It seems that a lot of folks interested in the HTC Droid Incredible want to be able to turn Sense (HTC’s custom user interface) on and off at will. Previous HTC handsets (as recent as the HTC Desire) had the ability to do this pretty easily by erasing Sense as the default and throwing up a choice between Sense or the stock Android home screen after you hit the home button.
Not any more.
We tore into the system files of our Droid Incredible to see what we could find. After hours of hard work, caffiene and Excedrin, we found some interesting information — the resources
and artwork for vanilla Android seem to be absent, or at least aren’t where we expect them to be. While we can’t be 100 percent sure just yet, it certainly appears that the Droid Incredible was meant to only run the Sense UI.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. HTC clearly has upped the game with the new Sense UI,
as our video walkthrough shows. At this point, if you’re on the fence, the best advice I can
think of is to head down to your local Verizon Wireless store on the April 29 and give the device a spin. After a few minutes with it, if you think (like we do) that Sense enhances this
particular handset, use your 30 days to find out.
Update: Yep, you can use Helix Launcher 2 on it. So you’re running a launcher on top of Sense. Have fun with that.