HTC ditches apps - Attentive Phone, Sound Enhancer, etc. move to Settings

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

One interesting observation from the new HTC Radar and Titan is that HTC have been able to move their add-on "apps" such as Sound Enhancer, custom camera options and Attentive Phone to Settings--that is these will no longer be apps to download but instead will be baked in the OS directly.

That's a good move for HTC as it seemed kind of silly to have separate apps for those--who wouldn't want those options? It also signals that HTC is able to inch a little closer in modifying the OS. It will certainly be interesting to see what other OEMs do with this ability.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

18 Comments
  • Hmm that is interesting. And do we know if this will be on all phones, or just HTC ones? I believe Nokia was contributing to the OS, but in a way that all manufacturers can gain from. I hope that is the case here as well.
  • These features--just HTC. In fact, HTC may have rights/patents on attentive phone. But other OEMs can do their own changes, including Nokia, perhaps even going deeper.
  • Nokia has a similar feature on their Symbian^3 devices, so hopefully, Nokia will include them on their WP devices as well.
  • Fujitsu Toshiba also added custom settings to its phones.
  • just don't let them access the ui to force sense onto it. sense on metro absolutely sucks.but i like the settings-extension.
  • Totally agree!Settings-extension is great...but please don't let'em add sense.I am sure Microsoft won't let that happen anyway
  • Hmm wish Samsung would have some of these..
  • And so fragmentation within WP7 begins. Hope MS doesn't let this get out of hand.edit: Negative votes because you hate the idea of it. Hardware manufacturers customizing the OS is never a good thing. Imaging if you bought a Acer laptop and it was missing a part of windows and replaced it with their own idea of how it should be.
  • I see your point, but so far, the only things that are modified are the actual device options by the OEMs, and extra used-to-be-called bloatware from the carriers. I have no complaints yet. I do see how things could progress to a point where we don't want them to go.
  • over a sound enhancer and attentive phone setting option? not even and besides I would sometimes goto settings to look for these anyway.
  • Hardware providers changing the OS per device or set of devices is precisely where it starts. I would hope that it doesn't go beyond this also.
  • I have a Mozart and I put a HTC mango rom rtm will i get an update on official mango release to have these built in?
  • I'm fairly certain that these feature are device specific, not manufacturer specific. I hope I'm wrong.
  • This article says landscape is still not supported in Mango. is that ture? I thought Mango was supposed to add universal landscape support.
  • The WP7 homescreen does not rotate to landscape. Only apps if they are built to support it. IE: messaging does(albeit poorly/ cant see anything), the browser does, etc.I wish it would.
  • I like the idea of moving these into settings so they are more readily accessible, yet at the same time I hope all of these "tweaks" the OEM's are adding will not result in a major fail of Android, customization = delays on OS updates and carrier approvals. I prefer to keep the OS update(s) rolling along smoothly.
  • Agreed. WP7 is a Microsoft product. I don't want nonMicrosoft people tinkering and changing the experience.
  • The problem is that these apps have already been pulled from the marketplace...before this integration has taken place...FAIL.