Everything You Need to Know About the HTC Sensation

For months now we've been hearing about a phone with killer specs called the HTC Pyramid. After the customary leaked specs and spy shots, the device is now official. The HTC Sensation is an Android handset that's likely to cause phone envy all around. In the US it will be called the HTC Sensation 4G on T-Mobile. The device has high-end internals and an impressive software loadout.

Let's go over what makes this device special, and why you might want to start saving your pennies now. The Hardware:

The Software 

We are very happy to see the Sensation is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. HTC has also slapped the new version of HTC Sense on the HTC Sensation. This is the version that we first saw on the HTC Evo 3Dlast month. It brings a lot of improvements to the Sense user experience.The lock screen is a lot more functional and skinnable. You unlock the device by dragging the ring at the bottom up. But you can also drag one of the icons you have placed on the screen down to open that app directly. With the skins, the Sensation can also show you ambient information on the lock screen like weather or stocks.

The home screen has gotten a nice 3D makeover as well. If you swipe through the screen quickly, the individual panels actually pull back and become a sort of 3D carousel. You can keep spinning it until you find the screen you want, or get bored of watching the effect. When you get to the last screen, it will loop back around to the first. When using the pinch gesture to get to the HTC Leap screen preview, the panels fly in as translucent spinning cards. Another part of the new HTC Sense build on the Sensation has a new camera feature called Instant Capture. This means that when you press the shutter button, the image will be captured at that moment. It might still take a second to write to the SD card, but there should be no shutter lag. The notification bar has also learned a few new tricks. At the top of the notification pane, running applications are in a scrollable bar. This pull-down interface is now tabbed. At the bottom is a tab called Quick Settings. Here you get a list of toggles for things like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular data, and so on. HTC is also bundling a new app called HTC Watch. This is similar to Samsung's Media Hub ecosystem. Watch is a way to rent and buy movies to watch on your device. Test videos shown off at the launch event played back very well, and seeking through the files was very snappy. As far as we know, DVD quality will be the highest you can get, so dreams of hooking the Sensation up to an HDTV for video are futile. Android's video playback experience has been notoriously bad, so we can appreciate HTC's desire to do something. It is unclear if licensing deals in different regions will cause issues, though.

Are you feeling Sensational? 

There's no question the HTC Sensation is a powerful phone. The big crisp screen and top of the line internals are great. We really can't wait to see what the new dual-core Snapdragon SoC can do in the wild. HTC's Adreno graphics have proven themselves in the last iteration of the platform, and we have high hopes for the 220. It's also impressive that HTC was able to create a unibody shell for the Sensation with all that high-end hardware and still keep the weight down.HTC has made some notable improvements to Sense, like the new lock screen and notification area. The 3D effects are attractive, but probably won't make the phone much easier to use. In most ways, it is still recognizable as Sense UI, which is a little disheartening. HTC has been adding features, and that makes Sense a heavier interface over time.The HTC Sensation will be out in Europe sometime in May on Vodafone. The T-Mobile version with the 4G branding will show up sometime early in the summer. Are you going to hold off on phone upgrades for this device?