AddictiveTips » Haroon Q. Raja

Google Schemer For iPhone Released; We Go Hands-On

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:29:08 +0000

If you haven’t heard of Google’s social activities sharing and recommendation service Schemer, we don’t blame you. It hasn’t received as much press as it deserves (ironically, we missed out on covering it as well). Better late than never though, and what better time to check this gem out in detail, than upon the launch of its iPhone app. While the Android app has been around for a while, Google has just released the iPhone app for Schemer a few minutes ago, and we’re here to take it on a spin for you. Read on for our full review.

Google Schemer is basically a location-aware social activities sharing service that lets you ‘scheme’ things that you would like to do, while giving you the opportunity of browsing through what others are scheming that you may join in. Accoring to Google, “Schemer recommends stuff based on time of day, weather, your location, and more” while letting you “Keep track of what you’ve been wanting to do” and “Keep up with the latest scheming from folks you’re connected to on Google+”. While certainly not meant for the introverts amongst us, it is definitely a novel concept for the more adventurous social types.

Upon launching the iOS app, you are presented with a pretty hip-looking login screen that depicts the purpose of the service itself – people doing activities together. Log in with your Google account and you’ll get a location access request. Allow it and you will finally land on the Schemes page that serves as your scheming hub.

The first time you log in, you’ll be requested to select some favorite activities, in order to be shown relevant schemes that would actually interest you. The list covers a lot of interesting topics, so feel free to select as many as you want. Done with it? Now would be a great time to search for schemes in your area by tapping on the ‘Find Schemes’ text box on top of the Schemes page.

Searching can be done based on keywords, location or both. The results are displayed as a list and from there, you can tap on the green + sign to join the scheme. You can also tap any of the displayed schemes to view its details before deciding whether you want to join it or not. The details view shows you the location, the original schemer as well as others who want to do the same activity.

Don’t want to follow suit and would rather lead in your own scheming career? Just hit the new scheme icon (the notepad and pencil button) on the top left, and you can start creating a scheme of your own! Go ahead, be creative, while keeping in mind though that many others might come across this scheme, so it’ll be a good idea to keep your dark fantasies at bay here.

As a part of Google’s plan on building Google+ right into all of their services, Schemer also integrates deeply with Google+. On the Activity page, you can see a timeline view of what you and people in your Google+ circles have been scheming, along with notifications about relevant Schemer activities of your Google+ contacts as well as specific activity on your schemes or schemes you have decided to join.

Up next is the Profile page that is all about you. It lists the schemes you have planned, the ones you have done, your schemes that have inspired others most, a little info on people who use Schemer and are in your circles or have you in their circles, and people who inspire you i.e. people whose schemes you have joined. There is also a ‘Latest Scheming’ view that takes you to your own latest activity on Schemer.

Tapping on ‘Want to do’ takes you to all your schemes, including schemes created by you and those created by others that you have ever wanted to be a part of. Here, you can tap on any scheme to bring up its details, where you can write it off once you have done it, or remove it if the idea no longer appeals to you.

Similarly, the ‘Done’ section lists all the schemes that you have completed (or claimed to have completed in Schemer). Just like in the ‘Want to do’ section, you can tap a scheme here for the details where you can remove it if you’re completely over it already, just keep it there for the record, or decide you want to do it all over again. Lastly, there is the ‘More’ section that lets you sign out, in addition to providing you with the never-read but always-present options like help, terms of use, privacy policy etc.

It’s a pity that it isn’t optimized for the iPad yet but hopefully a future update will fix that. All in all, Schemer is a great idea executed brilliantly. If it doesn’t take off even after the release of the iPhone app, there has to be something terribly wrong somewhere. Let’s see if people get to be adventurous enough to scheme with their fellow hipsters, or give it the same treatment that Google’s social products have been getting from the masses so far.

So what are you waiting for? Grab Schemer from the App Store and scheme on. Oh and don’t forget to let us know of your take (as well as any of your interesting schemes) in the comments.

Download Google Schemer for iPhone / iPod Touch (iTunes App Store)

How To Install Any App As A System App On Android [Guide]

Haroon Q. Raja — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:20 +0000

While installing an app on your Android device is as simple as searching for it in the Google Play Store and hitting install, or sideloading its APK on your phone, that always installs them as user apps (also referred to as data apps). At times certain apps need to be installed as system apps rather than user apps in order to utilize their full potential, and that’s where things get a little complicated. In this guide, we will show you how you can install any Android app as a system app on your Android device.

The apps installed on your Android devices can be broadly categorized as system apps or user apps, based on their installation location. The user apps are just all your normal app installations through the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore or sideloading. These go into the /data partition of your Android phone, which is the part of the internal memory made available for user data and apps.

System apps are basically the apps that come pre-installed with your ROM. In a standard Android user environment, the user doesn’t have write access to the /system partition and thus, installing or uninstalling system apps directly isn’t possible. The process isn’t as hard as it may sound. However, there is a catch.

In order to install an app as a system app on your Android device, your device must either be rooted, or have a custom recovery installed (or both). Usually pretty much everyone who has a custom recovery installed uses a rooted ROM, so we’ll just be using the method for rooted phones.

Root Access File Manager Method

Requirements

Your Android device must be rooted. If it isn’t already, check out our guide on rooting Android.
A root access file manager of your choice. We will be using ES File Explorer for the purpose.
The APK file for the app you want to install as system app. If you have the app installed as a normal user app, don’t worry; we’ll show you how to grab its APK.

Procedure

Configuring ES File Explorer for root read/write access (required only once):
1. Launch ES File Explorer, press Menu and tap ‘Settings’.
2. In the settings, enable the ‘Up to root’ check box.
3. Further down in the settings, enable ‘Root Explorer’ check box. You will get a warning that you should confirm.
4. You will then get the Superuser permissions request that you must allow.
5. Finally, enable the ‘Mount File System’ check box, and press the back key to get back to the explorer interface. ES File Explorer is now configured to work as a root explorer. You do not need to do this again on the same device now, unless you uninstall ES File Explorer, perform a factory reset or install another ROM.
Finding the APK of an already-installed normal app (skip to step 3 if you already have the APK):
1. First of all, install the app from Play Store, if you haven’t already done that.
2. Launch ES File Explorer and go to /data/app. (You may have to press the back button to get to / first).
3. If you know the icon of the app, you can easily find it here. If you are having trouble finding the app here due to the confusing names or because of having a lot of apps installed, just search for the app in Google Play Store in a web browser and look at its Play Store link for the name. The file name will basically be the part after ?id= in its market link (and before any other question mark that may or may not appear in the link). For example, the market link for ES File Explorer is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.estrongs.android.pop and its APK file in /data/app is com.estrongs.android.pop-1.apk.
If you already have the APK of the file that you want to install as a system app, make sure you have transferred it to your device’s SD card if you haven’t done that already. Also make sure you know the path where you have copied it on the SD card.
Once you have located the required APK on the SD card from ES File Explorer, tap-and-hold on its icon till you get a menu, and tap ‘Cut’. You should see a little blue arrow on the bottom of the screen now. (You may select ‘Copy’ instead of ‘Cut’ if you are copying a file over from the SD card and want to keep a copy there. In case of copying an APK from /data/app, always use ‘Cut’.)
Now press the back button till you reach / and then browse to /system/app/
Tap the little arrow that you see on the bottom of the screen. It will bring up a pane with the icon of the copied file.
Tap on the file’s icon, and it will be transferred to /system/app/.
Now find the app’s icon in the list of files there and tap-and-hold on it till you get the menu.
Scroll down in the menu till you see ‘Properties’ and tap on it. You will now see the properties dialog.
Tap the ‘Change’ button in front of the Permissions to bring up the permissions dialog.
Make sure everything under ‘Read’ is checked, only ‘User’ is checked under ‘Write’ and nothing is checked under ‘Execute’ Your screen should look like the following:
Tap OK on this screen and then on the Properties screen. Your app’s permissions are now set correctly.
Reboot your device. Your app is now ready to be used as a system app.

ADB Method

Requirements

Your Android device must be rooted. If it isn’t already, check out our guide on rooting Android.
ADB installed and configured on your computer. See our guide for the complete method.
The APK file for the app you want to install as system app. If you have the app installed as a normal user app, don’t worry; we’ll show you how to grab its APK.

Procedure

If you have the app installed on your phone as a normal user app:

Search for the app in Google Play Store on your computer in a web browser, and open its Play Store page.
Look at the Play Store link of the app for a string that starts with ?id= and ends before any further question mark in the link. That will be part of the APK’s name on your phone. For example, the market link for ES File Explorer is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.estrongs.android.pop and its APK file in /data/app is com.estrongs.android.pop-1.apk. If you see another question mark after such a name in the link, ignore everything after that.
Launch a command prompt window and enter the following commands one by one:
```
adb remount
adb shell
su
cd /data/app/
```
Now enter this command, making sure you replace ‘file_name_part_comes_here’ with the partial file name for your app that you found out from the link in step B. Don’t forget the asterisk ( * ) in the end.
```
ls file_name_part_comes_here*
```
In case of our example from step B, the command would be
```
ls com.estrongs.android.pop*
```
As a result of the command in step D, you will see the complete file name of the app. In case of our example, the result would be com.estrongs.android.pop-1.apk. It is usually the same partial app name that we got from the link in step B, followed by a hyphen ( – ), a number (usually but not always 1), and the .apk extension. Viola, we have located the file name of the required APK.
Now enter this command, replacing full_file_name_comes_here with the full file name including the extension:
```
mv full_file_name_comes_here /system/app/full_file_name_comes_here
exit
exit
adb reboot
```
In case of our example, the command would be
```
mv com.estrongs.android.pop-1.apk /system/app/com.estrongs.android.pop-1.apk
```
And you’re done.
Your app has been moved to the system partition, making it a system app from a user app. You may now close the command prompt window. The phone will now reboot for the changes to take effect.

If you have the APK of the file available on your computer:

Open a command prompt window and navigate to the location of the APK file on your computer.
Enter these commands, replacing file_name_comes_here with the full name of the APK file including the extension:
```
adb remount
adb push file_name_comes_here /system/app/
adb shell chmod 644 /system/app/file_name_comes_here
adb reboot
```
For example if the file name is FileManager.apk, the commands would be like:
```
adb push FileManager.apk /system/app
adb shell chmod 644 /system/app/FileManager.apk
```
And you’re done!

Your phone will reboot and your app will be ready to be used as a system app.

Method for unrooted devices with custom recovery installed

If you have a custom recovery and haven’t rooted your phone, you already know what you’re doing, and know that you just have to flash the zip file of the apps you need to install as system apps.

Comparison Of Best Free Cloud Storage And Sync Services

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:59:21 +0000

With the recent release of Google Drive, along with all the existing cloud storage and sync services out there like Microsoft SkyDrive, Dropbox, SugarSync, iCloud and Ubuntu One, you might be wondering what free cloud storage service is right for you. There are countless such comparisons out there but most of them aren’t focused on the free tiers of these services, or simply don’t include all these services. That’s why we are bringing you a detailed comparison of the free plans of all major cloud storage and sync services that should make it easier for you to choose the one that suits you best. Read on for the complete comparison.

As you might have noticed, we haven’t included any services that don’t offer desktop sync with their free plans, and that’s the reason you wouldn’t see Box.net and some other names in the list. That’s said, here’s the comparison:

Blue: Best in that aspect
Red: Major shortcoming
[1] New SkyDrive accounts get 7 GB; old accounts can retain 25 GB (if claimed in time).
[2] Dropbox holds limited time bonus quests every now and then, offering additional free bonus storage upon completion.
[3] No limit for files synced through PC clients; limit of 300 MB per file uploaded through web interface.
[4] No information found. Please let us know in the comments if you know about it.

Hands-On With The Google Drive App For Android [Review]

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:40:06 +0000

No cloud service these days can be complete without a companion Android app and the latest talk of the cloud town i.e. Google Drive is no exception. Now that Drive is finally out and about, and we have already taken it for a spin as a web and PC/Mac sync service, let’s turn to its Android app that’s also available on Google Play Store, and see what Google’s entry into the cloud storage arena has to offer us on their own smartphone platform. More information after the break.

Overview

First and foremost, Google Drive for Android is not a new app. It’s the good old Google Docs app, rebranded. In fact if you have Docs installed and search for Drive in Play Store, you will see it installed and available as an update. In the app itself, not much has changed. It’s the same interface that we are all familiar with, with a few Drive-specific features added.

