PocketNow recently had the opportunity to check out a non-final build of HTC Sense 4.0 which will be likely be first seen on the rumored HTC Ville (picture above)  and the HTC Edge. For HTC, Sense represents a point of differentiation among a sea of Android devices: the interface touches each and every built-in application, it defines the home screen experience, and it bridges all of HTC's assets together, like HTC Watch and HTC Listen. Those who have been critical of Sense's increasingly-bloated feel in Sense 3.5 and below will likely find Sense 4.0 to be a step in the right direction.

Buttons and interface

HTC has put an emphasis on improved typography and reduced visual clutter. As an example, turning the device into landscape orientation will provide t...

Touchscreen recoveries are all the rage these days. From TeamWin's TWRP, to unofficial variants of everyone's favorite, ClockworkMod Recovery. This morning, though, Koush himself took to Google to tease his very own blend of touchscreen controls for the recovery running on millions of devices.

While there's no release available for download yet, the work already looks promising. All the swiping, tapping, and touching we've all grown so used to is there. Koush also promises "there will be better graphics and whatnot later," so expect a UI revamp before this actually hits your devices.

A brand new way of using application menus in Unity interface is coming to Ubuntu.

HUD – Heads UP Display – uses an intelligent search-based approach to finding and accessing menu items you need. It’s smart too; HUD is capable of remembering what items you use most often and prioritising them in the results.

The goal is to make finding menu items faster, in turn speeding up your workflow. From the video demo of HUD embedded below, the feature certa...

HP has officially announced that WebOS will be open sourced by September 2012. This is a marvelous thing for the WebOS community, and Palm fans everywhere. It’s step one in bringing WebOS back from the dead; hopefully a revitalizing shot in the arm of development, applications, and new hardware (we hope). HP is also looking at all existing WebOS hardware to figure out how to best move this out, so don’t throw away your Palm Pre or Pixi just yet.

As important as the announcement for WebOS itself is the announcement that Enyo, HP’s JavaScript framework for WebOS is getting a major overhaul into 2.0 and being open sourced as well; it is available as of today. This is key because unlike other mobile operating system frameworks, Enyo is not based on Webkit. As a browser-independent tool, it allows programmers to write code for WebOS applications that will function in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrom...

In a new post on its Android Developers Blog today, Google is giving devs tips on how to better prepare their apps for a brave, Menu button-less future. Honeycomb started the revolution by introducing the so-called "action bar" at the tops of applications and by killing physical buttons in favor of soft, reconfigurable ones, but that was strictly a tablet affair — the impetus to get developers on board with the Menu button's demise is greater now that Ice Cream Sandwich is out and in the process of bringing those same UX paradigm shifts to phones.

As it stands, Android 4.0 bridges the gap with older apps by posting an "action overflow button" — three vertical dots — to the right side of the soft button bar at the bottom of the screen. Google doesn't pull any punches, though, say...