If there’s one defining characteristic of Android, it’s the operating system’s extensive customisability. Since I’m quite curious what you guys are doing to your phones, I figured I might as well just ask you what your phone looks like – homescreens, widgets, applications, lock screen, whatever. Another thing that has me curious – what Android version are you running? Do you use a custom ROM, or do you prefer stock?
It’s not just curiosity – I’ve found out about a lot of cool widgets simply by looking at other people’s phones. So, without further ado – My white (international) Galaxy SII, running the latest CyanogenMod 9 nightly, meaning Android 4.0.4. I’m using CM9’s own Trebuchet launcher.
From left to right, the first three home screens run full-sized widgets. There’s Minimal Reader Pro, Android Pro Widgets’ bookmark widget, and Android Pro Widgets’ calendar widget. The fourth screen is my default home screen, running two instances of Minimalistic Text (the phone’s name and a bettery widget), and the default Ice Cream Sandwich clock widget. The fifth and final home screen contains my most-used applications, and a weather widget from Beautiful Widgets (I’m still looking for a nice, ICS/Holo-themed 4×1 weather widget).
No modding when it comes to my lock screen, other than displaying the phone’s name again. The About phone panel shows the version I’m running.
As you can see, I’m not using anything particularly exotic – I like my experience rather stock (CM9-stock, that is), partly because Ice Cream Sandwich is quite pretty as it is, but also because the more you hack the CM9 nightlies, the more likely it becomes you’ll run into problems upgrading to newer nightlies.
Now, while there’s a definite focus on Android in this thread, you’re of course free to show off your other devices.
I don’t have time to screw around with my phone too much, I prefer to screw around with more multi-purpose devices
I like to screw around with female variants of the human race, but to each his own, I guess. 😉
A female is much more multipurpose than a phone…
You have your female trained better than mine
ha ha hahah hah hahahah…that’s funny
And can be heavily customized, too, but the cost of all the accessories!
You use your female stock or you modified it? Do you run sex, cooking and cleaning apps on her?
Mine got stolen in a bar
Your GF? or your phone? I’m confused.
In Thom’s taskmanager…”Pick up new car” is the only entry not blotted out:-)
I use the official firmware but had to hack past a few Samsung hurdles to get to more sane defaults. The changes Samsung have made are quite bad and I thought I could live with it but I’ll be moving back to cm9 when I have some time to spare.
I only use three workspaces because I tend to find that widgets and things bog me down.
left
http://db.tt/VKVV4MHZ
centre/home
http://db.tt/2Zblmy9y
right
http://db.tt/s5b0yL7x
lock
http://db.tt/HBYWLMQD
official firmware (rooted)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1544487
trebuchet apk (works with all ICS ROMs)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410674
default ICS ui/lockscreen (doesn’t work that well compared to CM9)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1443498
Edited 2012-04-11 23:55 UTC
I would post a screenshot of my Windows Phone but there is such a lack of customization options, what would be the point? It has my most used tiles right up front with their live updates, my less used tiles a flick down, and the rest of the apps a flick to the left.
Oh, and I use the blue color scheme, much easier on my eyes than the red or yellow.
For those who must know, my most used apps are Phone, People, Messaging, Gmail, “Me” (social notifications), Twitter, work email, and blog email. The phone is so rarely used though, I should move it down to the bottom. I live a sad, text-based life.
Edited 2012-04-12 01:00 UTC
Text is awesome, man!!
I’d take a clean text interface over bubbly widgets anytime.
I agree wholeheartedly! My favorite WMs on Unix-like OSes running on older hardware are still the *boxen (Fluxbox, Openbox, Blackbox) for their minimalism and text-based approach.
One thing I do not care for at all: The dripping-candy/polished plastic look of the first few OS X revisions. That look made its way into early versions of the iPhone GUI too, and was taken to extremes with KDE Plastik.
As far as I know, you can’t take screenshots with Mango.
I was going to post some of mine, but my regular camera battery is dead.
I also use the blue screen, with the white background (Matches my white Lumia 710).
I also live a text-based life. When somebody calls me, I usually hit ignore, then send them a text telling them to message me.
You can, but you have to install an app for it. There are two or three in the app store that are free, but I haven’t bothered.
I tend to get one or two phone calls every few days. My girlfriend’s job is in a call center so by the time work is over the last thing she wants to do is talk on the phone, and we never do. Instead we exchange hundreds of texts a day, and long-form emails every few days. We’re not exactly long-distance, but we live on opposite sides of Atlanta so it’s an hour drive one way; we tend to see each other only on weekends or mutual days off.
