Hard to believe, liking Sense 6 over GPE

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Zorachus

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2010
4,007
836
Lombard, IL.
I have had my One M8 two weeks now, LOVING this phone, and one of the selling points to me personally, was the ablity to go flash the GPE Nexus type ROM, and not be stuck on Sense. And I am a huge Nexus stock Android fan, having owned the Nexus-One, Nexus-S, Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus 4, but after the N4 I moved on to Samsung's Note 2, and then Galaxy S4. So last experience with stock Android was 4.1 Jellybean, haven't played with any Kit Kat builds before.

Long story short, I am liking Sense 6 way more than GPE's Kit Kat 4.4.2. and I never would have thought or expected that in a million years, being such a long time Nexus fan. I tried out two different GPE ROM's this week, and certain things in stock Kit Kat I can't stand.

- #1 the Phone dialer / Contacts, wow those suck now, why did Google change the Phone app they've had since ICS 4.0 ? I use my phone a lot to actually make calls, this new new Dialer sucks, and the Contacts is super bright white and very plane, really no features on it. I have read that a whole new Phone dialer app is coming in a upcoming 4.4.3 update. But I miss the awesome Phone app from 4.0 to 4.3, which was all Black with blue numbers, and swipe to to the right to go to contacts, etc...

- #2 the icon sizes are gigantic, like crazy huge, can't fit much on the home screen, I know a Launcher gets rid of that, but sometimes I like to run bone stock, and with those giant icons it looks weird and silly.

- #3 Battery life is definitely worse than a Sense based ROM, by a good amount IMO. My Sense based ROM's were giving me crazy good battery life, like 6h to 7h On Screen time, and total battery life of 24+ hours easily. These two GPE ROM's I tired, would only give like 4h to 5h On screen time, and maybe 15 hours total battery life.

- #4 Speed. I was always under the impression that stock Android was way faster than a UI like Sense or Touchwiz. The Sense 6 ROM's I was running were super fast and silky smooth. The GPE ROM's were also pretty quick too, but no way did not feel any faster than Sense. Just going off my own personal use, it felt like Sense was the faster UI. My point being, stock GPE Android was NOT faster or smoother, no. It was a tie, and if anything Sense won by a hair.

- #5 The look of the UI. Sense 6 has a really cool black / white / blue theme going on, and flat design, it looks really professional, and minimalistic, just smartly designed and well thought out. Where stock Kit Kat is starting to look like a Hodge podge of old Ice Cream Sandwich mixed together with the newer Google Now cards stuff, it's like stock Android can't make up it's mind, is it still Holo themed, or going for the new lighter Card style ? The menu still looks the same as from the Galaxy Nexus from 2011, but other parts look very fresh and totally different. I think we need Android 5.0 to usher in a new uniform design theme for stock Android.


To wrap this up, I am no HTC fan boy, my last HTC was the EVO 4G way back from 2010. I am really more of a Nexus stock Android guy, I guess I just don't like the Kit Kat updates from Jellybean. I was very satisfied with Jellybean. And this Sense 6 blew me away, really shocked I actually like it better than stock Android. It looks great, is smartly designed and laid out, and is super smooth / fast, with insanely good battery life. Next stock Android phone or ROM I'll run will be to wait for at least 4.4.3, and most likely the next big update with the HTC Nexus-Six this Fall.
 
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PunishedSnake

Senior Member
Apr 12, 2014
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Fresno
Wow I'd expect gpe to be faster and have better battery life due to its lack of bloat

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 

Zorachus

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2010
4,007
836
Lombard, IL.
Wow I'd expect gpe to be faster and have better battery life due to its lack of bloat

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

I remember when I had the HTC One X two years ago, it was common that those Sense based ROM's for that phone got way better battery life than Cyanogen or AOSP ROM's.

Same when I had the Note 2. The ROM's based off the stock Touchwiz got better battery life compared to the AOSP ROM's for the Note 2.
 

EvoYas

Senior Member
Feb 2, 2011
443
77
GPEdoeshave a better battery life, but the diff minimal. And yes, I'm running a GPE rom, but Sense 6 is easily my fav OEM skin.

Sent from my Sinless HTC One M8 ?
 

PunishedSnake

Senior Member
Apr 12, 2014
2,038
237
Fresno
I remember when I had the HTC One X two years ago, it was common that those Sense based ROM's for that phone got way better battery life than Cyanogen or AOSP ROM's.