The Android client differs significantly from the Windows and Mac clients in that it does not give you a folder that’s kept in sync with the cloud. You just get a phone and tablet optimized interface to browse through the files stored on your drive, edit your Google Docs files directly, download them to your device or selectively make individual files stay in sync with the ‘Make available offline’ option.

Walkthrough

When you open the app, you are greeted with the standard Drive menu that lets you access your drive, recent, starred, shared and offline items. Opening your drive takes you to your list of files and folders that you can access just the way you could in Google Docs.

The files in Google Docs format or one of the formats supported by the Docs can be open in Drive itself. Here too, you get the same old interface you had in Google Docs. In case of files that aren’t on Google Docs format, tapping on them lets you download them to your device and then they either open in the default app set for that file type, or pop open a dialog asking you which app to use for opening them.

From the menu on the file list screen, you can create or upload a new item, sort the files by title, last modified, last opened by you or last edited by you, refresh the file list or send feedback if you want.

In the file list, every item has a downward-pointing arrow icon next to it, tapping which brings up a menu that lets you share the item with other collaborators (this is the Google Drive sharing and not the Android sharing), send it to others (this is the standard Android sharing that pops up all the available services installed on your phone that you can use to share the item), or make it available offline.

Tapping ‘more’ is basically the same as tapping-and-holding on an item to bring a context menu that also lets you rename or delete files, or bring up the ‘Open with’ dialog to select the app to open it with. Note that the ‘Send’, ‘Open with’ and ‘Make available Offline’ options are not available for folders.

Drawbacks

One drawback to rule them all: no syncing for folders. At times it makes one wonder how could something this important be overlooked in a cloud storage and syncing service. Drive for Android allows you to only make selective files available offline, meaning you can’t have a folder on your phone or tablet that stays synced with a folder in your drive which you could manage from your computer. When building it, what were they thinking? “Oh who could possibly make use of a folder in their Drive to which they can drag and drop files to make them accessible and synced across their Android phones as well as tablets at the same time? Nah, let’s skip it.”. Right!

This drawback aside, Google Drive for Android offers a simple, straightforward and elegant solution to accessing your Google Drive from your Android phones and tablets.

Hands-On With Google Drive For Web, Windows, Mac & Android [Review]

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:58:04 +0000

The wait is over – after years of speculation, Google Drive is finally here, with apps for Windows PC, Mac and Android available for download and iOS apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch coming soon. So what does Google’s long-awaited and much-anticipated cloud storage service have in store for you? Does it have what it takes to make a significant impact in today’s cloud storage market riddled with countless others? Read on to find out all of this and more after the break.

So what exactly is Google Drive all about? Short answer: Google Docs + Dropbox. Yes, it really is as simple as that. In fact Google Drive isn’t exactly an altogether new Google product at all – it is essentially Google Docs rebranded, with Dropbox-like syncing support for PC and Mac, and 5 GB of free storage. Watch the video above for Google’s introduction to Drive.

Key Features At A Glance

Here’s a great video put up by Google that walks you through most features of Google Drive:

Here is a summary of all Google Drive has to offer:

5 GB of free storage (Paid plans for up to 16 TB available)
10 GB maximum file size limit (Of course you are still limited by your total storage plan)
Apps for Windows PC and Mac OS X with full Dropbox-like folder syncing support
Selective Sync for PC and Mac clients, allowing you to only sync certain folders
Android app for online access to your files, with the ability to make files selectively available offline
Access your files from anywhere in a web browser using the web interface
Web interface also allows you to upload files
Direct access to your photos and videos in Google Drive from Google+ for easy sharing
Search your Google Drive files by type, owner and more, and even by text or objects in images and scanned documents
Directly view over 30 types of files online in the web interface, including MS Office and OpenOffice documents, spreadsheets, presentations, HD videos, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, AutoCAD, SVG, PDF, TTF and more.
Create, open and share files directly in Google Drive from certain compatible web apps and web apps, with a section in Chrome Web Store listing all web apps compatible with Google drive
Share and collaboratively edit files with others from anywhere in real-time with Google Docs, choosing whether collaborators can view, edit or comment on your files
Access up to 30 days old versions of your files, with the ability to revert back to any of them anytime

UPDATE: Our comparison of free tiers of all major cloud storage and sync services is up now, so if you want to choose which free cloud storage and sync service is the best for you, head over to it and see all the details before making your choice.

What’s Missing

Nothing in this world is perfect and Google Drive is no exception. We must admit it’s hard to think of what’s missing in Drive considering its feature set and the price tag of free (since we’re only considering the free plan here).

The first and foremost major thing missing is a Linux client. No sync solution can be complete without clients for all major operating systems and while it doesn’t have anywhere close the the market share of Windows, Linux is still used by many. Let’s hope Google addresses this issue by releasing a client for Linux soon.

Similarly, while there has been an official announcement upon release that iOS apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will be available soon, there is no mention of a Windows Phone app at all. Ideally, all three of these major smartphone operating systems should have been covered from the very start but at least iOS has a promise; Windows Phone doesn’t seem to be as lucky.

Another thing that has been neglected that should have definitely been there is folder syncing support in the Android app. Currently, only files can be made available offline in the Android app and the complete Drive can be accessed only when online. The ability to choose a folder on your phone or tablet for keeping it synced with a sub-folder in your Google Drive folder on your computer would have been a great way to manage file transfers to your Android device.

Also, there doesn’t seem to be support for playback of MP3 files in the web interface of Drive. This is surprising, considering the impressive file format support – even HD videos are playable, but not MP3s.

Get Google Drive

At the time of writing this post, Google Drive hasn’t been rolled out to everyone. To see if your Drive is ready, visit http://drive.google.com. If it’s ready, you will be greeted with a welcome screen, presented with an introduction of its features and then taken to a download page for downloading and installing the PC or Mac app, depending on your platform (which gets detected automatically). Installing the PC or Mac app is optional so if you don’t want sync, you can still access your drive online and use it just the same way as the old Google Docs.

Web Interface

Once you have access to Google Drive, visiting it online will present to you an interface strikingly similar to the old Google Docs interface. There are your usual editable Google Docs as well as viewable files of other formats supported by Google Drive. This now also includes videos that play in a nice YouTube-like player when opened.

Everything you had in Docs is still available and accessible the same way in Drive now. You can upload files from the web interface the same way. You can still choose to convert certain file formats (documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc.) to Google Docs format automatically while uploading. You can even convert PDFs and image files to Google Docs format using the built-in OCR.

Google Drive is about more than just cloud storage. It is also about sharing and collaboration. For this reason, all the collaboration features of Google Docs are also retained. From the web interface, you can share any file or folder with anyone else using the same trusted Google Docs interface, letting others collaborate on the same documents with you from anywhere.

Files and folders can be public (anyone can search for and access them), link-only (only those with the link can access) or private (only those you have explicitly shared them with can access). Collaborators can also chat with each other while viewing or editing a file in a pane built right into the editor window. Furthermore, you can choose if collaborators get to have viewer, editor or owner level access. In the ‘Shared with me’ view, you can see all the files shared by others with you and if you want to grab a copy of your own, simply drag them over to ‘My Drive’ or one of its sub-folders.

In the left-side menu, there is a ‘More’ option that when expanded reveals a few additional options including the very handy ‘Activity’ view. In this view, you can see an activity log of all your recently accessed files sorted by last modified time, along with details on who were they last modified by. This is a handy way of keeping track of the edits and see if any of your files were recently edited by one of your collaborators.

The search feature is pretty elaborate as well, allowing you to search by document type, visibility and ownership, making the process of finding the files you are looking for a breeze.

Web Apps with Google Drive Support

Google Drive seems to be set to take on much more than mere cloud storage and cross-platform apps for accessing it. One of the most impressive features of Google Drive is integration into other web apps that allow you to automatically edit content stored on your Drive, or save content created by such apps there. On the Google Chrome Web Store, there is a new class of apps available – apps that are given the ‘works with Google Drive’ designation. To see the complete collection, check out Google Drive supported Web Apps on Google Chrome Web Store.

As you can see in the above screenshot, apps that have Google Drive support integrated have a ‘Works with Google Drive’ indication in their Chrome Web Store page. Hovering your mouse pointer on it shows you a popup with a link to all the apps that currently sport Drive integration. At the time of writing this post, there are 17 such apps available, and we have a feeling this number is going to grow real soon.

This feature of Drive is going to give cloud computing for the end user a whole different dimension. Imagine a world where all your apps are web apps, and the storage they use is your Google Drive.

Google Drive for Windows

This is the Dropbox-like part of Google Drive. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, you install the app on your PC and it gives you a folder on your PC that stays synced to your Google Drive. Everything already present in your Google Drive automatically starts getting synced to this folder. Also, anything you add to this folder from your computer gets automatically uploaded to your Google Drive, becoming accessible across all your devices.

Once installed and running, Google Drive for Windows adds an icon to the system tray. Clicking the icon lets you pause/resume sync, see any alerts, open your Google Drive folder (which you can directly access from the Desktop or Windows Explorer too), visit your Google Drive on the web, view items shared with you, monitor your storage space usage and access the app’s preferences, amongst other options.

In the preferences, you can monitor your account’s storage use, disconnect it if you want to start over or buy more storage if you need it. You can also choose whether to sync your complete Google Drive to your computer, or only certain folders. If you want, you can also sync Google Docs files stored in your Drive, but for that, offline viewing has to be enabled in Google Docs and configured for your computer. There is a link provided for that next to this option, along with another link to visit the files shared with you in Drive, if you want to sync some of those to your computer as well. By default the files shared with you reside on their owner’s drive and not yours, and are therefore not synced automatically. Lastly, you can choose whether to start Drive automatically with Windows or not.

All in all, it is a complete sync solution for your computer that’s dead-simple to configure and use.

Google Drive for Mac OS X

The Mac OS X app works the exact same way as the Windows app. You get a folder that syncs with your Google Drive, and an icon in the menu bar to access the same options and preferences as the Windows version. Since all the features are the same, just go through the Windows app review above to learn more, if you have jumped straight to this section.

Google Drive for Android

Needless to say, Google Drive is available upon launch on Google’s Android, and In fact it has been available on Android before even its release, as Google Docs. Yes, it’s the same app, rebranded, with some new features added. To learn more about it, see our full coverage of Google Drive for Android (coming soon).

Google Drive for iOS

Google has officially announced that the iOS version of Google Drive for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch is in the making and will be available shortly. We will cover it and add a link to our coverage here as soon as it is released, so keep checking back.

What do you think of Google Drive? Will you be switching over to it from your existing cloud storage service? Will you be using it along with the other options? Which of its features is your most favorite? What do you think is still missing? Don’t forget to let us know in the comments. Happy cloud computing!

Add Or Remove Any Folder To PATH Variable Using Windows Context Menu

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:59:20 +0000

How many times have you needed to add the path of some folder to the PATH Windows environment variable? Ever wished you could just right-click a folder and have the option in the context menu to add it to the PATH variable? How about the added capability of removing PATH variable entries the exact same way? Today is your lucky day. Read on and you’ll be surprised at how easy it is.

If you are a command line junkie like me, you probably want to have all your important tools at your fingertips to launch from the prompt. You also probably keep on adding to your arsenal of such tools by always staying on the lookout for tiny portable apps that make your life on the computer just that little bit easier. Finally, in most likelihood, you don’t want to keep remembering the paths of the folders you have added such tools to, especially if they come in bunches (like Nirsoft or SysInternals suites) and you don’t want to mix them all up in one folder. All of this comes at a cost – fiddling with the PATH variable.

Normally, you would have to manually add these folder paths to the PATH variable. Same is the case when you are getting rid of a bunch of such apps and decide that you no longer need that folder in the PATH variable. Frustrated with having to do it manually each time, I wrote a couple of registry entries to make this task easier by adding ‘AddToPath’ and ‘RemoveFromPath’ entries in the right-click context menus for folders, using which the folder could be directly added to or removed from the PATH variable.

The process basically involves a freeware standalone tool called pathed that is available as a part of gtools by Gerson Kurz. This tiny utility basically lets you manipulate the PATH variable, letting you append entries to it as well as remove existing entries from it, while keeping its formatting intact.

So now that we have a good idea of what we’ll be doing, let’s go ahead and do it.

Note: Before we begin, a word about the gtools package. All the tools in the package are standalone and don’t really need installation but a zip package doesn’t seem to be available. However, all that the installer does is extracting the tools in the installation directory and adding a gtools folder in the Start Menu, so if you want to keep it all standalone, just delete that Start Menu entry and you’re good to go. We will only be needing the pathed.exe tool, so feel free to delete the rest if you don’t need those.

