Sense 5 Toolbox the best customizer for HTC Sense 5 based ROMs

If you havent used it yet - you really should. Im talking about the "Sense 5 Toolbox" application, made initially for Android Revolution HD. In the last few weeks the popularity of this application reached an unexpected level, and we believe its a reason to celebrate.

More details about the Sense 5 Toolbox can be found on this blog, under "Sense 5 Toolbox" link on the right panel. Or, just click here.

Why Sense 5 Toolbox?

The application is an answer for 2 basic issues: many users wants to customize their OS as much as possible, but currently available solutions similar to Sense 5 Toolbox are very limited when it comes to the possibility of using them on most custom ROMs.

Android Revolution HD is known to be a "stock-looking" ROM, which was always the most important aspect for many users, who were looking for a stable and well known custom ROM. However, having a custom ROM with such popularity brought our attention to many users, who were looking for a stable custom ROM, but also with a little touch of customisation features - like displaying the battery percentage, or being able to re-order or re-design some part of the UI. This leads to two different approaches:

1. having a custom ROM full of many more or less advanced features coded into the framework, which always ends up with all sort of issues, bugs, waiting a long time for a new ROM version based on freshly released official OS update etc; or
2. having a custom ROM like Android Revolution HD, close to stock with just a few changes under the hood to make Android users life easier, combined with a standalone application like Sense 5 Toolbox.

The result is what most users are looking for: stock looking by default, a stable and optimized custom ROM - but with the capability to change many things inside the OS.

With Android Revolution HD and Sense 5 Toolbox you have:

1. fast updates when a new OS is released/leaked,
2. a stable custom ROM,
3. the capability to customize your OS,
4. great performance because of the tweaks under the hood,
5. many features not available on the stock ROM.

The Sense 5 Toolbox is under continuous development. More and more features are coming with each new release and the "to do" list is quite large.

In the background, another project is still alive and under heavy development too. Im referring to the "Revolution Toolbox" application, announced in this post few weeks ago. Its still being tested, however we are getting close to the first public beta. Just one little secret I can say out loud now - Revolution Toolbox and Sense 5 Toolbox will "connected" in a particular way. Cant say more for now, stay tuned!

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Give Away HTC One X

Here is something awesome for Android Revolution HD users. I will give away one, brand new HTC One X+ (GSM only) in color of your choice - black or white, to one winner of this little competition. There is no country limit - its a worldwide party!

The competition starts at 12:00 PM (GMT + 1) on Monday 4th, March 2013 and will continue until 12:00 PM (GMT + 1) on Sunday 10th, March 2013. Winner will be announced on Monday 11th, March 2013.

What you need to do:

1) "Like" HTC (facebook.com/htc) and Android Revolution HD (facebook.com/AndroidRevolutionHD) on Facebook

2) "Follow" HTC (@HTC) and Android Revolution HD (@mike1986_) on Twitter

3) Tweet about this contest with link to this page using hash-tag "androidrevolutionhd" (#androidrevolutionhd)
Example tweet: Win HTC One X+ at http://android-revolution-hd.blogspot.com/2013/02/give-away-htc-one-x.html #androidrevolutionhd

Note: If you already meet the requirements from points 1 and 2, now all you need to do is tweet! No need to re-follow or re-like accounts mentioned above. Re-tweets doesnt count. This must be your own tweet. Remember to include link to this contest and hash-tag #androidrevolutionhd.

How will I select the winner? I will randomly choose one person from the list of my Twitter followers who tweeted about this give away using #androidrevolutionhd hash-tag. Is that all? Yes! Easy as that! Just 2 clicks and 1 tweet to win amazing, high-end HTC One X+ - Engadgets Smartphone of the Year! 

Good luck!

Want to learn more about HTC One X+?
Visit this site - HTC One X+ overview

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Stock system dumps for HTC One HTC One X

Last two days were very exciting for HTC community, especially for HTC One X users (Android 4.2.2 with HTC Sense 5.0 update described here). However, there is always one problem when it comes to HTC updates - no RUUs (ROM Update Utility) officially available do download for regular users (HTC One Developer Edition and Google Edition seems to be the only exceptions). Why RUU is that important to us?

These executable (.exe) files for MS Windows are installers of complete firmware, including for example system or data partitions. Not having latest RUU means:

1. users using custom ROMs cant download latest OTA from HTC,
2. developers have no system dumps they can work with.