Of those one or two phone calls daily, they are either my best friend, my part time job or a wrong number/telemarketer. My full time job never calls since it’s almost as routine as my girl’s call center job. I’m the only IT staff at the part timer though, so I’m basically on call all the time. If not for that, I’d do away with a cellphone entirely and just carry a wifi-connected device.
Galaxy Nexus, no home screen widgets, black background. I do have some ‘toggle’ widgets in the notification bar, including one that is for wireless tether. Rom is Codename (custom rom).
lovely bit of hardware that lacks only a removable SD slot in my opinion.. ok, could do with an IR port also (got spoiled by using mobile devices and TV Remote apps).
Stock ICS 4.0.2 though.. actually spent time on Saturday learning how to flash stock images onto it. (seems it didn’t like changing it’s incryption pin after being encrypted.. wtf.. but fixed now)
The only screenshot I’ve ever taken of my phone. A few months old and the resolution was halved to better fit in another forum (it’s a Galaxy Nexus).
http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/galnexscrot1.php
Don’t ask me what I did cos I honestly can’t remember. Totally lost interest in smartphones, and Android in particular (it’s a mess). Changed ROMs a few times since that screenshot and it all looks pretty stock now. I’m treating it like an appliance instead of an operating system, hence I’ve stopped caring.
I’d rather waste my time customizing terminal Xresources and vim colours, tbh.
Edit: I’ve also got a screenshot of my N9’s Meego Harmattan screen, but that one’s basically the same as any other N9 screen, so not gonna bother posting.
Edited 2012-04-12 01:15 UTC
I absolutely love it!! The black on white is great for my tired eyes, and the “circle of circles” is very close to mockups I’ve done for my document/workflow-centric OS interface designs.
Maybe Google Goggles can help me…my next Android phone will look like that!
I’d advice against running a bright homescreen on AMOLED displays, though. It’s quite a killer on the battery. Didn’t believe at first, but then I actually tried it and the monitoring graphs showed the screen consuming ~10% more power than normal over a few hours.
Android by itself isn’t exactly the most frugal OS with regards to power consumption, tbh. It’s probably better than it’s ever been, but still not quite at iOS (and possibly WinPhone) levels yet.
Also, I didn’t expect you to like this sort of thing. More text, less icons, mate!!… just like your OB and Fluxbox menus.
Edited 2012-04-13 02:49 UTC
Well to be honest, white on black would look better. And I love the icon layout simply because it brings back memories of my old project-that-never-was.
As for AMOLED screens, I don’t think the next phone I buy will have one, unless someone loves me enough come Christmastime.
My phone is the same as my other computers. Stock.
15 years ago my Windows 3.1 install was completely customized with an aftermarket shell to make it look like Windows 95 (my computer couldn’t run 95). That was Calmira (http://www.calmira.de/) and it was awesome. I was 13.
12 years ago my Windows was running the Litestep shell and I had made my own minimalist theme. My ICQ was hacked to have custom graphics and load screen. I was 16 and it was awesome.
8 years ago I was running a minimalist window manager on Debian linux sid and managing everything myself. I was 20 and it was awesome.
4 years ago I got a new PC and it was too much trouble to get Linux to work properly on it. Moved to stock Windows and it was awesome to not have to spend all that time customizing.
3 years ago I started to get busy at work and decided to stop running linux there because it was getting to be more work than it was worth. I was 25 and life was moving ahead.
2 years ago I got a mac and left it bone stock. I don’t spend any time screwing with my computer for no gain. Shortly after I got an iPhone for work… I don’t spend any time customizing it because I’d rather spend my time using it.
So my phone is like all the other computing devices that I own. They started out highly customized and I learned a lot. I’m glad I did all that playing when I did, but I’m also glad I’m not spending my time on it anymore. Eventually I grew out of it.. I reckon most people will do the same with time.
With the exception that I use a Windows 7 PC and a Motorola Droid X, I’m right there with you. No time for all the fiddling around; I just need to get some work done. That’s too bad, though; I like all the fiddling around.
+1
Same. And everyone I know (except this one person, I should make him my best friend) asked why do I still have default Win 7 wallpaper…
To me it’s perfect – not so dull as one color fill and yet not color salad to make reading icons a chore or distracting attention (oooh anime girl’s boobies…).
the internet is still quaking from the hulk smaash you just deliverred.
I’ve seen a lot of folk go through that evolution all the way to stock user. For me, it still depends on the device.
Work system builds – stripped down using stock options since they are work rigs not wiz-bling entertainment rigs. Nothing beyond some cmd scripting and install options really though. (blackviper’s site references for services to disable)
Personal system build Windows – it’s a gaming environment so it’s mostly stock with optional crap left out, patches up to date, drivers up to date.. otherwise stock cause the desktop is just a brief flash before Steam kicks of the game-de-jour.