Download gtools and install them anywhere on your computer. I keep a C:\PPF folder for all my ‘Portable Program Files’ so I have installed these to C:\PPF\GTools\
Note: The installer only extracts the tools in the installation directory and adds a gtools folder in the Start Menu with shortcuts to the tools, so if you want to keep it all standalone, just delete that Start Menu entry and you’re good to go. We will only be needing the pathed.exe tool, so feel free to delete the rest of the gtools if you don’t need those.
Download this zip file and extract the contents anywhere on your computer. It contains two registry entry files: AddPathEntries.reg and RemovePathEntries.reg.
If you have extracted gtools in step 1 to the same path as us (i.e. C:\PPF\GTools\ ), simply double-click AddPathEntries.reg and confirm the prompt that appears, and you’re done. You may skip all the next steps.
If you have extracted gtools in another folder, right-click the AddPathEntries.reg file and select ‘Edit’ to open it in notepad, or just open it up in any text editor of your choice.
In the file, you will see C:\\PPF\\GTools\\pathed.exe mentioned twice. Replace both those lines with the correct path of your pathed.exe file, making sure you use double slashes and not single ones. Leave everything else unchanged.
Once you have edited the file to provide the valid path for pathed.exe, save the file and then double click it, confirming the prompt that you get. That’s it – you’re done.

Once done, simply logout and log back in (or kill and restart all instances of explorer.exe from task manager), and you will see entries for ‘AddToPath’ and ‘RemoveFromPath’ in the context menus of all the folders. You guessed it right – clicking on them will add or remove that folder to the PATH variable.

The solution is rather crude at the moment, in that it can possibly lead to clutter in the path variable because duplicate entries can be added for the same folder. However, for now, you can prevent that by always attempting to remove a folder from PATH variable first, before trying to add it. Don’t worry, trying to remove a folder that doesn’t already exist there will not break things in any way.

Oh and if you ever decide that you don’t want these two context menu entries sitting there being evil and all, just run the RemovePathEntries.reg and they’ll be gone. To completely uninstall the whole hack, also delete the gtools folder (or just the pathed.exe file, if you deleted the rest earlier) and there’ll be no traces left. Clean as a whistle, happy as a clam!

Found this hack useful? Don’t forget to let us know in the comments.

Our Favorite Pig Smashing Birds Go Galactic With Angry Birds Space

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:29:22 +0000

The wait is over – Rovio and NASA have joined together to bring everyone’s favorite birds and their green pig rivals to Android, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, Windows & Mac in the latest installment of the franchise: Angry Birds Space. Set in a space-themed environment, this release brings an entirely new level of gameplay to the series not seen in any of the earlier three versions. Read on for more information.

While the first three games in the series were set on flat ground, Angry Birds Space is featured in an environment with planets, their moons, asteroids and other celestial bodies, each having its own field of gravity. The physics engine has been rebuilt from scratch to cater to the new environment. Rovio has even designed a website to showcase the new gameplay in Angry Birds Space. And as with all Angry Birds games, there is also a really cool intro video:

You launch birds like in the previous versions but what’s different is what happens after the launch. As shown in the trajectory path, the launched birds follow an orbital path around the planets that the pigs have made their strongholds on. Depending on the gravity and the launch angle, the bird can even circle the planet multiple times before crashing into its target. Another change is the ability to launch birds even in reverse direction and still hit the target, adding tons of more fun to the gameplay. It’s just got to be experienced to fully cherish.

The game features 60 regular levels, hidden bonus levels, some brand new birds with new powers and nifty trick shots. With Rovio promising regular free updates to add newer levels, the fun isn’t set to stop anytime soon.

Angry Birds Space is available for Android at Google Play Store as ad-supported free version as well as ad-free paid version for $0.99. For iOS devices, the regular version for iPhone and iPod Touch can be found at the iTunes App Store for $0.99 and the HD version for iPad for $2.99. Finally for the desktop users amongst us, the PC version is available at Angry Birds Store for €5.95 ($7.83) while the Mac version can be purchased at the Mac App Store for $4.99.

Visit Angry Birds Space Website

Download Angry Birds Space for Android (Free)
Download Angry Birds Space for Android (Paid)
Download Angry Birds Space for iPhone / iPod Touch (Paid)
Download Angry Birds Space HD for iPad (Paid)
Download Angry Birds Space for PC (Paid)
Download Angry Birds Space for Mac (Paid)

Waveface Brings Together Your Photos & Notes From Multiple Devices

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 05:00:36 +0000

In today’s digital age, we use several devices to capture and save information that we come up with or come across. We use our phone cameras to capture images, and our computers, phones and tablets to jot down notes. There are several web services available that help us keep this information in sync and available across multiple devices. However, most of the time, such services are either a part of a larger service (like Facebook) or too laden with features that many users might simply not require (think Picasa or Flickr). For the minimalists amongst us that need just one stream of all their notes and photos readily available across all their devices in a simple interface, there is Waveface.

Waveface lets you upload photo albums and notes from multiple platforms and makes them accessible across all of them. Currently, the service has applications for Windows, Android and iOS, making it accessible from PCs, smartphones and tablets. It’s great for private collections of your image and notes that you needn’t let the world know about through facebook or similar services, yet would like to access from all your devices in a beautiful interface. Think of it like your private photo albums or scrapbooks that you can carry with yourself and show others at your discretion.

The main component of the service is its Windows app called Waveface Station. Once installed, it sits in your system tray and takes care of all the uploads from your PC, while providing you information like your account, local storage usage, monthly online usage etc. You are allowed to upload up to 250 images a month. This limit does not apply to web clippings, notes or comments. Speaking of comments, that’s a pretty handy feature, as you can always add more information on anything you have posted to keep your ideas organized. All uploads and comments indicate the device or platform they were uploaded from.

It’s second PC component called Waveface Desktop is basically the PC client for the service. You can simply drag and drop images on it to upload them to a new album on Waveface, browse albums by upload date using the calendar view, see album list and contents and add comments.

What really stands out is the iPad app. It’s designed with a beautiful magazine-style interface that is stunning to look at and interact with. All the images render beautifully in high definition.

The Android and iPhone apps also offer the same features in a more compact package. In addition to the standard viewing and uploading, the mobile apps also let you capture images directly from your phone’s camera for instant uploads.

Waveface also lets you grab web clips from web pages using browser extensions for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari, as well as a bookmarklet for pretty much every modern web browser.

Wavefront has its shortcomings – once a post has been made, there seems to be no way to delete or even edit it, so one must be careful not to make any typo in the album title/description and notes when uploading. Also, there is no way to organize your posts to be displayed in any sequence other than sorting by upload time. Apart from these two drawbacks, it seems to be a pretty decent way to bring your images and notes from all your devices into a single, private timeline.

Visit Waveface Website

Download Waveface Apps/Extensions

SuperSU Brings Better SuperUser Root Permission Management to Android

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:45:16 +0000

SuperSU by Chainfire is a free app for rooted Android devices that lets you easily and efficiently manage root / superuser access permissions for all the apps on your Android phone or tablet. It takes over the SuperUser app on rooted devices, basically replacing it for a better and more feature-rich alternative. For users of rooted Android phones, managing which apps get root access can be a tough call when it comes to security, since any app with root access has administrator-level control over your device. For this reason, rooting a phone also involves installing an app for the very purpose of managing these permissions. This app is called SuperUser and whenever you see a SuperUser permission request on your phone when attempting to run an app that requires root, it’s the SuperUser app in action. While the SuperUser app by itself is sufficient for granting or denying root access to other apps, it is rather feature-limited. That’s where SuperSU comes in.

SuperSU is basically SuperUser on steroids. According to the developer, it “allows for advanced management of Superuser access rights for all the apps on your device that need root.”.

What this basically means for you is more comprehensive information with each SuperUser request by any app, and better management of access granted to apps. Here is a full feature list:

Enhanced Superuser access prompt
Superuser access notifications
Superuser Access logging
Always runs in ghost mode
Notification configuration on per-app basis
Deep process detection
Trusts ADB connection
Temporary unrooting support
Works when Android isn’t properly booted
Works in Recovery
Works with non-standard shell locations
Wake on prompt

There is also a Pro version available for $2.64 that offers these features in addition to the above:

OTA survival mode
Per-app user override
Full color-coded command content logging (input/output/error)
PIN protection
Per-app logging configuration

SuperSU is available for free in the Google Play Store for rooted phones and tablets only.

Free

Paid

Download SuperSU (Free)

Download SuperSU Pro (Paid)

Windows 8 PC Settings [Complete Guide]

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 05:51:00 +0000

PC users have long been using Control Panel as the hub for controlling their system settings. With the introduction of Metro UI in Windows 8, this is going to change. While the Control Panel is still there for desktop mode, there has been a new hub introduced in Windows 8 called PC settings, that lets you change several important settings of your PC from a beautiful, streamlined, no-frills interface.

Today, with the release of Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview, we are bringing you extensive coverage of all the new features in Microsoft’s latest operating system. This post is a part of our Windows 8 Week. To learn more, check out our complete coverage of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

This guide is a part of our series on detailed coverage of Windows 8 New Features and Improvements.

Accessing PC Settings

PC Settings can be accessed as follows:

Bring up the Charms bar on the right. This can be done on a PC by by hitting Windows key + C on the keyboard or hovering the mouse for a short while in the top-right corner. On tablets or PCs with a touch screen, just swipe your finger from the right edge leftwards.
On the Charms bar, hit ‘Settings’.
Now hit the ‘More PC settings’ link that shows up at the end.

Now let’s take a look PC settings in detail.

Personalize

The Personalize section allows you to change settings for your Lock screen, Start screen and Account picture. Under Lock screen settings, you can change the lock screen wallpaper, select apps like Calendar, Messaging and Email to show status and notifications on lock screen, and also select other apps like Calendar to show additional, detailed information like your agenda and appointments.

Under Start screen settings, you can select a background for the Start screen and change the background color, from a pre-define set of background designs and colors available.

Finally, you can change your account picture to an existing file on your computer or SkyDrive, or directly take one from your computer’s camera for the purpose. There is also an option to create account pictures with apps, though no stock apps are listed under that for now.

Users

User settings let you choose between using your Microsoft account to login to Windows, or just a local account the way it was on Windows 7. You can also change your password, create a picture password or create a 4-digit PIN for logging in. Lastly, you can add or remove additional users from here.

Notifications

Here, you can manage notification settings. You can turn them on or off, choose whether notifications are shown on the lock screen or not, and enable or disable notification sounds. You can also enable or disable notifications for each app here.

Search

In this section, you have the options to choose whether to let Windows keep your search history or not and if history is enabled, you can also set Windows to show the apps you search most on the top of search results. Lastly, you can set which apps can be used to provide you with additional search results.

Here, you can control which apps appear when you click ‘Share’ from the Charms bar, as well as the ability to organize them in the list based on frequency of use.

General

In the General section, you will find settings for your time zone, enabling/disabling app switching between recent apps, autocorrect settings, language settings, PC reset options and advanced system startup and restore settings.

Privacy

Here, you can allow or deny apps access to your personal information such as location, real name and account picture. You can also choose whether or not apps can send the links of web content that you access from the apps (including the websites you visit) to Windows Store, which (according to Microsoft) is done in order to improve Windows Store.

Devices

Here, you can manage devices connected to your computer, as well as devices present on the network. You can also choose if device driver software can be automatically downloaded or upgraded from the internet when your computer is using a metered internet connection (like 3G/4G).

Wireless

In Wireless settings, you can enable/disable all wireless communication using Airplane mode, or enable/disable individual wireless devices like Wi-Fi, 3G/4G data connection (if present) etc.

Ease of Access

Here, you can manage accessibility settings like high contrast, large text, caret browsing, narration, notification display time, cursor thickness etc.

Sync your settings

Under sync settings, you can manage how Windows syncs all the PC settings with your Microsoft account.

HomeGroup

The HomeGroup section lets you join a HomeGroup for easily sharing documents, music, pictures, videos, printer and devices with other computers on the same HomeGroup. You can also create your own HomeGroup here, which generates a password that you can use on other computers in order to join it.

Windows Update

Lastly, the Windows Update section helps you check for important updates and install them if available.

That’s pretty much it for Windows 8 PC Settings. Stay tuned for more of our Windows 8 coverage.

