Archive for: skin
We here at GS thought it was a bold, yet welcome move when we saw Toyota release an official Toyota Scion theme for distribution in the Cydia App Store. Apple on the other hand wasn’t too thrilled. In a forum post detailed over at ModMyi, forum owner and repo admin Kyle Matthews claims to have been contacted by Toyota’s advertising agency “Velti”. The story is that Apple contacted the ad agency more or less demanding the ad be removed from circulation as well as the theme. After a couple of phone calls the deed was done and the Toyota Scion theme is no more.
Perhaps someone should tip Apple off to the fact that it is 100% legal to jailbreak and make use of Cydia…
If you’re eagerly awaiting Honeycomb to land on your device, or for an upcoming Honeycomb-powered device to launch, why not get in the spirit early? Install the Google Chrome Honeycomb theme and get touches of the new sleek UI enhancements that Android 3.0 provides right inside your browser window.
Download: Honeycomb Google Chrome Theme
Apple may know a thing or two about designing beautiful, intuitive user interfaces, but that doesn’t mean other competitors don’t get it right every once in a while as well. Windows Phone 7 in particular is more or less the polar opposite of Apple’s mobile OS. Instead of bright and flashy, WP7 is subdued and extremely minimal in design — truly unique in the modern smartphone world. It is so unique in fact that many people want to port the minimalistic UI to other platforms.
Truth be told, the above theme — called “OS7″ isn’t the first attempt at bringing WP7′s tiled interface to Curpertino’s iDevices, but it is certainly one of best attempts that we’ve seen. Complete with static and live tiles, auto-generated lists, and ability to run independently of Winterboard means OS7 is worth a hard look. Interested individuals can hit up the thread over at ModMyi to get in on the open beta. Oh, one more thing — the theme is plug-in-play, meaning no paid add-ons or third party plugins needed. Nice and easy, like it should be.
Video walk-through after the jump…
The once great king in the mobile world, Symbian, is dying a slow, painful death. Among the many upgrades the platform needs, the most easily visible one is the UI. It’s old and stogy (of course, that’s what Maemo is supposed to fix). But thanks to the easily customized nature of the platform, 3rd party skins and themes can be easily installed. On that note, if you’d like to get the HTC Sense UI theme running on your Symbian S60 or S^3 device, a quick trip to the Nokia Mobile Blog will net you all the necessary files. A word of caution: If you’re really interested in this, you’ll want to download the needed files sooner rather than later. Past ports of Sense UI to other platforms have brought out HTC’s legal hounds. I can’t imagine this instance would be any different.
With that out of the way, we’ll add that the theme at least looks rather nice and includes the full swath of features present on any normal HTC handset, save for the obvious such as HTCSense.com support. So go ahead and give it a shot. Be sure to let us know how it goes!
- December 13, 2010 1:05 pm
While the iPhone 4 may be my current device of choice, I put in many months with a Moto Droid and came to appreciate the platform overall. During that time there were a few apps that really stood out, particularly Launcher Pro. Say what you will about the so called performance of the stock Android launcher, but at the end of the day the harsh reality is that it sucks. I’ve seen phones ranging from 528MHz up to 1.5GHz overclocked display shakey, stuttery homescreens. Launcher Pro fixes that and then some.
Besides the dramatically smoother and faster homescreen interaction, Launcher Pro also allows end users to customize the look and layout with skins. On that note, Launcher Pro forum user “Benny879″ went ahead and crafted a few Gingerbread-themed skins for users to install.
If the green is too much for you, there’s a gray-toned version available as well. The additional color schemes and any install help you may seek can be found in the Launcher Pro Forums.
The general consensus amongst smartphone enthusiasts is that Android skins and most homescreens are more trouble than they’re worth. Delays in updates and the reduced performance they often bring negate any advantages. But Kite UI could make believers out of even us.
Much like Windows Phone 7, Kite UI is different. It’s much more free-flowing in nature to the point where individual apps blend into each other rather than appearing as walled gardens of code, designed for one specific task.
Unfortunately for those of you ready to download Kite UI this very instant, the project is in it’s early stages. With that said, the small team behind Kite UI is looking for experienced coders to get the project moving on a fast track. Anyone who fits the mold is asked to check out this thread over at XDA Forums as well as shoot a PM to XDA member “Liquidice“.
What do you think: The first truly worthwhile Android skin/homescreen replacement? Hop inside for some screenshots and a quick video showing off Kite UI in action…
- November 24, 2010 1:13 pm
For the last year, HTC has been hitting plenty of hits on the Android front. Using their Sense UI layed atop Google’s mobile OS has brought both companies quite a bit of success. It’s almost hard to remember when HTC and Windows Mobile were just as friendly. But a time may come when HTC tosses Android aside too and moves forward — alone. In an interview with Pocket-Lint, HTC’s director of User Experience, Drew Bamford, stated the following:
“We will do everything necessary to create the best experience possible. Right now, working with Microsoft and Google is the best approach, but that might not be the case in the future”
Basically, if HTC isn’t given the freedoms they’re seeking from either Microsoft or Google, they’ll find it elsewhere or create a new experience from scratch. The latter option — making their own OS — is both intriguing and worrisome. On one side of the coin, options are great. However, do we really need another mobile OS?
With that said, we shouldn’t worry too much about HTC leaving Android or Windows Phone 7 anytime soon. Bamford states that he believes both companies will give HTC the access and freewill they are seeking. Let’s hope.
The customizers of the internet bunch are going to like the expanded Gmail theme library today. On their blog the Gmail team took the wraps off of 5 new themes: 2 minimalist light/dark, “Tree Tops”, “Marker”, and my personal favorite, “Android”. Head on over to your Gmail settings page and click on “Themes” to check the new ones out. They’re not all grouped together so you’ll have to search for a quick second.
The two minimalist themes are simple light/dark skins — bare minimum. Tree Tops gives your gmail account the look of a rain forest. Android has the famed green paint plastered all over the place as well as a couple of nifty Android guys hangin’ out. Finally, Marker takes the look of a piece of paper with highlighter markings making up the borders and such.
Ok, I have to correct myself. Android and Marker are my two favorites. The naming scheme is pretty much self explanatory. Check out the screenshots inside as a sort of “dry run”…
- October 25, 2010 11:28 am
On my year-long stint with Android, I went through my fair share of homescreen replacements. The stock Android homescreen wasn’t particularly bad. It was just laggy. (No phone with a 600+ MHz processor should skip and jump when moving between screens.) And then LauncherPro came into my life. It was fast, quick, and had a relatively light memory footprint. I was in heaven.
But if it was flair that you wanted, LauncherPro wasn’t the right homescreen replacement for you. Unfortunately, a lot of those fancier homescreen replacements had terrible performance. This new homescreen replacement, Slick UI, aims to try to mesh functionality and a pretty face without the usual accompanying performance hits. Can it do it…?
