Videos of HTC’s new TouchFLO 3D 2.6 for Windows Mobile are starting to pop-up online and they appear to show a user interface that bears some striking similarities to HTC’s UI for the recently launched Hero android-powered smartphone.
Codenamed ‘Manila’, the new UI hasn’t been released yet but it is installed on the pre-production models of the HTC Leo smartphone that are currently doing the review rounds. The UI is called ‘Sense’ on the Hero and the expectation was that HTC was working on a pixel-for-pixel port for Windows Mobile. This seems not to be the case and ‘Sense’ appears to embody a design philosophy rather than a specific piece of software.
Nonetheless, elements of Sense have made it into TouchFLO 3D 2.6 and that’s what you can see in the videos — after the cut.
Unless you’re already familiar with the Google Android-powered Hero, it’s taking a look at it user interface to see what wonders HTC has deployed. Anyone familiar with HTC’s earlier TouchFLO interfaces will recognise most elements, but there’s a whole new level of polish with Sense.
HTC Hero - First Look
Both TouchFLO 3D 2.6 video demos come from PocketNow and the first shows a similar heavily customisable ‘today’ screen as the Hero’s and, more importantly, looks very responsive. It looks like the HTC Leo will ship with a capacitive touch-screen — long overdue for Windows Mobile.
TouchFLO 3D 2.6 (Manila 2.6)
PocketNow’s second video show’s TouchFLO 3D 2.6’s new multimedia features and the HTC Leo’s accelerometer in action. The whole UI looks a lot slicker than anything that Microsoft has shown so far for its new versions of Windows Mobile, but maybe that will change once Windows Mobile 7 appears in 2010.
TouchFLO 3D 2.6 (Manila 2.6) Multimedia Features