How To Resize, Group & Manage App Tiles In Windows 8 Start Screen

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:36:21 +0000

As most of us already know, Microsoft have ditched the Start button in Windows 8, replacing it with a Start Screen that uses Metro UI, with large tiles for launching apps. Many of these tiles can be customized in certain ways, to personalize your start screen to your taste. You can choose between tile sizes, static or live tiles, and organize the tiles into groups. You can also remove tiles from the Start screen, and add them back later. Read on for details on how to do all this to make your Start screen truly yours.

Types of Tiles

When you go to the Start screen. you see tiles for all your installed apps organized in a default manner. Whenever you install new apps, their tiles get added to this screen. These tiles can be broadly categorized into two categories: Metro apps and non-Metro (standard Windows) apps. The difference between tiles for Metro and non-Metro apps can be spotted at first glance – the Metro apps have custom-designed tiles while the tiles for non-Metro apps are basically squares with the app names and icons. In the following screenshot, you can see the difference between the tiles for Metro apps (the well-designed, colorful tiles in the left and center groups) and non-Metro apps (the eight tiles in the group on the right). Click the screenshot to see the large view.

The Metro tiles are the real deal of the new Start screen. Many (but not all) of these tiles can be presented as large, rectangular tiles or small, square tiles. Many of the Metro tiles can also have a live or static mode. In Live mode, they present not the tile icon but rather live information relevant to the app that gets updated or changed periodically, the same way that Windows Phone Live tiles do.

Selecting Tiles

To customize any of the tiles, you have to right-click them to select them first. Upon right-click, the tile gets selected, and a bar pops up on the bottom of the screen, showing you all the available options for the tile. Note that these options are different for different types of tiles. You may even continue right-clicking on multiple tiles to select more than one tiles at a time, and the options will update to contain only the operations that can be performed on all the selected tiles together. To deselect any file, simply right-click on it again.

Available Actions

Upon selecting tiles, several actions become available, depending on the app. For Metro apps, these are usually limited to unpinning, uninstalling, choosing smaller/larger size and selecting live tile on/off.

Note that some Metro apps might not have all these options available. For instance, some Metro apps don’t have a ‘Smaller’ or ‘Larger’ option while some might not have live tile capabilities.

When it comes to non-Metro apps however, all the options are pretty much the same. In addition to unpinning and uninstallation, you also get other options for pinning the app to taskbar, opening a new window, running the app as administrator and opening its file location.

Unpinning (Removing) Tiles

Selecting any tile will give you ‘Unpin from Start’ as the first option. Just click on it and the tile will be gone from the Start screen. This will *NOT* uninstall the program, and the tile can be very easily added back, so feel free to remove tiles for any apps you don’t want showing up on the Start screen.

Pinning (Adding) Tiles

Right-click anywhere on the background of the Start screen (not on any tile) and you will see an ‘All apps’ button appear at the bottom. Click it to get a list of all your installed apps. Once there, right-click on any app and you will see the option ‘Pin to Start’ pop up at the bottom.

If you know the name of the app that you want to pin, you can also directly start typing that name while on the Start screen, and you will see the matches appear. Right-clicking on the desired app from those results will also give you the same option.

Note that if the app is already pinned on the Start screen, you will see the ‘Unpin from Start’ option instead in these views as well.

Resizing Tiles

When you select a tile that can be resized, you will be presented with the option to do so, depending on its current size. If it is currently a large rectangular tile, you will see a ‘Smaller’ option, while if it is currently a small square tile, you’ll see a ‘Larger’ option. Just click on the appropriate option to get the tile in your desired size.

Organizing Tiles in Groups

It makes good sense to organize your app tiles into sections, keeping tiles for related apps together. On the Start screen, you can simply drag and drop tiles from one spot to another, and they will snap nicely to the grid, automatically shoving other tiles out of the way while keeping them aligned to grid as well.

You can also move apps into different columns, with noticeable space between adjacent columns. Just drag an app’s tile horizontally and you will see a gray bar appear in the direction you are dragging it. Drop the tile on that gray bar and it will get a column of its own, into which other tiles can then be added the same way to make a group of apps.

When it comes to removing a group, once all the tiles from a column are removed or dragged and dropped into other columns, that group automatically vanishes – no additional empty spaces left to be removed manually by you.

That’s pretty much it for Start screen tile management. Stay tuned for more of our Windows 8 coverage.

Best Free And Amazingly Functional Android Live Wallpapers

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:30:16 +0000

A few weeks back we brought you our handpicked collection of the best free and most beautiful Android Live wallpapers, with a promise to bring you a similar one of the best free and functional Android Live wallpapers. The wait is finally over, so read on to find out how you can add fun as well as functionality to your phone using these amazingly functional Live wallpapers for Android.

UPDATE: Several of you have noticed and reported dead links to some of the Live wallpapers. Many of the Live wallpapers featured below were developed by Wolf Labs and unfortunately, that developer’s wallpapers as well as account has been taken off the market very recently. This post was written over the span of a couple of weeks and the wallpapers by Wolf Labs were amongst the first ones added so this could have happened only in the past few days. All the links were confirmed to be working when added to the post while writing it. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this but it was due to circumstances beyond our control. We are actively looking for mirror links to these wallpapers and will be updating the post as we find them. In the meantime, let’s hope Wolf Labs and their content gets back up on the Market or becomes available at some alternative location. The links for wallpapers by developers other than Wolf Labs are working and will continue to work. Thank you for your feedback.

Launcher

You might be wondering what do launchers have to do with Live wallpapers. You are in for a big surprise! Live wallpapers are essentially apps running as your phone’s background and can be interacted with, so letting go of your home screen shortcuts and widgets, and just using a Live wallpaper to act as your launcher can make sense. Following are some of the best free Launcher Live wallpapers out there on the Market, so feel free to choose your pick!

Launcher Wall

Update: Market link down for now. Here is a working mirror link: Download Launcher Wall Live Wallpaper. As the name suggests, Launcher Wall is a Launcher wallpaper for your Android devices. While being inspired by the Metro UI of Windows Phone 7, it still retains its originality and doesn’t come out to be a mere Windows Phone 7 rip-off. Here, take a look.

All these tiles that you see have actions associated with them and give you the ability to launch most of the frequently used apps directly with one tap. There is a pictures tile that can use images from your SD card, Picasa or Flickr.

You can change the background to one of your choice if you don’t like the default one, and there are plenty of settings that let you customize the shortcuts, enable/disable sounds and haptic feedback and tweak animation and performance options. Furthermore, there is also an extensive Wallpaper Editor available that lets you fine-tune it exactly to your taste. Note: Launcher Wall is one of the several Live wallpapers featured in this guide that have been developed by Wolf Labs. All the Live wallpapers by this developer have similar options and include their Wallpaper Editor. Throughout the remainder of this guide, we will only be mentioning Wolf Labs for all their Live wallpapers without explaining the editor or showing its screenshots over and over again.

Launcher Box Live Wallpaper

If you like Launcher Wall but want it to be even more like Windows Phone 7 in appearance? Launcher Box is what you’re looking for. Being from the same developer, it can be considered as a Metro-lookalike version of Launcher Wall.

Apart from the differences in the number and appearance of the tiles, Launcher Wall and Launcher Box are pretty much identical when it comes to the functionality as well as the options they provide, so all that has been said above for Launcher Wall will apply to Launcher Box as well.

Android Launcher

Yet another masterpiece from Wolf Labs, Android Launcher is a cool Live Wallpaper that brings wooden shelves to your home screen, with little Androids carrying logos for your apps, as well as a clock, battery information and a nice picture frame that can be set to show pictures from your SD card, Picasa or Flickr.

The first time you tap on any of the icons, you will be asked if you want to set an app for it and upon confirmation, you will be shown a list of all your installed apps to choose from. While you can assign any app to any icon, it will obviously make sense to choose apps appropriate for the icon.

We have already covered this Live wallpaper before so for even more information and to take a look at its editing mode, see Android Theme Launcher is a unique launcher-style Live wallpaper.

Contacts

On any phone, contacts let us perform the most basic operations that phones were initially built to perform – making phone calls and sending/receiving text messages. There are widgets available to bring quick dial shortcuts for contacts to your home screen but using a Live wallpaper for the purpose lets you do the same with more creativity, as you are about to see.

Contact Live Wallpaper

Enter Contact Live Wallpaper – a Live wallpaper that transforms your home screen into a setting like an elegantly furnished room with picture frames as placeholders for your contact photos, which act as quick dial shortcuts.

There are a bunch of preconceived templates provided already but if you aren’t satisfied with them, you can even create your own using background images and placeholders of our choice. The free version offers only three pre-conceived templates and lets you place just two contacts on your home screen but that still makes it functional enough for many who just need quick access to a couple of contacts. To find out more about how Contact Live Wallpaper works, check out our guide on how to place contact shortcuts on your Android Home Screen Background with Contact Live Wallpaper.

Clocks

While some might consider clock-based wallpapers to be merely cosmetic and not functional, add some more information like basic system stats (charging state, battery level, network strength, current location etc.) and they get to be pretty functional at delivering all that information at a glance. So let’s take a look at some of the best Clock Live Wallpapers for Android.

Typography Wall

This one is undoubtedly amongst our most favorites in this category, when it comes to sheer looks. It gives you a very decent display of the current time, date and day, along with battery percentage in the enlarged zero of the year.

While the battery is charging, the horizontal bars inside the zero keep getting incremented. The image for the background is pretty easy on the eyes but can be changed to one of your choice. The rest of the options are the ones that come standard with all Live wallpapers by Wolf Labs.

WP Clock Light

WP Clock Light has to be one of the most famous clock Live wallpapers for Android. It displays the current time in a very neat and highly visible manner with Windows Phone style typography.

Additional information such as network SSID and battery status can be displayed as well, and you can choose whether to keep the sides of the larger digits off-screen (as shown above) or fit the time to screen. The background image and font colors can also be customized.

Lightwell Live Wallpaper CE

Just clock, calendar and battery don’t do it for you? How about adding your current city and street location, the duration you have been at that location for, WiFi status, phone signal, weather conditions and current temperature to it? That’s what Lightwell Live Wallpaper CE gives you.

In the settings, you get complete control over what gets displayed and what doesn’t, along with a fair level of control over how it displays. There is one serious shortcoming though: you can’t set a background of your choice and while you might like the ones provided with it, they weren’t exactly to our taste. Still, all that it does offer does earn it a spot in this collection.

Super Clock Wallpaper Free

This one doesn’t boast a lot as the free version displays merely the time, date and day. However, the font that it uses to do so is so easy on the eyes that it becomes really hard to ignore it. See for yourself:

Thankfully, the background can be changed, as well as the font (though we personally love the default one) but beyond that, the options are locked down in this free version. Still, it’s enough for many.

Simply Clock

Simply Clock is down to the basics, but quite beautifully at that. A very elegant analog clock along with the date, day and battery percentage in soft shades of gray on a similarly soft gray pixels background will give your home screen a classy look.

Being by Wolf Labs, it offers the same settings and customizations as their other Live wallpapers (you must be getting used to that now).

Clock Art

What has been missing in all the Clock Live wallpapers that we have covered so far (as well as the ones coming after this one)? A compass, of course! For both the directionally challenged and the addicted explorers amongst us, this Live wallpaper puts a small and unobtrusive yet fairly visible compass right in the center of your Android home screen, overlaid on time, date, day and battery percentage.

As you might have figured from the settings screenshot, this one is also by Wolf Labs. Install it to make sure you never get lost, or never end up praying while facing the wrong direction.

Analogy Clock

The artists and the math geeks amongst us are bound to love this one. While it doesn’t boast any system stats or even date/day information, as a clock it is stunning! One feels mesmerized watching the seconds make fading circles around the minutes.

You can customize the colors including the highlight color for the current time, the passed time color and the background color. It would have been even better if we could set a picture as background but considering how pretty it looks and how you can customize it with the colors of your choice, no complains.

Season Clock Spring

This one is for you ladies out there (and perhaps also for the men amongst us who are more ermm…’in touch’ with their feminine sides). It shows beautiful pink and white Sakura flowers falling around a clock that reminds us of our old LED clocks, with the LEDs replaced by miniature pink Sakura flowers.

As the time changes, the flowers fall off the clock and get replaced by new ones to form the newer digit, which adds a pretty eye-catching effect. You can choose to display time as Hour:Minute or Minute: Second, and tweak the setting of the flower animation to make them bounce off the bottom. Apart from that, there aren’t many options in this one, and rightly so too considering how it looks as it is.