Now, the game.. that’s tweaked thanks to re-discovering the love of modding.. and oh how Skyrim can be improved with mods.
Personal system build *nix – always minimal install plus custom package selection. Settings changes depend on the distribution. This is usually done with a managed set of build scripts though (bare metal to fully installed and adjusted system is about an hour and a half depending on network connection).
I still like to tinker with the mobile devices too. The N900 was a joy to muck with (shame about the N910 not going out to public consumers.. wouldn’t be using Android now if Nokia had some vision). No custom rom on the Android side for me yet though, just did a stock ICS reinstall on the weekend due to a full device encryption issue (decided it didn’t recognize the PIN change.. or original PIN.. so time to start over with a clean OS).
WinXP with Lightstep.. that does take me back though.. those would be the days I was doing full themes and custom whatevers. No.. don’t have time to sit and tweak matching icons/background/widget graphics anymore.. my tinker time focuses less on the cosmetics these days.
http://i.imgur.com/Va2z5.png
Holding down the Power button + Home key
LG Optimus 2X P990HN
running stock Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread)
with LG launcher which I can’t seem to find a way to remove it
ICS with the Galaxy live wallpaper. Simple white icons and hidden notification bar.
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/16249408/1/Screenshots?h=55fa1c
http://bit.ly/HyQZY1 Main Screen
http://bit.ly/HJnjpF Secondary Screen
http://bit.ly/IIYd9N Lock Screen
Running the TexasIce Cream Sandwich ROM on a Nexus One. (Android 4.0.3 in the version I have installed)
LauncherPro, Minimal Text widget
Edited 2012-04-12 05:09 UTC
I have been a bit shy to try it, how does it run? Is there an update.zip that work with clockwork or do I have to give up on it and repartition like they say on XDA?
Requires a repartition. This was the first custom ROM I ever installed on my phone, I had no prior experience at all. It took me 2 days of reading before I started and a day of taking a lot of care not to screw it up before I had it up-and-running.
If I’d been more comfortable with the process, blackrose largely automates the repartition. Then it was just installing clockwork and the actual flashing, which was totally painless.
Since getting it installed it’s been an adventure. I have to use the tiamat kernel as the default one causes me to get sleep-of-death all the time, but on the build and kernel I am running I have a stable, fast device that thankfully is feature-complete enough for me to be satisfied for now. Certain camera functions are broken but that’s the price I pay for running preview (not even alpha) code.
cm9 stock with cm9 calendar widget
and fennec nightly, not chrome beta 😉
My phone’s pretty boring. Stock G-Nex. I have the Power Widget and apps that I use often on the main screen, slightly less-used apps one screen to the right, voice and text shortcuts one to the left. I hated all the backgrounds, but black was too… black so I got I Love Color and set it to a darkish blue. That’s it.
running a stock Android 2.2.2.
Running the clock, calendar, 3G and wireless widgets.
Shortcuts for email, sms, internet and camera.
I’ve customized the standby time and the ringtone.
I guess I’ve lost most of my creativity customizing X-Windows managers back in the early UNIX days. No patience to do that nowadays.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini pro, running stock gingerbread ROM, launcher, etc.
I did have to spend some time customizing it before it became bearable, as is sadly the case with any newer phone, but it was mostly about removing removable crapware and pushing the rest in a dark corner of the software menu, getting rid of stock widgets, telling Google what I think of their offer to make a copy of all my personal data on their servers, putting a calendar widget on the primary home screen and a few power management widgets in a secondary home screen, installing Juice Defender and a timer soft (how dare they sell a phone without that ?), etc… Nothing very visual, mostly maintenance work.
As a new Android user, I hate how difficult they have made it to close applications so far, and am interested in a way to make the lock screen more useful so that I can directly access new texts and similar stuff.
Edited 2012-04-12 07:16 UTC
In the ICS developer settings, there is an option to close apps rather than drop them into the background. Not sure how it handles apps meant to run in the background but that should generally stop any apps you move focus away from if enabled.
Thanks !
My Asus Eee PC 701 stock homescreen Android-x86 ICS 4.0.3 RC1.
My HTC Dream (G1) stock theme available by KustHome. You can change absolutely everything. Unfortunately it was a little slow and it`s no longer supported AFAIK. I have not seen anything on Android from all your screenshot that can compare to its flexibility.
Samsung Galaxy S II
still with stock Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread)
http://i.imgur.com/vk3HD.png
I use the only phone that has an e-ink screen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE
My “home screen” isn’t flashy, but it takes no battery power to display it. I wish there were more phones on the market with e-ink screens…
http://i39.tinypic.com/14vo3th.jpg
Running Cyanogenmod 7.2 (RC1), I try to have as few widgets and background apps running as possible; just the built in Music and Power Control widgets along with shortcuts to all the apps I use on my homescreen.
