Pretty-ing up Android
Jun. 28th, 2011 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abortrephraseWith the announcement that Telstra and HTC have decided between them to drop Sense from the Gingerbread update for the original Desire, I've opted to take another look at just what can be done with third-party tools.
This post is going to be a little screen-shot heavy, so I'll put the rest behind a cut.
I'm running CyanogenMod 7.1 RC1, which is based on the AOSP Android 2.3.4 release. On top of that I'm running a bunch of stuff to add functionality and to bring the shiny.
Here's the main homescreen I have set up:
What you see there is GO Launcher EX with the Beautiful Widgets homescreen clock, the Beautiful Widgets Weather live wallpaper, and the Business Calendar Free 4x1 agenda widget.
The bottom row is three application shortcuts plus the BW battery widget. Tapping the battery widget takes you to the standard Gingerbread power use screen.
There are a whole bunch of third-party launchers for Android. I've tried a few of them, but so far I like GO the best. Functionality-wise it offers:
It also does a whole bunch of animation effects on screen transition. My personal favourite is this:
Here's the app drawer, displaying the "Recent" tab:
The stock dialer and contacts tools aren't the worst things ever, but I'm used to what HTC provide with Sense. GO Contacts provides a nice alternative:
For text messaging I've been a fan of GO SMS Pro for quite a while now. It provides all the customization I need while also having a very polished interface:
That, incidentally, is the standard Gingerbread keyboard, but I've applied the JAMT Flat Black theme to the system so the colouring is a little non-standard.
All of the GO tools are theme-able, but right now I'm just using their default themes with a few tweaks for font sizes and colours.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results.
This post is going to be a little screen-shot heavy, so I'll put the rest behind a cut.
I'm running CyanogenMod 7.1 RC1, which is based on the AOSP Android 2.3.4 release. On top of that I'm running a bunch of stuff to add functionality and to bring the shiny.
Here's the main homescreen I have set up:
What you see there is GO Launcher EX with the Beautiful Widgets homescreen clock, the Beautiful Widgets Weather live wallpaper, and the Business Calendar Free 4x1 agenda widget.
The bottom row is three application shortcuts plus the BW battery widget. Tapping the battery widget takes you to the standard Gingerbread power use screen.
There are a whole bunch of third-party launchers for Android. I've tried a few of them, but so far I like GO the best. Functionality-wise it offers:
- Resizable widgets
- A very nice app drawer, with "All", "Recent", and "Running" tabs
- Indicators for a few tools, including missed calls, GMail, Messages, and K9 Mail
- An all-screens overview mode, with similar functionality to TouchWiz
- "Circular" screens -- i.e., scrolling left from the left-most screen wraps around to the right-most
It also does a whole bunch of animation effects on screen transition. My personal favourite is this:
Here's the app drawer, displaying the "Recent" tab:
The stock dialer and contacts tools aren't the worst things ever, but I'm used to what HTC provide with Sense. GO Contacts provides a nice alternative:
For text messaging I've been a fan of GO SMS Pro for quite a while now. It provides all the customization I need while also having a very polished interface:
That, incidentally, is the standard Gingerbread keyboard, but I've applied the JAMT Flat Black theme to the system so the colouring is a little non-standard.
All of the GO tools are theme-able, but right now I'm just using their default themes with a few tweaks for font sizes and colours.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results.