Text Clock Lite

Last but not the least amongst the Clock Live wallpapers, Text Clock Lite is a clock with a twist. It gives you the current time in the classic ‘Ten Minutes Past Eight o’clock’ format, just the way my (imaginary) Butler does.

While the free version is feature-limited, it offers quite a lot of features for a limited version. You can choose a black or white theme, or even make your own custom one. Background color, unlit text color and lit text colors can also be selected from a true color palette. You can even specify your own vertical and horizontal spacing around the edges, select a font size and choose whether to display OCLOCK or not, though more options like a custom background image, font, text format and certain visual effects can be unlocked only by getting the Pro version.

Weather

Just like Clock Live wallpapers, weather Live wallpapers also borderline upon cosmetics and functionality. In our opinion though, anything that goes beyond serving mere eye-candy is functional. Though that doesn’t mean that for it to be functional, the eye candy must be neglected. Unfortunately when it comes to weather-based Live wallpapers, we found very few options out there and all of them except for one weren’t exactly what we would call easy on the eyes. Fortunately, the one we did like makes up for the lack of the rest, and then some.

Go Weather

If you have been playing around with your Android phone for over a few weeks, you must have come across at least one GO app. GO Launcher, GO Reader, GO Widgets, GO Keyboard and GO Contacts are a few examples. GO Dev team has really made a reputation of delivering the very best and it not only keeps up that reputation, but takes it to a whole new level with GO Weather, and it comes with its own Weather Live Wallpaper too!

While GO Weather is a complete weather app that goes beyond a mere Live wallpaper, we will only be discussing its Live wallpaper part here, as its other components like the weather app and the home screen widgets are beyond the scope of this collection. Once you have GO Weather installed, you can select its Live wallpaper just like any other Live wallpaper but there are a certain things that you will have to configure from the app first, to get it properly working. First of all, you must Launch the GO Weather app and from its menu, add a city. You can search for a city by your location by hitting the location icon in the top-right, or by entering the city name or zip code.

Note: If you don’t want to add a city manually, you can go into the app’s settings and enable your location, which will pick your location automatically using GPS or Cellular Tower Triangulation, and show you the weather for wherever you are. Once you have added your city or selected to use your location, you can then select the theme for your Live wallpaper. Simply select Theme from the app’s menu and you will be taken to the GO Weather Theme Chooser. Select the LWP tab to see the available themes for the Live wallpaper. You will need to download most of the themes. Only one of the currently available themes is animated and is available in standard and HD versions. While the other three themes aren’t animated, they’re still Live wallpapers as their static images do reflect the current weather conditions.

Tapping on one of the themes will let you download it if it hasn’t been downloaded before, or apply it if it’s already downloaded. Choosing to download one will take you to the Market link for that theme, from where you can install it like any other Android app. Once installed, simply apply it and you’re good to go. Once you have the theme of your choice applied, you can go to the Live wallpaper settings to choose the location to use with it (in case you have added more than one locations to GO Weather), whether to display the weather information text on the Live wallpaper or not, and the text position and size.

So to sum it all up, if you are looking for a Weather Live wallpaper, you simply can’t go wrong with GO Weather, especially with a price tag of free and a feature set not even rivaled by any paid alternatives.

Useful Tools

On our smartphones, we use many useful single-purpose tools to assist us with many of our day-to-day tasks suck as navigation and note-taking. At times, we need view-only access to the information provided by those apps while still being able to do other things on our phones. That’s where these simple tool-based Live wallpapers come handy. Let’s take a look at them.

Google Maps Live Wallpaper

This is perhaps the only Live Wallpaper in this list that most of us already have installed on our phones, as it comes with the Google Maps app. While the utility of having a live map set as your home screen is relative and probably debatable, it can come handy while you are using home screen widgets while on the go and don’t want to open the maps app directly.

It supports some basic Maps features like double-tap-to-zoom and pinch-to-zoom. You can choose to show default, satellite or terrain maps, show or hide traffic or show current weather for the location you are at, but this last option requires you to have the stock News and Weather widget installed as the Live wallpaper uses its service to retrieve weather information. An interesting and worth-mentioning bit about this one is that your current location ALWAYS stays centered at your middle home screen, regardless of the zoom level. You can pan to a limited access by sliding between home screens, as long as the blue dot representing your screen doesn’t completely go off the current screen.

Compass Live Wallpaper

If you aren’t too big on the idea of having an entire live map as your wallpaper but the explorer inside you still wants some navigational tool to be always visible on your home screen, Compass Live Wallpaper is the right one for you! Brought to us yet again by Wolf Labs, this Live wallpaper does one thing, does it well and looks stunning while doing it too.

You have the usual Wolf Labs Wallpaper Editor, along with background choice, ability to launch an app by tapping the compass (handy for directly launching Maps) and performance and animation tweaks. All of this makes it a must-have for all you adventurers and geography geeks out there.

Sticky Notes Live Wallpaper

As the name suggests, Sticky Notes Live Wallpaper lets you put up sticky notes on your Android home screen. We have already covered this one in detail and not much has changed so far, except for a couple of new themes being added, which we are showcasing here.

You can choose between Android, Summer, Classic and Coffee theme now, and set multiple notes.

For more information, check out our coverage of Sticky Notes Live Wallpaper for Android.

Camera through wallpaper

We have literally gone through hundreds of Live Wallpapers in order to select the best ones for this guide but amongst them all, Camera Through Wallpaper has been the most interesting by far. It uses your phone’s back camera to make your home screen appear transparent. You have got to take it on a spin yourself to do it justice, as a mere screenshot can’t even show a fraction of its awesomeness.

While it does look stunning, it is pretty functional too, especially if you use your device while walking around a lot. Just add transparent home screen widgets for your most frequently used apps (we will cover many of those in the upcoming widgets installment of our Android customization series) to eliminate the need for opening those apps for most use cases, and you have a home screen that is safe to use while walking about, without the risk of running into people or things in your path (or getting run over by them).

Notifications

Android gives us quick access to our notifications in the notification bar but if you want to bring them directly to your home screen to be able to view them while using other home screen items, these notification based Live wallpapers will offer you to do just that.

Bubbleator Live Wallpaper

The first one in this category is Bubbleator – a Live wallpaper that keeps you updated with horizontally scrolling notification bubbles for many services from your phone as well as social media.

The available options for notifications include calendar events, missed calls, text messages, weather alerts and social media updates from Facebook and Twitter.

Each notification type can be customized to suit your needs. We have already written about Bubbleator in detail so to learn more about its options, head on to our coverage of Bubbleator Live Wallpaper.

Notification Bubbles Live Wallpaper

Notification Bubbles does vertically what Bubbleator does horizontally, while adding a more cartoony look to it. Your notifications rise from the bottom of your home screen to top as bubbles. Notifications can be dismissed by simply tapping on the bubbles to pop them. You can also set a rather corny heart-shaped bubble as your ‘My Darling’ contact and once you’ve done that, tapping on that bubble enables you to directly call or text that contact.

We have written about this one before as well so check out our full review of Notification Bubbles Live Wallpaperand take it on a bubble-popping spin.

Earth

Admittedly, having the entire planet earth as your home screen background isn’t going to be of much functional use for most of us and the Live wallpapers in this section should have perhaps been included in our cosmetic Live wallpapers guide but considering how some of these show actual real-time weather and sunlight data for the entire planet adds a functional side to them – the ability to get an overview of the global weather conditions as well as ideas about times of the day around the world at one glance!

Earth Live Wallpaper

The beautiful emerald planet spinning on its axis with the neighboring star field and cosmos in the background has got to attract all space and sci-fi lovers. Though that’s just the cosmetic part of Earth Live Wallpaper, and there’s certainly more than just the cosmetic part.

You have the option to view real time image of our planet, along with cloud data from satellite showing you clouds where they currently are. Furthermore, you can also switch to maps such as Earth without clouds, Earth with city lights and more. You can even switch the globe with the Sun or some other celestial body.

Other options include displaying the moon orbiting around the Earth, showing names of the celestial bodies, setting light maps for day/night simulation etc. The options to play around with are quite plentiful and combining them together, you can fine-tune it for a fully customized Earth-based home screen.

Live Earth Wallpaper

Live Earth Wallpaper doesn’t offer a lot of options that Earth Live Wallpaper does provide. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it any worse. It brings the map of the globe on your home screen, along with cloud and weather data.

The sheer variety of weather data that this Live wallpaper can bring right to your home screen is impressive. You can see reports on recent earthquakes worldwide or storms including hailstorms, windstorms and tornados in North America.

If the idea of a flat earth doesn’t appeal to you much, you can select it to be spherical (though geometrically, Earth isn’t a sphere and bulges at the equator) and even select dawn-only or dusk-only regions of the globe to be displayed.

Earth At Night 3DLiveWallpaper

Last but not the least amongst Earth-based Live wallpapers is Earth At Night 3DLiveWallpaper that shows you a stunning map of the globe with real night lights showing up across the globe.

You can select the rotation speed and zoom level, along with moving or stationary stars, light color and texture quality. This one’s perhaps the least-functional of the bunch but in no way any less gorgeous.

Web Content

At times, we want quick access to data that really matters to us, without requiring to interact with it in any manner. The biggest resource for such data has to be the biggest information resource on this planet – the world wide web! The power and flexibility offered by Android for its Live wallpapers means content from the web can be used as a Live wallpaper to make our important information available to us at a single glance, right from our Android home screen. Let’s take a look at a few Live wallpapers that allow us to accomplish this in different ways.

TwiLPaper

Over the past couple of years, Twitter has become ubiquitous for sharing our thoughts and ideas with friends and strangers alike, or perhaps more so to strangers than friends. If you are an impulsive tweeter and want to keep track of what you have been tweeting about, right under your nose all the time (or if you are just vain enough to find yourself looking at your tweets every couple of minutes), why not bring them to your home screen background? TwiLPaper lets you do just that!

We have written about TwiLPaper in the past and not much has changed significantly eversince, so to learn more on its feature set and configuration details, see our coverage of TwiLPaper.

Web LiveWallpaper

Web LiveWallpaper does one thing and does it well – setting any web page as your Android home screen background. It supports everything your mobile browser supports so be it your favorite blog, a webcam feed or a custom built web page to show you the exact data you want, Web LiveWallpaper will put it right in front of you!

There aren’t many options but then, there aren’t many options required either. All you have to do is to enter a URL directly, perform a web search or browse through your browser history to find the site you’re looking for and then apply it as your Live wallpaper. It really is that simple!

WebLiveWallpaper BETA

Not to be confused with Web LiveWallpaper despite the similar names, WebLiveWallpaper (notice the lack of the space) does the same task of letting you put up web content as your Android Live wallpaper, but in a different manner. It organizes web content categorically based on its type and comes bundled with pre-configured sources for a lot of popular content ready for you to bring to your home screen. Webcam feeds, online image galleries, popular websites or even your custom configured resources – you name it, you got it! We have already written about WebLiveWallpaper BETA a few months back and while the app has seen several updates by now, its core concept remains the same, so head over to our article on setting your favorite web content Android Live Wallpaper with WebLiveWallpaper BETA.

System Statistics

System Stats Live Wallpaper

This one is for all our geeky friends out there who must know everything going on behind the scenes on their Android device. Be it CPU utilization, RAM usage, data speed or consumed data usage, right with history in form of graphs, System Stats Live Wallpaper brings all these details to the front.

What’s more – it also shows you logcat for your device, live as the events occur, right on your home screen, in a SciFi-inspired font ! Readability issues aside, the mere geeky oomph that it offers has got to make it any geek’s choice!

Make Your Own

Want to make your Android home screen background truly stand out and serve you exactly the way you want to be served? Why not make your own Live wallpaper for the purpose? The powerful Live wallpaper editor by Wolf Labs used for making all their above-featured Live wallpapers is available for anyone to make their own custom Live wallpaper with, and we have written about the whole process in detail, so what are you waiting for? Check out our guide on creating your own Android Live Wallpaper with DiY OwnSkin and you’ll have your own custom-tailored Live Wallpaper ready in no time! Once you’re done with it, don’t forget to share it with us here in the comments.

This concludes our long-awaited Functional Live Wallpaper collection but this is just the beginning of Android personalization. In the following episode of our Android customization series, we will take a look at some of the best Android launchers (home screen replacement apps) available out there, so stay tuned and keep checking back!

