense (in part or in whole)?
 
Yeah it's a replacement for Sense (it doesn't get rid or your Sense settings or anything, just if you install another launcher the next time you hit the home key it will ask whether you want to go to your "Sense home" or your "ADW home", and you can change that preference at any time or just uninstall ADW

ADW and Launcher Pro are the two ones that most people seem to like, there's no harm in trying it out since it doesn't get rid of sense or delete your settings :)
 
I would love Scenes a lot more if the sounds settings carried over from one scene to the next.

I want a regular scene and a silent scene, but when I save one, the sound settings don't get saved.

It really makes no sense (pun intended) for Scenes to work this way.
 
How do I save my current home screens as a new scene so I can return to it? After rebuilding seven home screens, I'm not inclined to experiment again.

I had figured this out on the 4G, but have forgotten the trick now.
 
Simply hit the personalize tab bottom right and choose scene, once you scroll to a different scene it automatically saves that scene



TheHoodedClaw said:
How do I save my current home screens as a new scene so I can return to it? After rebuilding seven home screens, I'm not inclined to experiment again.

I had figured this out on the 4G, but have forgotten the trick now.
Click to expand...
 
DonB said:
Simply hit the personalize tab bottom right and choose scene, once you scroll to a different scene it automatically saves that scene
Click to expand...

When I've done this, I lost (or at least think I lost) the original homescreens I painstakingly set up. Are they there someplace and I'm being blind and overlooking them?

My question is not about getting to the different pre-loaded scenes, it is about preserving the one I've set up myself so I can go back to it after Disneyland (or wherever!). :)
 
Well I can tell you I clicked on another scene, and tried it, once done I went back to the original one and it was there, now I will research if there is another way to save it incase and report back


TheHoodedClaw said:
When I've done this, I lost (or at least think I lost) the original homescreens I painstakingly set up. Are they there someplace and I'm being blind and overlooking them?

My question is not about getting to the different pre-loaded scenes, it is about preserving the one I've set up myself so I can go back to it after Disneyland (or wherever!). :)
Click to expand...
 
DonB said:
Looks like it saves it automatically, once in that same screen section, hit the menu button and you can rename your current screen. It is saved, Check page 40 of the PDF attached
Click to expand...

Worked! I'm not sure why I didn't find that, but anyway I have it now. Thanks.

And thanks for the reminder about the manual....I pored over it when it was released a few days before the 3D shipped, but had completely forgotten about it, even though I have the PDF saved! :rolleyes:
 
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