[orangekid]

As I see it you can just do a word replace for HTC or Samsung on everything you guys are talking about and say the same thing.

Both HTC and Samsung are now support development for THEIR own UI at about the same level, you basically have to pick sides and stick with it. HTC does limit you to use THEIR UI and the SDK is not universal, however neither is TW4.0. HTC and Samsung are the leaders in the Android game and will probably stay that way for a long time. Ask ANYONE what kind of Android device they have and chances are they have one or the other. In my office alone 3 people have Samsung SGS, I have an HTC (HD2), and one guy has an iPhone. LG is catching up and the G2X is a nice device.

I choose Sense because to me it looks much better. You get the animated flip clock, live weather animations, amazing weather app in Sense 3.0, and everything looks more vibrant and pleasing to the eye. There's also the HTC hub which gives free wallpapers, ringtones, themes, skins, widgets etc... which I like.

Of course that's subjective, someone else may prefer TW because the widgets don't take up as much space and the UI overall does not use as much RAM and some Android apps cannot work over Sense (like the wii-remote integration I use for PSX emulated ROMs).

To be perfectly honest, I actually like Launcher Pro over AOSP for speed, efficiency, functionality and eye candy. I can make my own icons and theme it very well with the Theme Chooser cooked into CM7. I have an awesome theme right now with transparent widgets on my CM7 ROM on my HD2 and I've stuck with it.


IMO the general problem with Android is the fragmentation. This is the single biggest problem that WP7 and iOS don't have. iOS 5 is rumored to have widget support, which would put it on par with Android IMO depending on how Apple pulls this off. They still need LWP support (non jailbroken).

The main thing that HTC has over Samsung is that you CAN port TW to an HTC device, but you cannot (so far successfully) port Sense to a Samsung device, but this actually speaks in favor of the TW UI because it can be ported easier, however makes it a plus-point to BUY an HTC Device. The more locked down your device is, the more it is worth IMO because the "open UI and OS" can be ported to your device. As soon as Cotulla publicly releases his hacked SPL for WP7 then WP7 will be the shit because you can port Android to it and have WP7 working flawlessly on a dual-boot.

iPhones are awesome because they can dual-run iOS and Android.

Personally I am considering an Evo3D because of the "3D" and Sense 3.0, that's what it's got over the SGS2 for me. My HD2 is currently the best phone on the market for devs because it can run ANTYHING not called iOS, it is the only device that can stably run WM6.5.x, Android 2.3.x, WP7 (NoDo, with themed UI, which even native WP7 devices cannot do), and Ubuntu, as well as other Linux Distros. This is not a credit to the phone or HTC, but a credit to DFT who are some crazy insane genius ninja hackers. 3rd party developers are the real heroes here, not the manufacturers.

At this stage I do not see any advantage to HTC over Samsung and vice versa, just depends on your preferred flavor. If either company gave a real damn about consumers, they'd make their SDKs globally compatible with other UIs.