What’s New In Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich [Feature Review]

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) was revealed by Google and Samsung at an event in Hong Kong this October and as expected, this most eagerly-anticipated update to Android brings a lot of new features as well as enhancements of existing features to the world of smartphones, in addition to merging the previously separate phone and tablet versions of Android. Personally, we would call it nothing short of groundbreaking and beyond our expectations. First announced at Google I/O 2011 keynote back in May, Ice Cream Sandwich has been long anticipated to be the most major update to Android till date and now that we have had a look at it, we completely agree with Google’s claim. Don’t agree with us? Just read on and see for yourself!

Last month, we brought you our extensive coverage of iOS 5 on the 5th, as it was revealed at Apple’s Let’s Talk iPhone event in Cupertino, California. While Apple did come up with a solid operating system with new features, most of those ‘new’ features were playing catch-up with Android, Cydia tweaks and functionality already possible with third-party apps. From what we have just seen in Ice Cream Sandwich, it seems Apple will now have a LOT more to catch up with. See for yourself in the complete video coverage of the event. Note that it is nearly an hour long video so if you just want to get down to the details, read on for our full review.

Unlike our previous operating system coverage of Windows 8 Developer Preview and iOS 5, we will keep this one in a single post as Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t available to the public yet. We’ll have to wait for the release of Google’s flagship ICS device – the upcoming Galaxy Nexus – to go hands-on with ICS and will then bring you our extensive app-by-app coverage of all that it offers.

For your reading and navigational convenience, this review will be organized as follows.

User Interface Enhancements
Operating System Improvements
Core Apps
- Phone Dialer
- People
- Visual Voicemail
- Calendar
- Gmail
- Browser
- Data Usage
- Camera
- Gallery
Communication

User Interface Enhancements

The first thing you’ll notice in Android 4.0 is the major interface overhaul across the entire operating system. Google has attempted to address a major shortcoming of Android: the lack of a unified look and feel of the user interface across apps and devices. With Ice Cream Sandwich, there is a consistent feel across all elements of the operating system that is both intuitive and fluid.

Magazine Style Interface

Certain content-focused elements of the user interface have a look and feel with design elements that appear to be inspired from Windows Phone 7’s Metro UI in certain ways (focus on large, readable text and tiled images of content), yet it has a distinctive feel of it’s own and doesn’t seem to be a complete Metro rip-off. Google is calling it their magazine-style interface.

Navigation is easier with swipe gestures. If you have used the latest Market app on earlier versions of Android, you know what we are talking about. With Android 4.0, the same gestures are available across the entire operating system.

Common Actions

Common actions are now more visible throughout the OS in top or bottom action bars, unlike in previous versions where you had to press the menu button to bring them up.

Virtual Buttons

Hardware buttons have been replaced by a new System bar with virtual buttons that works across the entire Android 4.0 UI. These include Back, Home and Task Switching buttons. There isn’t any menu or search button. These virtual buttons are visible throughout most part of the OS but in certain situations, they can be disabled, such as during an incoming call or on the lock screen.

Search

A transparent Google Search box with voice actions button is visible across all home screens. This addresses the lack of a search button. Searching within apps is done through common actions bar that becomes visible when the search feature is available.

High Native Resolution

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich boasts an incredible resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels natively for all phones it’ll run on. This is a gigantic leap from the previous resolution of 480 x 800 pixels for most devices. And yes, it is a higher resolution than the iPhone 4’s Retina display, though pixel density will depend on the screen size, which varies across different Android devices. Resolution for tablets will most likely be higher, though we’ll only know for sure once a tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich is revealed.

Operating System Improvements

Android 4.0 comes with several major long awaited improvements. Since some of the new features introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich have already been possible on Android with some custom ROMs such as MIUI and CyanogenMod, Google has been playing catch-up with the custom ROM developers to finally bring them to the core Android OS. However, there are enough genuinely new and innovative additions that make ICS stand out amongst all of the currently available smartphone operating systems. And of course, it never hurts to bring some of the best features of custom ROMs to the core operating system for making them accessible to the vast majority of users who do not use custom ROMs.

Let’s take a look at the OS improvements in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in detail.

Customizable Favorites Tray

Android 4.0’s bottom launcher bar is now called favorites tray and is customizable. Also, it supports five icons instead of the three of the previous versions. This lets you access more apps regardless of the home screen you are currently on.

While the center icon is of the app drawer, the center-left and center-right ones can be set to any app or folder (more on these later) of your choice. (We have yet to see if the left-most or the right-most can be changed. In the demonstration, these were for the dialer and contacts apps respectively.)

Folders

Finally, there is native support for creating folders iPhone style. Just drag an app’s home screen icon over another and you’ll have a folder. Drag more apps into it to populate it and see its circular icon update with the icons of the apps as you add them to it. You can even have folders with quick dial shortcuts for your frequently called contacts. You can also rename folders as well as organize apps within each folder by dragging and dropping.

Improved Widgets

Widgets are another core feature of Android that sets it apart from other smartphone operating systems. While manufacturer-customized versions of Android such HTC devices running Sense interface, as well as several third-party home screen replacement apps have long offered a higher degree of control over widgets, stock Android has neglected this aspect till now. With Ice Cream Sandwich, widgets are both scrollable as well as resizable, and can dynamically update the widget layout based on the current size.

Furthermore, all the installed widgets are now available right from the app drawer in a separate ‘Widgets’ tab in the app drawer. This makes perfect sense, as widgets are essentially apps or components of apps that you can interact with independently. So no more long-pressing the home screen and then scrolling through the long list of widgets. Simply go to the widgets tab of your app drawer and drag the desired widget to your home screen of choice. To add to the convenience, you see actual previews of widgets in the widgets section of the app drawer rather than mere icons or names, so you get a decent idea of what you’re bringing to your home screen.

A new feature added to the widgets is stacks which shows you a stack of content such as photos or videos. You can swipe down the top-most picture or video to reveal the one below it, with beautiful animation effects. Apart from being cosmetic, this can help you quickly browse through your camera photos right from your home screen without even launching the gallery app, and tapping on the photo or video to open it up in full size, once you have found the one you were looking for.

Rich Notifications

Android has always had an edge over its competitors when it came to its notification system. With Ice Cream Sandwich, notifications have been improved even further by giving you more information as well as control than just text, right from the notification bar.

Notifications can now include rich and dynamic content, images as well as control elements. You can pause playback without switching to the media player app, just by tapping on the pause button in the ‘now playing’ notification of your media player, or respond to an event in an app directly from the notification of the event, rather than tapping on the notification to bring up the app and then taking action in the app itself. This means less disruptions in what you are currently doing, without having to ignore important notifications from other apps.

Dismissing notifications has also been made easier. Now you can simply dismiss individual notifications by flicking them off the screen with a swipe gesture without effecting other notifications. This is a very welcome change, as in the previous versions of Android, there was only the option of clearing all notifications together and not individually.

Improved Task Switching

While true multitasking support has been one of the primary selling points of Android from its very first version, switching between tasks hasn’t exactly been intuitive so far in any of the previous versions of the OS. Google addressed this issue in Android 3.0 Honeycomb but being solely tablet-specific, that version was never made available for smartphones. In Ice Cream Sandwich, there is a dedicated task switching button on the System bar that brings you a scrollable list of large thumbnail previews of the currently running or recently launched apps, with the ability to switch between them with a single tap.

You can even close or dismiss the apps right from the task switching interface by flicking them off the screen with a swipe gesture. This can help you focus on just a few apps without having other apps coming in your way.

Application Management

Installed applications can now be managed more easily. You can long-press an app’s icon to get more information about it or uninstall it. In case of a system app that you can’t uninstall, you can choose to disable it in case you don’t want it to run in the background. It can be easily re-enabled in the same way whenever you choose.

Lock Screen Actions

Android’s lock screen has also evolved with Ice Cream Sandwich, becoming more than a clock and a locking/unlocking slider. You can now jump directly from the lock screen to camera to capture those precious moments instantly. You can also view notifications and unlock right into their respective apps, right from the lock screen.

If you are listening to music and your phone’s screen times out or you turn it off yourself, you don’t have to unlock the phone each time you want to change the song, as media controls are available right on the lock screen during music playback, along with album art for the currently playing track in the background.

Screenshot Support

iPhone has had it for quite a while, MIUI has had it for long, CyanogenMod recently added it and now Google has followed suit by allowing you to natively capture screenshots of your device by using Power and Volume Down buttons.

You are shown a nice Polaroid animation and viola, your screenshot gets saved to your gallery, ready to be uploaded, shared or saved for future blackmailing.

Face Unlock

Who doesn’t think facial recognition is cool? Just the thought that your device recognizes your face and unlocks itself for you, while denying access to others, gives you a secure feeling. The feeling of being the hero of a Sci-Fi flick comes as a bonus. Ice Cream Sandwich has support for unlocking your Android device with face recognition.

The phone even gives a cool “Sorry, don’t recognize you” message when someone else tries to unlock your phone using this feature. Beware though, as you might get the same results at times too, as Google’s Matias Duarte experienced during the presentation. Luckily, you can still unlock using your PIN or pattern if Face Unlock fails for you for some reason.

Input Methods

Modern computer devices are thousands of times faster than us at processing and output but when it comes to taking input from us, they can be just as fast and as efficient as the input they are getting from us. That’s why input method efficiency is of the utmost importance to make the user experience enjoyable on any device. This is especially important for smartphones as due to their small form factor and frequent use, the quickly and more accurately we can input data into them, the better the user experience. Ice Cream Sandwich comes with improvements to both its core input methods – Keyboard and Voice.

Keyboard: The on-screen keyboard in ICS has been improved to offer better autocorrect and word suggestions with new and improved default dictionaries, resulting in better detection of skipped, double-typed and omitted letters and spaces. You can even tap on a correctly spelt word to get suggestions for replacement words. Support for third-party spell-checkers and dictionaries has been added as well.

Voice: Android 4.0 comes with a better voice input engine with continuous voice recognition. You no longer need to speak into your phone in phrases, pausing to get one word or phrase recognized before proceeding to the next, as the new voice recognition system works in a continuous stream, recognizing words as you speak, for as long as you want. Pausing will not make the OS recognize what you say after the pause as a different chunk of input.

In addition to mere words and sentences, you can now dictate punctuation as well. Any errors that the voice input engine encounters are underlined automatically. Tapping on them shows you a list of suggestions, from which you can quickly fix the mistakes. With Apple’s Siri already making headlines out there, Android’s newer voice engine is definitely more of a need of the operating system to be able to compete in the market against iOS 5.

Accessibility

Android 4.0 includes many new features for enabling the blind or visually impaired to use their Android devices more efficiently. There is a new ‘explore-by-touch’ mode that allows users to navigate their devices with audible feedback. A single touch makes the phone speak out the component that has been touched and a second touch on the component activates it, eliminating the need to see the screen.

Core Android apps have also been updated for accessibility, with the browser including a screen reader that reads out web content for users and even helps them navigate websites. The default font size across the entire Android UI can also be changed, which effects all apps rather than just the home screen and default apps.

Accessibility features are of no use if the blind or visually impaired user can’t enable them in the first place, so Android 4.0 lets them enable them right at the phone’s first setup using a touch gesture of a clockwise square made on the screen from the top-left corner. It also launches a setup tutorial to guide users with the rest of the setup process.

Core Apps

In today’s world, an operating system is just as good as the number and quality of apps available for it, as we spend most of the time using apps rather than the core features of our smartphones. Android 4.0 comes with updated core apps that bring several improvements over the previous versions of these apps. Let’s now take a look at some of the major core apps in details and see what new features they offer in Ice Cream Sandwich.

People

A major change in Ice Cream Sandwich is the People app. It is basically the Contacts app not just renamed but rather redefined. Sporting the magazine style, People app brings all the information of your contacts together – not just phone numbers and email addresses but also instant messaging accounts, social media accounts and online services profiles. All the information about your contacts is pulled directly from their social media accounts, which means if they update their twitter or LinkedIn profile, their contact information updates on your phone as well. Any network or service can add support for this feature, which means interaction possibilities are endless.

While in the People app, swiping to the left takes you to the favorite contacts for quick access in a beautiful, magazine style interface. Opening any user’s People entry shows a high-res photo with common actions such as calling, texting, emailing, IM or contacting via other online services, right from one screen. Swipe to the left and you’ll be presented with a stream of content shared by them over the connected online services.

Furthermore, tapping on a contact photo in any app – be it email, texting, Whatsapp, Twitter – brings up a quick contact card that offers quick access to all possible interactions with that person, not just in that particular app but even using other apps. This means you can receive an @mention on twitter and seamlessly continue the conversation over email or GTalk. Last but not the least, you can add people shortcuts to your home screen and even group them together in a folder.

