HTC opens Sense to developers, launches HTCDev portal

Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference hosted HTC’s chief executive officer Peter Chou for some exciting announcements – the Taiwanese phone maker launched the HTCDev portal opening access to its Sense UI for developers. With tools like the HTC OpenSense SDK and support documents, all to become available at HTCDev, developers will be given the opportunity to better suit their apps to HTC’s Sense leveraging its functionality. The first to take advantage of the offer and provide deeper integration of their apps were Google, Gameloft and LinkedIn among others.

"People tell us how much they love HTC Sense," Chou said at his keynote speech. "Now we will make Sense available to developers."

While the HTCDev portal is already up online, it will take a couple of weeks until all the development tools become available. The initiative will function along with the similarly aimed HTCPro program, which shifts the focus to businesses who are looking for mobile solutions.

In addition to open access to the Sense user interface, developers are also getting the Tablet pen API access to capacitive styli like the one introduced with the seven-inch HTC Flyer tablet. While styli are not currently the mainstream solution, we can think of a couple of practical uses of the greater precision of the Magic Pen, so developers can unleash their imagination. The stereoscopic 3D display API along with sample code is another element that will be open to developers.

HTC’s latest 3.0 version of the Sense UI brings features like dynamic lockscreen content allowing you to get essential and up-to-date information about the weather, emails and so on. But the Taiwanese company is stepping boldly into the software field by adding its very own movie rental service, HTC Watch, while just recently we heard rumors about an upcoming gaming storefrond, HTC Play. The new UI comes preinstalled on phones like the HTC Sensation and the HTC EVO 3D.

The company has been in the forefront of the smartphone boom and its chief executive remains optimistic about the future audaciously predicting that smartphones are to outsell feature phones by year-end. But it’s the user’s vote which matters most, and many have pointed out that a vanilla Android experience works better. Does HTC’s announcement of OpenSense change that view? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

source: HTCDev via Engadget