Ad. 1) If you want to download and flash latest OTA, your device must have completely stock system partition and recovery. Every OTA update is checking MD5 of each file on system partition to ensure .apk patch can be applied. If even one of 1000 files wont match, OTA update installation will fail. In this case you need to flash the latest official update you can find (even one year old) and later download official OTA updates.

Ad. 2) There are few workarounds, however none of them is as good as having a RUU:

• adb pull /system in custom recovery mode*
• cp /system /data/media/dump in custom recovery mode*
• nandroid backup
• boot partition can be taken from inside firmware.zip inside OTA .zip package or it can be dumped using dd if=</path/to/boot/partition> of=/data/media/boot.img

* adb pull, cp or dd commands must be executed from custom recovery mode, otherwise system dump will be missing few important files or these files will have 0kb size. Also, keep in mind that adb features are heavily limited on stock un-rooted device. In case of dd command, root access (su) is needed to make such operation.

Thats why I created my own stock system dumps (as a custom recovery .zip packages) for both HTC One and HTC One X. I believe this can save a lot of time for many XDA users and developers.

HTC One thread - HTC One *STOCK* ROM | 2.24.401.8 | Jelly Bean | HTC Sense 5

HTC One X thread - HTC One X *STOCK* ROM | 4.18.401.2 | Jelly Bean | HTC Sense 5.0

Download links can be found on this blog, under Downloads section - Downloads

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HTC One X give away winner is

Im happy to announce, that the winner of HTC One X+ give-away contest is...

The winner should send me a private message via Twitter within 7 days with his e-mail address. After 7 days of no contact from the winner, Ill randomly pick another winner.

Congratulations Barry!

This was the first, but not the last contest. Next time youll probably have a chance to win brand new HTC flagship device - One. Good luck!

PS. Since some users have issues with their tweeter accounts, next give-away will be based on different rules to encourage even more people!

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Android 4 3 for HTC One now available for everyone

As previously promised here, the new Android Revolution HD based on Android 4.3 and HTC Sense 5.0 is ready for everyone to download.

HTC hasnt released yet the international (WWE) update for HTC One, so users with international version of HTC One (M7_UL) are still waiting for Android 4.3 to come. As a workaround, Android Revolution HD is based on recently released Android 4.3 OTA for HTC One "Developer Edition". By checking byte to byte its quite easy to notice that the software from international edition (401) and developer edition (1540) are almost the same. So instead of waiting for WWE OTA, Android Revolution HD 22.0 has been "WWE-ed", which means it works identically to WWE software. All WWE languages are included.

So, if you dont want to wait for WWE OTA update for your HTC One, please visit this thread and get the latest Android Revolution HD 22.0 with Android 4.3 and HTC Sense 5.0.

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HTC One X with Android 4 2 2 HTC Sense 5 0 update

HTC One X is one of the very few (if not the only one) devices from HTC which reached 4.xx.xxx.x software version (4.18.491.2). This only proves how great this device still is and how many users are still actively using it. Today HTC One X users are receiving one of the most important update - Android 4.2.2 with HTC Sense 5.0. Last summer HTC did similar update, upgrading HTC One X with Android 4.1.1 from Android 4.0.4 and bumping HTC Sense from 4.0 to so called "4+". However, HTC Sense 4.0/4+ update wasnt that significant and didnt bring so many new features and improvements as HTC Sense 5.0.

The new update includes well known HTC BlinkFeed™ (available firstly only on HTC One), native Android Quick Settings and completely re-designed HTC Sense interface. Two features are missing from HTC One - HTC BoomSound™ and HTC Zoe™. Unfortunately, both are hardware related. BoomSound™ obviously needs dual speakers audio system, and HTC Zoe™ was created to work with small pictures taken with UltraPixel camera - which allows user to take excellent pictures in natural conditions using only 4 mega pixels resolution in pair with dedicated HTC ImageChip™ 2.








As you can see, there is a changelog attached to the OTA notification, however it is just a "commercial" changelog - that means there are a lot of different changes/improvements under the hood. Android 4.2.2 update brought a lot of changes itself, not to mention new HTC Sense 5.0 features, further optimization in SoC drivers and kernel related improvements.

The new update for HTC One X looks great and surely will bring some fresh air to the device. HTC One X+ already received HTC Sense 5.0 update few days ago, however it was only Taiwanese update so far. Below you can see HTC BlinkFeed screen together with Android Quick Settings on latest HTC One X 4.18.401.2 software.

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