There is also a ‘Me’ profile that is basically your contact card that keeps together and identifies all your contact information and social media, instant messaging and web services profiles. You can then quickly share your information with anyone as easily as handing over your business card.

Phone Dialer

Just like the People app, the dialer has also received some enhancements. You can swipe to the left in the dialer to access direct dial shortcuts to your favorite contacts in the same magazine style layout similar to that in the People app. When in a phone call, large high-res images of contacts are shown across the screen.

How many times have you received a call but weren’t in the position to attend it right away and had to either blatantly reject it or press the volume-down key to silence the phone’s ringing and let the other person deduce you were busy or away from the phone? Ever wished you had a way to automatically send a text message to the caller, letting them know you are busy and will be responding later when free? You can now do that with Ice Cream Sandwich Phone Dialer.

This update to the Dialer app lets you swipe up during an incoming call to reject it and automatically send the caller one of several pre-configured canned responses. You can edit the responses to suit different callers as well as different scenarios. This is a very convenient addition to the dialer app.

Unfortunately, there was no word on smart dialing support but who knows? We’ll just have to wait for the first Ice Cream Sandwich devices to roll out to see if Google has included that much-requested feature as a surprise or neglected it as before.

Visual Voicemail

Tired of using a separate interface for your voicemails? Since voicemails are basically missed calls with just a voice message added, it makes sense to integrate them with the call log, and that’s exactly what Google did in Ice Cream Sandwich. Now, your voicemails and call logs are integrated together in the phone app, as Visual Voicemail. You can not only playback voicemails right from the list but also manage the playback speed of voicemail. Voice transcriptions, Google Voice text messages and audio files transferred through compatible third-party apps are also integrated into Visual Voicemail.

Calendar

The updated Calendar app sports a cleaner, color-coded and more easily readable interface with unified work, personal, educational and social agendas all in one interface. Swiping and pinching gestures mean you can easily get to the exact time slot or event you are looking for.

Other apps can now contribute to Calendar event with user permission, letting them update your information across other services based on your calendar schedule or update your calendar based on your actions in other apps.

Gmail

The Ice Cream Sandwich Gmail app features several interface and functionality enhancements including 2-line previews of all your email messages to get a better idea of their contents, as well as an action bar at the bottom of the screen with one-tap access to compose, search, labels and refresh actions. Multiple message selection has also been added and upon selecting multiple messages, the action bar changes to offer the applicable interactions. Once a message is opened – the action bar lets you archive, label or delete it with a single tap.

Threaded view has been greatly enhanced with the same magazine style look featuring bold colors and large contact photos. Navigating to the next and previous emails can be done by horizontal swipes. Auto completion has been enhanced to add graphical eye candy. Furthermore, there is focus on people rather than email addresses. When composing, contacts are shown as chips with photos. Tapping on a chip lets you switch email addresses or remove the person from the To, CC or BCC field.

Offline search has finally (and thankfully) been added. By default, you can search for emails from the past 30 days but this can easily be changed to a duration of your choice. Other improvements to Gmail include quick responses support, toggling reply-all and forward, integrated accounts and recent labels menu, nested subfolders, EAS v14 for enterprises, administrative options and last but not the least: a resizable email widget for your home screen!

Browser

As smartphones have matured over the past few years, web browsing from phones has increased exponentially. That’s why Google has worked significantly on improving the Browser app.

Perhaps the most significant new Browser feature is the ability to save pages for offline viewing later. This is indispensible on mobile browsers as you can just save a lot of pages before going somewhere you won’t have internet access, and then then read them offline in peace, without having to incur any data charges for it. Saved pages are accessible in a visual list that makes it easy to pick the right one quickly. Your browsing history and bookmarks are also presented in the same interface. Speaking of bookmarks, you finally have the ability to sync Google Chrome bookmarks with your Android browser. It was entirely beyond us why Google didn’t add this capability before but better late than never.

You can now have 16 tabs open at a time and tab switching has been revamped to be just like the new task switching, with a scrollable list of large tab thumbnail previews and the ability to close the tabs by flicking them off the list with swipe gestures. The tab switching interface can be launched by tapping on its icon in the options bar on top.

Other changes to Browser include incognito browsing, a list of most visited pages, custom text size and zoom levels, faster rendering and separate preferences for each browser tab. There is also a full desktop mode for browsing sites just the way you would on a computer browser.

Data Usage

Over the past couple of years, most – if not all – telecom providers have enforced download caps over mobile data plans. Once you have reached the limit, you either have to pay prohibitively high charges for further data use, or get crawling slow throttled speeds that remind you of the 28.8kbps dialup days. That’s why being careful about your data use can never be a bad thing. Ice Cream Sandwich addresses this issue by introducing a brand new app called Data Usage.

Data Usage shows you a graphical presentation of the data usage on your phone over a billing cycle. It also shows you your projected data usage in the remaining days of the cycle, based on your past data usage in the cycle. You can specify warning limits or upper caps to get alerts or cut off background data.

That’s not all – below the graph is a list of all the apps that have been using the data, sorted by the amount of data used.The app lets you zoom in on particular time slots in the cycle where there are spikes and close in on the app responsible for high data usage in that time slot. Once you’ve spotted the culprit app, you can tap on it to see its individual data usage graph and even set a limit on or entirely cut off its background data access.

Unless you are one of the lucky few who still have an unlimited data plan or don’t use mobile data at all, Data Usage will at one time or another prove to be the most handy feature of Android 4.0 for you.

Camera

Mobile phone cameras have improved greatly over time but in the end, what good is a camera when you can’t instantly use it to snap the right moment without having to fiddle through unlocking your device and looking for the camera app? With Ice Cream Sandwich, you can launch camera right from the lock screen by dragging the unlock ring over to the camera icon. Though compared to the rest of the improvements in the Ice Cream Sandwich camera, this one would seem like peanuts.

The updated camera app has boasts zero shutter lag and very low shot-to-shot lag, so no more missing out on the right moment due to the interval between you tapping on the capture button and the camera actually capturing the moment – that interval is gone. Consecutive shots taken in quick succession come nearly instant as well, letting you capture as many images of the right moment as you want, to be able to choose the best one later. Other improvements include continuous focus, auto set exposure, stabilized image zoom with on-screen slider, face detection with focus and tap-to-focus.

That’s not all – there is also a new single-motion panorama mode, letting you capture wide panorama images by simply moving your camera in a slow, horizontal motion. The app then automatically stitches the images together to give you one complete panorama image, with impressive results.

Once you have taken a photo, you can share it through any installed supported services by just tapping on the image and selecting the service of your choice. It takes only two taps to share or upload your photography masterpiece.

Video capabilities have also been improved. Ice Cream Sandwich camera now natively supports full HD video recording at 1080p, though this feature is obviously hardware-dependent and may or may not work on all devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. (Nexus S is one example of devices it won’t work on, as its camera doesn’t even support 720p video recording at the hardware level.)

While recording a video, you can tap the screen at any time to take an instant photo of the current frame. Support for continuous focus, time lapse video recording and zooming while recording are amongst some of the other new Camera app features.

Last but not the least is Live Effects – a video camera feature that allows you to add several effects like changing background or making faces funny, all in real time. Even if you are in a video call with someone on GTalk or Skype, the other person will see these effects live. This can come handy for removing that awkward messy dorm room background or just to give your friends some laughs.

Gallery

Like the Camera app, the Gallery app also comes with many updates. As with the rest of Ice Cream Sandwich UI, it features a magazine-style interface for easy previewing, managing, showing and sharing your photos and videos. You can see more albums on each screen, select multiple albums, scroll with swipe gestures and tag photos. Photos can be organized by albums, locations (using geo-location data), time, tags or even people in the images that you have tagged, à la Picasa.

There is a new picture gallery widget as well that supports single image, album, image shuffling and image stacks. In fact it is a great example of the new stacks style of widgets, and can be seen in the section on widgets above.

A totally new feature in Gallery is photo editing. You can crop images, add cool filters, adjust shot angle, remove red eye, and the list continues. All edits are saved as copies so your original file stays as it as and once you are done with editing, you can select the final result that looks best.

Communication

NFC Beam

NFC stands for Near Field Communication and it basically allows you to perform a vast range of interactions such as data transfers, payments, authentication etc. simply by touching another NFC-enabled device with it. In the Google I/O event earlier this year, Google announced enhanced NFC support for future versions of its operating systems and with Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s a reality!

NFC Beam lets you share apps, contacts, music, videos and much more with another NFC-enabled phone by simply touching it with yours. Once you do this, you’ll see a preview of the item to be shared, with a ‘Touch to Beam’ message on top. Just tap the screen and the item will be shared with the other phone – it really is that simple.

Reading an interesting article and want your friends to read it on their phones? NFC beam will directly launch the article in the browser on their phone. Want to initiate a supported multi-player game with them? Just touch, tap and go! Came across a nice app and want them to try it out? NFC beam will open Market on their phone and load that app’s Market page. Maps, YouTube videos, People cards, you name it, you got it. An endless number of apps can add support for NFC beam to make sharing this easy, so expect a lot more in the future from this technology.

If you want to learn more about NFC, check out this guide I wrote a few months back on what is NFC, how it works and what are its practical applications.

Wi-Fi Direct

Ice Cream Sandwich also comes with Wi-Fi Direct – a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connectivity method that lets you directly connect two Wi-Fi devices together just the way you would pair two Bluetooth devices, without the need for a Wi-Fi router or access point. Once connected, the devices can share the date connection of one with the other, transfer files at high speeds, stream audio or video between devices or print using a Wi-Fi Direct compatible printer. These interactions limited only by the apps and devices that support them. Any app can add Wi-Fi direct capability using its open APIs just like NFC, so expect a lot more from it in the future that will greatly improve the way we exchange information with each other.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, a Wi-Fi Direct pairing connection can be initiated via NFC.

Bluetooth Enhancements

Android 4.0 brings some additional features to its Bluetooth stack including Bluetooth Hands Free Profile (HFP) 1.6 that offers high quality audio connection with compatible Bluetooth handsfree devices.

There is also built-in support for Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) that enables connecting to Bluetooth enabled medical devices for monitoring health statistics directly on your Android device.

Whoa, that was quite a ride. Now that we have seen a lot of what Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has to offer, all that remains is to wait for the first ICS devices to hit the market and take it on a spin. We will then bring you in-depth app-by-app coverage of Google’s latest offering in the Android franchise. So till then, stay tuned.

Did Ice Cream Sandwich come up to your expectations? Did it exceed them or came short of them? Share your views with us in the comments.

[Images from official video and Android Website]

Roundup: Let’s Talk About 10 New Features In iOS 5

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:56:27 +0000

Apple’s much awaited ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event is over and while it may have left several disappointed due to the iPhone 4S being announced rather than the much eagerly anticipated iPhone 5, the launch of the final version of iOS 5 is still confirmed, which will start rolling out to end users from October 12th. The GM (Gold Master) version of iOS 5 – which is a pre-final version for developers that can be considered as a release candidate and as close to final as possible – was also released today and brought to us all the features that are to be a part of the final version. In what follows, we will take a look at all these new features of iOS 5 and what they mean for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users.

Ever since Apple announced iOS 5 back in June at WWDC 2011, everyone has been speculating upon the release of the new smartphone OS by the Cupertino based tech giant. The wait is finally over and iOS 5 is now here. We got our hands on the GM version just as soon as it was released for developers, to be able to bring you our coverage of all the new iOS 5 features.

While Apple has announced 200+ new features for iOS 5, following are ten of the most notable ones:

Notification Center
A brand new Notification Center that consolidates all the system, phone and app notifications and makes them accessible in an unobtrusive manner.
iMessage
A new messaging service over WiFi and 3G for all iOS devices that brings an integrated free messaging experience to all iOS users.
Reminders
A location-aware task management system that reminds you about things of importance or tasks you need to do, optionally based on where you currently are.
Twitter Integration
Deep Twitter integration into iOS and apps such as Photos, that eliminates the requirement of using separate apps for uploading your activities to Twitter or having to sign-in to it multiple times.
Newsstand
iBooks-like app for all your newspaper and magazine subscriptions in a streamlined, unified format.
Camera & Photos Updates
Easily access your camera right from the lock screen and edit your photos on your device without the need of transferring them to the computer or using third-party apps for the purpose.
Improved Game Center
An updated Game Center with profile photos and social features such as friend lists, friend and game recommendations and achievement points.
New Features In Safari
Updates to Safari browser that add full tabbed browsing and a new Reader function that presents the page in a format optimized for your device for reading whenever you want.
New Features In Mail App
Updated Mail app with new rich formatting, indentation and flagging support, and the ability to move email addresses by dragging and dropping.
Activate iDevice Without PC
OTA (over-the-air) activation as well as operating system updates without the need to connect to a PC and use iTunes for the purpose.

