homescreen - 2/3 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jan

[Monthly Home Screen Challenge, January 2012] Post Your Android Home Screen, Win An Android Police Shirt

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Development, Home Screen Challenge

Creating an aesthetically pleasing home screen for your phone or tablet has become an art in itself, and an entire ecosystem packed with widgets, themes, wallpapers, launchers, and custom ROMs has built up to support it. Sometimes, it can be tough to find a winning combination of elements to create a beautiful and enduring home screen that provides both form and function.

For this reason, we have decided to open up a monthly call for gorgeous, well-decorated home screens of all shapes and sizes. Each month we will select the very best home screen configurations and completely break them down into their component parts, providing you with all the necessary information to create your own awesome home screen.

Oct

3 Years Of Android: A Look At Android's Home Screens - From Cupcake To Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Cupcake 1.5, Donut 1.6, Eclair 2.1, Froyo 2.2, Gingerbread 2.3, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Jelly Bean 4.1

Oh, Android. How far you've come since the days of the G1. Actually, tomorrow, October 22nd, will mark 3 years to the day that Android has been available on consumer handsets in the United States, and the G1 on T-Mobile was concepción.

With Ice Cream Sandwich finally revealed, Android has gone through its seventh major iteration. How has Android changed? What better way to illustrate Android's evolution than its home screen, the hub of user interaction. Here's a look at the face of Android over the last 3 years.

Android 1.5: Cupcake

Android Version 1.5: Cupcake

Cupcake was step one for what was, at the time, Google's recently acquired mobile operating system Android.

Mar

SPB Shell 3D Comes To Android, Your Current Homescreen Cowers In Fear

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

We all love eye candy, but when combined with practical functionality, it truly becomes a thing of beauty. That’s exactly what mobile developers SPB Software have accomplished with their new shell replacement app, SPB Shell 3D.

SPB Shell 3D is a homescreen replacement that brings 3D modeling like we have never seen before. You don’t have to take my word for it, though, just take a look:

Impressive, right? I’m sure that it takes pretty modern hardware to back something that visually appealing, but if you’ve got the power, why not flaunt it?

There are a couple of downsides, however – it’s not available for tablets (yet) and it will set you back $15.

Jan

Launcher Pro Updated With Homescreen Transition Effects [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Development, News, Videos

Launcher Pro, my favorite launcher replacement, got updated today with a much requested feature - homescreen transition animations, available to all LP users, not just Plus. In addition to the usual and very smooth slide effect, we now have 4 more: Scale, Rotate, Flip, and Cube. All are smooth, except for the Cube transition, so I would advise against using it until Fede makes it a bit more snappy. Out of 5 transitions (including the regular slide), my favorite is definitely Flip. What's yours?

^{Excuse the poor frame rate in the screencast - unfortunately, that's ShootMe's max for the time being}

Source: Launcher Pro

Dec

New Picture, Specs Leak Out Of Motorola's Honeycomb-Running Tablet

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola

You could say December 7th ended with a bang - after a day crammed full of Gingerbread goodness, Andy Rubin came on stage at D: Dive Into Mobile to tease a next-gen Honeycomb tablet. Unfortunately, Google's VP of Engineering didn't give us a very in-depth look, so most of us were left hungry for more.

And more we have - in addition to the picture you're seeing above, Taiwanese forum member goldenstone provided us with the following specs:

1280x800 display
32 GB EMMC storage as well as a microSD card slot
NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 dual-core CPU with 3D performance re-optimization
Gyroscope
5 MP rear camera
2 MP front-facing cam

Oh, and Motorola's got something hidden up its sleeve for those of you still bickering over which size is best - there will be both seven and ten-inch editions of the device.

Dec

Launcher Pro v0.8.2 Brings Virtual Homescreen Looping, Recent Apps Dock Popup

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Launcher Pro, one of the greatest Android homescreen replacements (Sense who?), received an update today with 2 excellent new features: virtual homescreen looping and a Recent Apps dock popup.

The virtual looping feature enables scrolling past the leftmost or rightmost homescreens with a quick bounce-to-the-opposite-end effect. While Fede implemented it this way instead of an endless scroll for technical reasons, I think it's visually a lot better and clearer, as you will still know when you've reached the end and won't feel lost in your own homescreen forest.

Joining SMS, missed calls, and bookmarks, the 2nd feature is a new swipe gesture dock popup called Recent Apps.

Oct

Slick UI Wants To Be The Next Game Changer In Android UIs, Looks Plenty Original

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Videos

One of the reasons I love Android is because you can customize the heck out of your experience. Replacing the stock launcher with Launcher Pro is pretty much the first thing I do now when I get a new phone because of the innovations a hard-working, smart, and dedicated engineer (Fede) can bring to the table.

However, Launcher Pro is not too much different from the stock UI, outside of tweaks and other little but important things - same goes for ADW and other home replacements. Because of that, I get especially excited when I see some outside the box thinking (remember Mozilla's Seabird and the TAT's Horizon concepts, for example?)

The visionaries behind Slick UI are some of those outside the box thinkers that I am so fond of - they're thinking of a UI nobody's ever done before, and I'm very much interested in seeing this concept go to something real we can all install on our phones.

Oct

QuickDesk 0.4 Now In The Market, Brings QuickPanel Task Switcher, UI Redesign; PRO Version Coming

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

There are a couple of Android programs that are so brilliant and well done that you can't imagine your life without them. For me, these programs are Launcher Pro, Titanium Backup, and QuickDesk. QuickDesk is ingenious and always makes those who see it for the first time beg me to tell them what it is. Minutes ago, Faruq, the QuickDesk developer, published a completely redesigned and long awaited version 0.4 to the Market, and it is good. Damn good.

To give you a brief background on the app, with QuickDesk, you double tap on the Home button and a quick overlay pops up on top of the current app without taking over and destroying whatever is going on on the screen.

Sep

Launcher Pro v0.7.9.0 Update Introduces Friends Widget, Customizable Homescreen Grid Size, Bug Fixes

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Today, Launcher Pro, one of the best homescreen replacements for Android, got a nice update, introducing a couple of new features and bug fixes. I replaced the bloated Sense UI on my EVO with Launcher Pro Plus about 2 weeks ago, and ever since then, half of my co-workers did the same, seeing what it can do.

The new update finally introduces a customizable number of icon columns and rows, which is no longer limited to 4 or 5. ADW actually had this feature for a while, so I'm glad LP finally caught up.

Another major addition, though for Plus users only, is the Friends widget.

Sep

Zune Home Gives You That Zune HD Vibe, Tegra Sold Separately

Posted by Brian O'Toole in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Apart from SlideScreen, it seems like pretty much every alternative Android launcher out there is a slightly different version of the same thing; namely, the stock Android launcher. Well, SlideScreen is no longer alone. With Zune Home, we have something rather familiar but entirely different to what we’ve seen before on Android.

As the name would suggest, Zune Home is an homage to the laudably sleek interface found on Microsoft’s Zune HD portable media player. What it does is replace your standard homescreen with a simple list of clickable text labels: phone, contacts, etc. These link to applications of your choosing (apart from phone and marketplace, which are preset), meaning you can have the “internet” label open up your preferred browser, eg Fennec.