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HTC Sense Coming to Galaxy S

Filed under News by Kenneth Pennington on November 9, 2010 at 7:03 PM
HTC Sense on Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S)

HTC Sense on Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S)

HTC’s done something right with their HTC Sense overlay for Android. From the HTC Hero to the brand new Desire Z, the Sense look and feel is highly coveted in the Android world. Sense has seen ports to over a dozen individual devices and domination over a large chunk of the development by Android modders and tweakers.

From the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S earlier this year, tech-savvy consumers have been asking for a port of HTC’s Sense to the Galaxy S phone lineup. Bounties for the development of HTC Sense on Galaxy S devices have reached up to $500 in some forums, and users are eager to see the cleanliness, features, and speed of a Sense-equipped Galaxy S.

Recently, a new team of developers from XDA-Developers forum called TeamGalaxySense set out to accomplish the goal of a full HTC Sense port for Galaxy S devices (including the Epic 4G, Captivate, Vibrant, Fascinate and I9000). The team is made up of over twenty developers, some of whom are listed below in our table. The team already has a massive list of users looking to beta test as well: eleven users for the I9000, ten for the Epic 4G and Vibrant each, and nine for the Captivate and Fascinate each.

Galaxy S I9000 Captivate Vibrant Epic 4G Fascinate Other

nikademus

xcaliburinhand

Master™

geniusdog254

mrweeee

Whosdaman

Dexter_nlb

rafyvitto

barakinflorida

DevinXtreme

thatdudebutch

jamezelle

neolander

Kaik541

eugene373

noobnl

Captainkrtek

mssmison

hansmrtn

Mammon88

bubby323

Progress

Overall, development for this project has been extremely speedy. The first threads were made only a week ago, and already two phones have been able to boot into a semi-working HTC Sense build. The three GSM phones: Samsung’s Captivate, Vibrant, and European I9000 (for AT&T and T-Mobile respectively) have working development builds that are able to boot successfully. Developer at the forums, barakinflorida, was the first to get a working build using his Samsung Vibrant with a Desire HD ROM. Then, developers were quickly able to fix the build to work on all three GSM phones. Team member Whosdaman tweeted this afternoon that a Sense build for the AT&T Captivate would be “coming soon.”

HTC Sense on Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S)

But, there is no official ETA at the moment, because developers are still ironing out some of the bugs and problems. Audio, 2D and 3D, as well as the orientation sensor are all working on the latest build for the GSM Galaxy S devices. WiFi, the radio interface layer, bluetooth, SD Cards, and SIM cards are all not quite working right at the moment.

As of now, the developers for the CDMA phones (Epic 4G and Fascinate) will be porting an Android 2.1 ROM from the HTC Desire, because no Android 2.2 kernels are available for these devices yet.

The progress made so far can be attributed much to barakinflorida’s initial porting efforts on the Samsung Vibrant using the Desire HD ROMs released on the development forums. Prior to the TeamGalaxySense inauguration, barakinflorida posted up a YouTube video showing off his work on Sense for the Vibrant. Check out the video below:

You can check out Team Galaxy Sense on Twitter or join their IRC channel on Freenode.

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