HTC Sense 3.6: ICS Sense for your HTC Sensation

We already know the HTC Sensation and Sensation XE will be getting their ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) updates this coming in March, however we’ve just gotten our hands on an HTC Sensation XE running ICS, sent directly from HTC for us to trial. You may recall we posted a pretty comprehensive look at a leaked build of Ice Cream Sandwich on the Sensation last year and demonstrated Chrome on it last month. So what’s different about this version? It’s running HTC Sense 3.6, that’s what.

Getting back to the version of HTC Sense later, our first impressions scream stability. You’ll notice in the Chrome video on the beta, with every flick and swipe, a jarring pink judder would plague the backdrop. No longer. Chrome runs extremely smoothly and after a full days using the HTC Sensation XE with ICS, we’ve not had a single crash.

Any other differences? None all that noticable. We’re really happy to see features like disable apps is still available so you can tidy up your app drawer if you’re not an HTC Watch user or Teeter player. Getting back to Sense however, HTC Sense 3.6 looks like an ICS compatible stop-gap, or possibly end of the road for the Sensation. While we were hoping for HTC Sense 4.0, 3.6 is hardly discernable from Sense 3.5 aside from the ICSification, offering identical functionality to the leak last year.

Does this mean that your Sensation ICS update later this month won’t carry Sense 4.0? That’s our guess. We’d think HTC will want to keep the limelight firmly on their One X, One S and One V. With no confirmation as to whether HTC Sense 4.0 will be arriving on the HTC Sensation line, we can only hope that our more than capable Sensations will be four point oh’ing in the near future.

Still, ICS and Sense 3.6 is considerably better than no ICS and Sense 3.5. Add to that the sterling efforts of the folks at XDA developers and you can make it happen sooner than later if you want it badly enough on your Sensation. In the meantime, if you’re not on a rooted device and are expecting ICS in the coming weeks, there’s only one thing to do – say hello Sense 3.6.