Same when I had the Note 2. The ROM's based off the stock Touchwiz got better battery life compared to the AOSP ROM's for the Note 2.

Custom Roms don't count as those aosp Roms don't have the optimized drivers as the skinned OEM ones do. Gpe does....

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 

md1008

Senior Member
Dec 9, 2011
1,947
422
I don't really like sense, I find the settings to be rather annoying. My experience with battery life is that GPE is actually better

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
 

Hellscythe

Senior Member
Sep 8, 2012
1,847
476
straya kienttt
Just some of my opinion here, manufacturers are starting to learn how to create a nice and smooth user interface.
I remember back in the "old" days when manufacturer firmwares were laggy as hell and CM was an alternative firmware that could actually provide users with a smooth user interface.
For my xperia z, stock firmware is SMOOTHER than CM AND has more features, there really is no reason for me to be using CM.
I think that is the similar case with the M8 here.
 

technologiq

Member
Apr 1, 2012
18
6
I'd probably stay with GPE if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't support all the functions of the Dot View case. I'm going to go back to something like Android Revolution or InsertCoin.
 
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    I have had my One M8 two weeks now, LOVING this phone, and one of the selling points to me personally, was the ablity to go flash the GPE Nexus type ROM, and not be stuck on Sense. And I am a huge Nexus stock Android fan, having owned the Nexus-One, Nexus-S, Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus 4, but after the N4 I moved on to Samsung's Note 2, and then Galaxy S4. So last experience with stock Android was 4.1 Jellybean, haven't played with any Kit Kat builds before.

    Long story short, I am liking Sense 6 way more than GPE's Kit Kat 4.4.2. and I never would have thought or expected that in a million years, being such a long time Nexus fan. I tried out two different GPE ROM's this week, and certain things in stock Kit Kat I can't stand.

    - #1 the Phone dialer / Contacts, wow those suck now, why did Google change the Phone app they've had since ICS 4.0 ? I use my phone a lot to actually make calls, this new new Dialer sucks, and the Contacts is super bright white and very plane, really no features on it. I have read that a whole new Phone dialer app is coming in a upcoming 4.4.3 update. But I miss the awesome Phone app from 4.0 to 4.3, which was all Black with blue numbers, and swipe to to the right to go to contacts, etc...

    - #2 the icon sizes are gigantic, like crazy huge, can't fit much on the home screen, I know a Launcher gets rid of that, but sometimes I like to run bone stock, and with those giant icons it looks weird and silly.

    - #3 Battery life is definitely worse than a Sense based ROM, by a good amount IMO. My Sense based ROM's were giving me crazy good battery life, like 6h to 7h On Screen time, and total battery life of 24+ hours easily. These two GPE ROM's I tired, would only give like 4h to 5h On screen time, and maybe 15 hours total battery life.

    - #4 Speed. I was always under the impression that stock Android was way faster than a UI like Sense or Touchwiz. The Sense 6 ROM's I was running were super fast and silky smooth. The GPE ROM's were also pretty quick too, but no way did not feel any faster than Sense. Just going off my own personal use, it felt like Sense was the faster UI. My point being, stock GPE Android was NOT faster or smoother, no. It was a tie, and if anything Sense won by a hair.

    - #5 The look of the UI. Sense 6 has a really cool black / white / blue theme going on, and flat design, it looks really professional, and minimalistic, just smartly designed and well thought out. Where stock Kit Kat is starting to look like a Hodge podge of old Ice Cream Sandwich mixed together with the newer Google Now cards stuff, it's like stock Android can't make up it's mind, is it still Holo themed, or going for the new lighter Card style ? The menu still looks the same as from the Galaxy Nexus from 2011, but other parts look very fresh and totally different. I think we need Android 5.0 to usher in a new uniform design theme for stock Android.


    To wrap this up, I am no HTC fan boy, my last HTC was the EVO 4G way back from 2010. I am really more of a Nexus stock Android guy, I guess I just don't like the Kit Kat updates from Jellybean. I was very satisfied with Jellybean. And this Sense 6 blew me away, really shocked I actually like it better than stock Android. It looks great, is smartly designed and laid out, and is super smooth / fast, with insanely good battery life. Next stock Android phone or ROM I'll run will be to wait for at least 4.4.3, and most likely the next big update with the HTC Nexus-Six this Fall.