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AA NewsShow us your Homescreen! 250 days ago | | 6 Comments

Show Us Your Homescreen! 14th September, 2012

home-show

So here we are, our first featured homescreen as part of our new “Show Us Your Homescreen” segment. Thankyou for everyone that entered and please keep those entries coming, I really enjoyed checking out everything that you have done.

It was a very tight vote, with surprising variation in the voting by the different members of the Android Australia team. The winner in the end (by the narrowest of margins) is gurgle.

I’m personally a big fan of this setup, as it really is quite different to the default Android setup. For isntance, it only has one homescreen and forgoes a button to access the app drawer, using a swipe gesture instead. I’m also a fan of the lockscreen and was not surprised to hear that many of gurgle’s friends can’t figure out how to unlock the phone when they first hold it.

Let us know what you think of gurgle’s efforts in the comments, but remember to keep any criticism nice and constructive. If you think you can do better, or even if you think you can do worse, then be sure to send me your entry at homescreens@askmeandroid.com with the subject “Show Us Your Homescreen.”. All the rules and details can be found here, and remember that if you want any ideas for changing your launcher, then head over to our Launcher Roundup here.

With no further ado, I’ll let gurgle explain his homescreen setup himself.

So i know it’s supposed to be mostly about homescreens, but i’m pretty happy with my lockscreen, so i’ve included that too. Hope you enjoy!

Lockscreen

Save for a few minor improvements and widget replacements, i’ve had this lockscreen for pretty much the whole time i’ve owned an Android phone. I’ve tried others, including the stock ICS & JB lockscreens, but i find myself consistently coming back to this. I just love it. It has all the glanceable info i need, while still looking f%*$#ng money (Editor’s edit).
  • First off, the whole thing is done with WidgetLocker. Awesome app, it allows virtually unlimited customization. One of it’s cool features is it lets you overlap widgets, allowing a pretty tight layout (as im sure you can see).
  • Widgetlocker also allows you to set custom sliders. The Daft Punk slider goes so well with the wallpaper, people sometimes can’t work out how to unlock my phone.
  • The clock is TypoClock (the original, accept no imitators!). The paid a version allows you to use a custom colour. I had no problem shelling-out to keep the Holo cyan theme going.
  • I have Tasker set phone profiles depending on my location, (as you can see, right now i’m at home) the name of which i have displayed by Minimalistic Text. Tasker rocks, i’m always looking out for a cool new way of automating my phone with it.
  • I have another Minimalistic Text widget show the weather at my current location. Minimalistic text is pretty powerful, it’s almost unbelievable it’s a free app.
  • All unread notifications show up on my lockscreen via Missed It!. There is the perfect amount of room in that spot for 4 different notification types.
  • Finally, i have Battery Widget in the corner.

Homescreen

I rock Widgetlocker’s homescreen sibling, Nova Launcher. It’s fast, stable and full-featured. I have the first panel of my app drawer set to 20 of my most used apps, allowing me to keep the homescreen clean and uncluttered, with only one homescreen page and a scrollable 2-pane dock. I only allow google apps in the primary dock pane, with the secondary one made up of 5 high use apps and the Battery Widget again (Nova is cool in that it lets you place 1×1 widgets in the dock). When tapped it links to my phone’s battery use screen (settings > battery). The app drawer is invoked by a swipe up gesture, negating the need for an icon in the dock. The only other things i have on the homescreen are Simple Calendar, showing today’s and tomrorrow’s events, and another Tasker/Minimalistic Text profile widget. Oh, and obligatory Google Search widget, kinda necessary here because i don’t have the Google Now link from my lockscreen.

Wallpaper

Lockscreen – random Daft Punk wallpaper i found ages ago.
Homescreen – stock CM10 wallpaper
Written by : Bob is a physicist currently working in Milan, Italy, though originally he's from Newcastle. He's been an Android addict for a while now and rarely stops tinkering with any of his devices. His dream is to tinker with his phone long enough to teach it to fetch him a beer.
  • gurgle

    I’ve since upgraded from my aging Desire HD to a new Galaxy SIII (yes, i succumbed) and managed to replicate it pretty well on the new phone. The extra screen real estate allows for 7 apps in the dock which is pretty cool, and i’ve made the homescreen calendar Holo cyan instead of plain white now too.

  • Nathan Elcoate

    Awesome great job!!

  • Cam Charles

    oh man i just want to take all that text and align it or something lol the designer in me is just freaking out at the randomness and messy-ness of it ha, its all personal choice though isnt it and this one isnt for me, but the fact you can easily do that is a thing to love about android

    also i never realised nova was from teslacoil i may just go back and try it again out of principal

  • http://androidaustralia.com.au Josh Berg

    I love this design. It won me over from the moment I saw it.

    Makes me think I need to be doing more with my many Androids…..

  • Nathan Elcoate

    I love Simple Calender…

    When does week 2 start?

    • Bob Burgess

      I’ll close up entries over the weekend of the 22nd/23rd to get a couple of days of voting before I post it. I’m actually flying back to Australia on the 27th so I’ll have to write it up by then.