“We are the second or the third best design house in the world when it comes to mobile phones,” says Horace Luke, chief innovation officer at HTC.
HTC has also imbibed one of the greatest ideas of American business: It’s okay to fail. HTC’s R&D division called has a “target failure rate” of 95 percent, says Luke. “A research lab has to come up with enough ideas that fail fast and fail early so you can learn and harvest the right ones,” he says. “That’s very different from the culture at Taiwan, where you have to be successful all the time.”
For HN folks that haven't played with HTC's Sense UI - their proprietary Android home screen app, widgets, theme, and apps - it's a significantly different experience from stock Android. The relationship between HTC and Google is far better than, say, Motorola and Google.
It's simple things - normal Android doesn't have an indication to show which home screen you're on. Or emphasize the 'Phone' as being more than just a single app. Or show photos for your contacts. Or realize that a white globe with blue dots doesn't constitute a globe for most humans.
Google make technically good software, but they need someone like HTC to show them how people use phones.
Another thought: HTC needs to stop letting carriers rename it handsets if it wants the recognition it states in the article. Letting Verizon and T-Mobile call the hero the 'Droid Eris' or 'T-Mobile G2' removes the credit from HTC and turns them into another LG or Samsung.
Interesting page lay-out. I bet the lay-out artists at Wired have monitors with more than 800 pixels vertically. On my 1024x1280 rotated screen, the image is huge, but the page works. It won't fit whole on my notebook (1280x800) built-in LCD and usability on such screens is seriously hampered.
HTC has also imbibed one of the greatest ideas of American business: It’s okay to fail. HTC’s R&D division called has a “target failure rate” of 95 percent, says Luke. “A research lab has to come up with enough ideas that fail fast and fail early so you can learn and harvest the right ones,” he says. “That’s very different from the culture at Taiwan, where you have to be successful all the time.”
A lot of interesting quotes.