Now, I know its shape is somewhat boatlike, and its chin—an HTC hallmark—has evolved into something closer to a jaw. But the version I held—the white one—had tasteful aluminum trim, clean lines and a shape that was generally more hand-friendly than the Dream, and slightly heftier than the Magic. Its Teflon coating isn't as slippery as it sounds, thankfully. I wasn't really in a position to drop test the phone to see if the finish is as durable as HTC says, so we'll have to take their word on that.

Software performance was very snappy, though the interface takes a while to figure out at first. Screen input on the multitouch capacitive screen is accurate and quick, and the slight vibratory haptic feedback does the job, but the software doesn't seem quite as buttery smooth—especially during multitouch zooming—as the iPhone or Pre, and I noticed occasional keyboard slowdown during browsing. The Android basics are all there, and the multiple homescreens are the same as they've always been, albeit populated with a pile of new HTC widgets.

On those widgets: Most of them are fine, drawing heavily from previous efforts by HTC on other platforms (weather and stocks, for example, are almost identical to the versions for TF3D). We didn't have a chance to really test the social networking integration, since the display phones weren't loaded with much personal data. In general, it looks a bit like webOS's Synergy. It's a little bit more fragmented in a way that I think people will like: instead of mandating a single flow of status updates, texts, call history or new photos from your contacts, it divides their activity into panels. More on that here.

Finally, we've got Flash support. The implementation is patchy, at least for now. A quick trip to YouTube, as you can see in the gallery, displayed an oddly-sized video frame, and transitioned to a full-screen player when double tapped. It worked OK, although it was clear that the phone was straining. Playback wasn't totally smooth; it would suffice in a bind. Flash ads and animations work more smoothly, and Adobe says that many games are playable. (Note: Eh, what about controls?)

In more than a few ways, the Hero—or Sense, really—represents a lot of what people had hoped for in Android. When the OS came out, everyone was talking about customization, varied hardware and integration with online services. Until now, we hadn't really seen that.

Far from the horrible carrier interface overhauls we're used to seeing on featurephones, the facelifts given to Windows Mobile over the last few years, courtesy of HTC and Samsung, have been the only thing keeping that tired OS alive. Now Android's getting the same treatment. The difference is, customization is easier, the changes are deeping, and Android is a good, modern OS in the first place. HTC has done some exciting stuff here, to be sure. With any luck, others will follow.

If you want a closer look at the software, HTC has posted a complete walkthrough of the OS:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

As you can see, it's not final final yet, as the video recording is still a bit buggy, but overall the improvements look nice.

This is an official development build issued by HTC yesterday we're seeing. It's for dev phones only, technically, but if you have a rooted G1 you can install this just like any other "update.zip" recovery image. See our how-to guide as well as this XDA developers thread for more guidance on upgrading your G1 if you so dare. We're still looking at a non-specific May release date for the official OTA update.

Despite the long list of new features in 1.5, the core of the OS is still more-or-less the same. Accordingly, most Android Market content is completely compatible, and those in the first wave to try the G1 builds were able to log in and download to their hearts' content. At some point in the last few days, though, it seems that Google has started cracking down—Google-sourced builds can no longer access the store, though HTC-sourced builds still seem to work fine.

The trick is to nab one of the "H"-suffixed versions, which'll give you all the perks without any of the sacrifice. —Note: Unlike previous "Cupcake" builds, this one includes Google Apps, the Android Market and the full battery of standard features that you can expect to see on a production HTC Sapphire, for example. It's not just the stripped-down OS. [haykuro via BGR]

There are a lot of new toys for developers, including some kind of emulator configuration thing called Android Virtual Devices, or AVDs, that apparently will make developers' lives way easier. That's cool for them, but what do we get?

April 2009

The Android 1.5 platform introduces many new features for users and developers. The list below provides an overview of the changes.
User interface refinements

* System-wide:
o Refinement of all core UI elements
o Animated window transitions (off by default)
o Accelerometer-based application rotations
* UI polish for:
o In-call experience
o Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
o SMS & MMS
o Browser
o Gmail
o Calendar
o Email
o Camera & Gallery
o Application management

Performance improvements

* Faster Camera start-up and image capture
* Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
* Smoother page scrolling in Browser
* Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling

New features

* On-screen soft keyboard
o Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
o Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
o User dictionary for custom words
* Home screen
o Widgets
+ Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
o Live folders
* Camera & Gallery
o Video recording
o Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
* Bluetooth
o Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
o Auto-pairing
o Improved handsfree experience
* Browser
o Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
o Copy 'n paste in browser
o Search within a page
o User-selectable text-encoding
o UI changes include:
+ Unified Go and Search box
+ Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
* Contacts
o Shows user picture for Favorites
o Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
o One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
* System
o New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
o SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
o SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
* Google applications
o View Google Talk friends' status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
o Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
o Upload videos to Youtube
o Upload photos on Picasa

Whoa. Soft keyboard, widgets, video recording (with YouTube uploading capabilities!), updated browser features like tabs, system-wide UI polishing... This is a killer upgrade. So, uh, thanks, Google! [Phandroid, thanks trigatch!]

The WebOS announcement for the Palm Pre started the year off with a bang (IN MY PANTS), while the Android 1.5 and WinMo 6.5 updates managed to raise my right and left eyebrows, respectively, in intrigue. Today's iPhone OS 3.0 reveal? It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach. But seriously, I've said too much. Speak on it. Now.

The home screen folders are kind of cool, although at this early stage all they offer is a folder view of your contacts (all or starred). On display is also, of course, the soft keyboard, as well as a few UI brushups. A few other features touted as new here aren't actually new to Cupcake, and on the whole, not a lot has changed since we took the Cupcake dev branch for a spin via the Android SDK emulator a few months ago. [Phandroid]

We've known how this Cupcake tastes for a few days now, and we're still most excited about the soft keypad, of course, which will come in handy in the many situations where you don't want to flip open the G1 just to type a few letters. There are also a few mysterious new apps, some of which look like dev tools but may be polished for eventual release, as well as hints of haptic feedback for the keyboard and a few more tidbits. Check out our captioned gallery for a tour:

My number one wish, though, would have to be improved battery life via smarter data connection management. The G1's hardware battery may be partly to blame, but one of the reasons the G1 usually can't make it through a whole day without re-juicing is that the data connection is constantly active for email and contacts sync as well as push updates and whatever else you may be doing. Sure you can turn most of the automatic data syncs off, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the phone. Hopefully cupcake will fix some of this.

If you want to load Cupcake on your computer via the Android SDK, grab the SDK here. Then, follow the instructions laid out by the folks at Nullwire (very easy) to replace your system image files with the new 1.5 Cupcake versions, then simply run the "emulator" app (a UNIX executable on OS X and Linux, and an .exe in Windows) inside the SDK's "tools" directory and you're in business. [Nullwire]