Custom OEM skins such as HTC's Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz are commonplace on Android smartphones these days and are used to differentiate their phones. HTC Sense has as many lovers as haters; much like most other Android skins. In a recent interview HTC's head of Sense development, Drew Bamford, provided some valuable insight into how skins, Sense in particular, add value to the Android experience.

Bamford believes that HTC Sense 4.0 adds a lot of usability to the Android experience. A prime example is the time and weather widget that is almost an icon of Android itself, as well as the updated camera application. HTC also wishes to develop personality through its custom UI, to the extent where customers will go into a store and ask for an HTC phone rather than an Android.

“I think between our widget sets, our customizable lock screen and our skins, we offer a much more personal experience overall. A couple that you’ve probably heard a lot about because they’re our kind of key feature on the HTC One are the camera and authentic sound,” Bamford says.

In the interview he goes onto admit that HTC got carried away with amount of pointless processing intensive tasks in the past in previous versions of Sense. Instead with Sense 4.0, “it’s just a different approach that we eventually came up with,” one that isn't as resource intensive and a alternative to the stock Android 4.0 user experience.

KitGuru says: We've had some hands-on time with the HTC One X over the past few weeks, and we have to admit that Sense 4.0 is much better than previous iterations.

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