The only additional (left hand) screen just has bookmarks and shortcuts to games for quicker access than going through menus… in fact I very rarely use the launcher/app menu.
I’d like to be running a Meego phone now but Nokia persist with their self defeating policies on price and support for the N9 *grumble*. The only cheap open source (and not tracked by Google) route for phones is Cyanogenmod (as far as I can tell).
I’ve got an LG Optimus One P500 with its stock Android 2.2, and very few apps and even less customization. Probably I will download the updates, I hope they fix some bugs.
I’m quite tired of customizing everything, and past year all my customization will has been absorsed by my house.
My PC still has a Cataclysm wallpaper, and my MacBook still sports the original Lion’s one.
…just like on my N900.
So no Android here. And btw. its not the default stock N900 Desktop:
http://www.abload.de/img/magi2n900aik74.png
Here are my 7 home screen panels and lock screen.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19004216/RCC_CaptivateGlide.jpg
As to what’s in there:
Screen -3 Memes: RoidRage Comic Maker, Meme Generator, slideshow widget currently displaying a “Condescending Wonka” meme.
Screen -2 Productivity: Shortcuts to QuickOffice Pro, Convertr unit converter, Calendar, Google Translate, Notes and Calculator.
Screen -1 Utilities: Running Applications task widget, Tesla LED widget (to use the camera flash as flashlight), Circle Battery Widget, and shortcuts to My Files, ArchiDroid (zip manager), Android Memory Cleaner and Dropbox.
Screen 0 Main: BeWeather weather & clock widget, and shotcuts to YouMail (visual voicemail) and Contacts.
Screen 1 Games: Shortcuts to Bejeweled 2, Sonic CD, Mines (minesweeper), CopyCat (Simon), Spincube (Rubik’s Cube) and Frozen Bubble.
Screen 2 Multimedia: Picture frame with my cat Vequi, and shortcuts for Gallery, Music, Videos and Camera.
Screen 3: Internet: Shortcuts to Whatsapp Messenger, TuneIn Radio, Shazam, YouTube, Twitter, E-mail (non-GMail), GMail and the Android Market with its crappy new name.
Common to all home screens: Phone, Messaging, Browser and Applications.
Last picture is the lock screen with a nice picture a friend of mine took in Dorado, Puerto Rico.
Hey, AnythingButVista, don’t forget that nice stock Vista wallpaper.
Correct. The only useful thing out of Vista so I might as well get the most use out of it. :p
http://www.uploadgeek.com/image-7366_4F873C23.jpg
http://www.uploadgeek.com/image-AA44_4F873C23.jpg
http://www.uploadgeek.com/image-21B6_4F873C23.jpg
http://www.uploadgeek.com/image-A257_4F873C23.jpg
Dafuq? I am the only one who uses his phone just to make phone calls and not care about how it looks?
no, thats me for the most part.
You just forget that android users are the ricers/myspace users of the mobile phone world. :p
… to do much customizing. It’s pretty much stock Cyanogenmod nightly.
Stock ICS 4.0.4 with the Xperia Home launcher (just look at some Xperia S screenshots on Google and that’s about it). Not really better than the default ICS launcher but not worse either.
I don’t even use widgets: the clock in the notifications bar is enough for me, I can satisfy my weather needs looking out through the window, I have bluetooth, wifi, gps and 3g enabled all the time and I’m not into social networks… I’ve yet to find any useful widget or any app I’d want to “widgetize” (which might have something to do with me not finding WP7 attractive at all).
My not jailbroken basic iOS setup
Lockscreen
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4883635/iOS%20Lockscreen.png
Screen 1
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4883635/iOS%20Screen%201.PNG
Screen 2
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4883635/iOS%20Screen%202.PNG
Coming from Android and never having anything on my homescreen, I feel more at home in iOS since I essentially don’t have one.
Edit: I’m not an iOS troll, I just didn’t read the “article” asking for Android specific stuff.
Edited 2012-04-13 04:40 UTC
APPLICATIONS IN FOLDERS NAMED BY CATEGORY
BOTTOM SHORTCUT BAR DISABLED
(DEFAULT ANDROID GUI DESIGN IS A BIT OF A CLUSTERFUCK)
Your caps lock key is stuck. It’s the one on the left side of your keyboard, above the shift key.
http://www.uploadgeek.com/share-37D9_4F880A3B.html
http://www.uploadgeek.com/share-7336_4F880A1A.html
I use WP7, so I only have random tiles. It’s nice.