Some features and apps in iOS 5 that were showcased during “Let’s Talk” event are not yet available in GM build. We will cover them as soon as we get hands on the final build on 12th October. The most important feature was Siri voice assistant which is exclusive to iPhone 4S users.

So what are you waiting for? Hit up the links to check out all these new features of iOS 5, and let us know what you think of them in the comments.

New OTA Updates And Activation Feature In iOS 5, No PC Required

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:20:54 +0000

One of the key features announced back in WWDC 2011 for iOS 5 was the ability to update your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch over-the-air (OTA) without the need of a PC. Earlier today in the Let’s Talk iPhone event, Apple’s Senior Vice President of iOS Software Scott Forstall again talked about this new feature that will remove the dependence of users on a PC to be able to update or activate their iOS devices.

OTA or over-the-air updates are basically updates directly delivered by the device manufacturer to your device, without the need for hooking your device up to another device for the purpose of downloading and applying the update. The download happens directly to the device via its Wi-Fi or data connection.

Smartphones have evolved to become more like independent computers and the idea of using a conventional desktop or laptop computer to update them sounds so last-century. While users of some other smartphone platforms (such as Android and Windows Phone 7) have been able to do this from the very beginning, iOS users have had to use their PCs or Macs to update or activate their iPhones and iPads, despite having internet connectivity on these devices.

For the end user, this new feature removes a huge annoyance and adds the convenience of being able to keep your device up-to-date even when you are on vacation and have taken along only your iPhone or iPad. It also means those of us who absolutely hate to use iTunes will no longer need to launch it each time a new update is released for their iOS devices.

Not only this, but users will also be able to activate their new iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch devices directly through their Wi-Fi or 3G connections without having to use iTunes for the purpose.

Once you have iOS 5, your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will automatically download any new version or any update to the current version of iOS as it is released by Apple. The update will be downloaded in background and you will be able to use your device while the update is downloaded. Once downloaded, you can apply it and it will install automatically, restarting your device once finished and viola! You will have the updated version of iOS running on your device just like that!

This feature, along with the Notification Center feature and the upcoming iCloud service integration will help Apple catch up with its main competitor i.e. Android as well as a future potential competitor – Windows Phone 7.

This guide is part of the 10 new features in iOS 5 – the latest operating system from Apple for their iDevices.

Notification Center
iMessage
Reminders
Twitter Integration
Newsstand
Camera & Photos Updates
Improved Game Center
New Features in Safari Browser
New Features in Mail app
Activate iDevice without PC (Currently viewing)

New iOS 5 Game Center Gets Social, Adds Profile Photo And Achievements

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:07:26 +0000

One of the major features of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that has contributed significantly to the massive success of these devices has been gaming and with iOS 5, this important part of the OS hasn’t been neglected. This latest update to Apple’s smartphone and tablet operating system brings with it new features to the Game Center, making it more personalized as well as social.

From the very beginning of modern computing, gaming has been an important part of it and as computing technology has progressed, it has become more and more of a crucial component of any device, up to the extent that a good gaming ecosystem can mean the difference between its success and failure. This holds equally true for smartphone platforms. That’s why Applehas been smart enough to capitalize on it from the very beginning, providing game developers with tools to create immersive games to keep us indulged (or distracted, depending on what else we are supposed to be doing) for countless hours.

In iOS 4, Apple introduced its Game Center that acted as a hub for all your games. As is the case often with initial releases, it lacked in many aspects such as user profiles, achievement records and social interaction with other games. This lack was felt most by Xbox LIVE users who have had profile avatars and achievements for quite a while now. With iOS 5, Apple has addressed all these shortcomings.

The new Game Center in iOS 5 brings with it the capability to set your own profile photo to personalize your gaming profile. Although it isn’t quite like the animated avatar you can have in Xbox LIVE, it’s still a start and makes your profile unique.

Social features have also been added to Game Center, which will now recommend other players to you to add as friends, based on the games you play as well as on mutual friends you already have. This social interaction will let you discover new games without having to leave the Game Center, as you browse the lists of games your friends or recommended friends play.

Last but not the least, achievement scores have been added to profiles based on your performance in the games you play. This not only lets you boast your gaming prowess to others but also allows you to assess any potential opponents by checking out their scores before deciding to compete against them. This will help avoiding getting your arse kicked by taking on an opponent too tough for you to tackle.

With all these new improvements, the iOS 5 Game Center is definitely on its way to becoming a social hub for all your iOS gaming and with the passage of time, it might even get to rival Xbox LIVE, who knows?

This guide is part of the 10 new features in iOS 5 – the latest operating system from Apple for their iDevices.

Notification Center
iMessage
Reminders
Twitter Integration
Newsstand
Camera & Photos Updates
Improved Game Center (Currently viewing)
New Features in Safari Browser
New Features in Mail app
Activate iDevice without PC

iOS 5 Newsstand Brings All Your Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions Together

Haroon Q. Raja — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:18:39 +0000

Newsstand is one of the new features introduced by Apple in iOS 5 that aims to bring your newspaper and magazine subscriptions together under one app. Announced at the WWDC 2011 and discussed again in today’s Let’s Talk iPhone event, Newsstand is designed to be the central hub for the digital versions of all your periodicals on all your iOS 5 devices including iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Tablets are fast replacing printed publications and that holds true not only for books, but even more so for periodical publications such as newspapers and magazines. While iOS devices have had the iBooks app for a while to take care of your book library, a dedicated app for periodical subscriptions was missing and such publications had their own dedicated apps for the purpose. While that model also worked, it didn’t give users a streamlined experience as all those apps used their own layouts despite serving very similar nature of content, merely with different subject matters. That’s something Newsstand takes care of.

Note: At the moment, the version included with iOS 5 GM version is not fully functional as the Store button that takes you to the App Store’s section for compatible publications is disabled, so you’ll have to wait till October 12th for the final version of iOS 5 to roll out to your device, to be able to use it. Once it does, you will see compatible apps available from leading publications such as The New York Times, GQ, Allure, Vanity Fair and a lot more.

Newsstand looks like just another app on your Springboard but upon launching, it merely expands like a folder. Unlike regular folders though, you see a wooden racks interface similar to that of iBooks. There is a Store button that takes you to the App Store’s section for Newsstand compatible publications, which you can install from there and they will show up in Newsstand.

Another useful feature of Newsstand is that it will give you notifications and an unread count badge on the Newsstand icon whenever a newer edition for your subscribed newspapers or a newer issue of your magazines is available. The new issues are downloaded automatically in the background so all you have to do is select and install your favorite publications from the App Store and forget about them, meaning there’s no need to check apps individually for updates.

In conclusion, Newsstand attempts to unify all your publications into a single streamlined interface to make your news and magazine reading experience on iOS devices much more pleasant. Amongst the several new features of iOS 5, it is certainly poised to become a welcome addition.

This guide is part of the 10 new features in iOS 5 – the latest operating system from Apple for their iDevices.

Download iOS 5 GM (Gold Master) for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch

Haroon Q. Raja — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:48:20 +0000

Apple has finally announced the final version of iOS 5 in its Let’s Talk iPhone event today. This version has a lot of new features and will start rolling out to public on the 12th of October for all users. Don’t get too excited just yet though! Unfortunately, there is no way at the moment for anyone to grab a copy of iOS 5 final and take it for a spin on their devices just yet. However, that does not mean iOS 5 will not see the day of light before that day.

Apple release a GM version for developers that can be taken as a post-beta iOS. It is generally as close to the final release as it gets, if not an exact replica of it. There is a catch, however. This version – just like any other beta version of the iOS – is available only for developers so you’ll need to either already have a developer account with Apple, or will need to shell out $99 to register one. Once you have developer account access, you will be able to download and install the GM version of iOS 5 directly from Apple, and take it for a ride on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch right away.

iOS 5 comes with several new features, amongst which the most notable ones include:

Siri – an intelligent voice command center
iCloud
Cards
Find My Friends
Notification Center
iMessage
Reminders
Twitter integration
Newstand
Camera updates
Game Center updates
Safari updates
Mail updates
PC-free OTA updates

So if you don’t already have a developer account but these features have already interested you enough to want to grab one to download iOS 5 GM version before the final release (and maybe even start off with development for iOS), head over to the iOS Dev Center and register to join the iOS Developer Program. Once registered, you will be able to download the GM version of iOS 5 from there. Once downloaded, you will be able to install it to your iPhone, iPad Touch or iPod through iTunes.

Top Free And Most Beautiful Android Live Wallpapers

Haroon Q. Raja — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:34:20 +0000

While the concept of wallpaper is universal to most desktop as well as mobile operating systems, Android extends this concept one step further by letting you set dynamic content as your wallpaper – a concept known as Android Live Wallpapers. It is Android Wallpaper Weekend here at AddictiveTips. A few days back, we taught you how to take Android wallpaper customization to the next level. Join us today as we take you for a tour of the prettiest and most eye-catching Live wallpapers available for Android that we have hand-picked for you from the countless options out there.

Android is all about customization and we are big fans of doing that. That’s why we have put up a comprehensive guide to customize the looks of your Android device to the max. Wherever there’s mention of customizing the looks of your device, wallpapers and themes are amongst the first things that come to mind. There are a plethora of Live Wallpapers available for Android and that can make choosing the right one for yourself a rather tough call, though we are here to help, but lets have a few more words on Live wallpapers before we proceed.

Live wallpapers aren’t like static wallpapers – they are not like simple image files but rather like regular Android apps. That’s why installing Live wallpapers is like installing just any other app too – you either install them from the Market or sideload them using their APK file. There is a difference, however – Live wallpapers don’t have launcher icons, so upon installing, you will not find them in your app drawer. Do not be alarmed, as setting them as your wallpaper is a piece of cake. For the sake of the beginners, we have outlined that method in detail in our ultimate guide to Android wallpapers so don’t forget to check it out.

Also note that being apps, Live wallpapers take significantly more resources than static wallpapers when running, and that can be taxing on the battery. However, some live wallpapers may fare better than others in this regard while some also offer you options to choose between best appearance and best battery. That said, let’s begin with our showdown of the best free Android Live wallpapers.

Abstract Live Wallpapers

Tired of pictures, pictures and more pictures as your wallpaper and want something more abstract and artistic? We have you covered with these breathtakingly beautiful colorful and abstract live wallpapers!

Splatter

Ever seen someone wearing black just walk out of a paintball game? Splatter turns your Android’s home screen into a canvas for splatting paint on it, and the results can be mesmerizing! Despite not being fans of non-functional live wallpapers due to their battery drain, we fell in love with Splatter as soon as we installed it. By default, it uses all colors of the rainbow, but in very elegant shades that are easy on the eyes and look great with any kind of icons or widgets on top. Take a look at it yourself in our screenshots.

You can splat color by dragging and dropping icons and widgets here and there, or by simply tapping on the screen, though these options are customizable. There are options that let you shake your phone to clear all splats and get a clean canvas or let splats appear automatically after set intervals. You can also choose the color scheme of the splats, the background color and the maximum number of splats visible on the screen at any time.

These settings also allow you to control the power consumption of Splatter and with auto splatter disabled or auto splatter frequency set to 60 seconds, the power consumption shouldn’t be significantly more than static wallpapers, unless you find yourself tapping on the screen or dragging and dropping widgets and icons very frequently like us, just to check out the colorful splats they make.

Splatter is available at Android Market for free but there is a pro version available too that removes ads from the settings menu so if you want to support the developer, you are encouraged to buy it.

Pixel Rain

Do you like rain? How about a shower of colorful, glowing pixels on your phone’s home screen? While it might not sound too tempting, it certainly looks quite stunning. See for yourself!

The background color as well as color of the falling pixels, their sizes, lengths of pixel trails, the glow and splash effects are amongst the many options that you can set, so there is plenty of room for tweaking if you want a lighter background or a more girly, pink-themed look, as in the following screenshots.

Plasma Colour

Plasma Colour brings the enchanting plasma fluid effect to your lock screen, with the ability to make it react to your taps. Screenshots can’t really do justice to its effects but here are two to give you an idea.

Electric Plasma

Not satisfied with mere plasma and want something more electrifying? You mean it should be electrifying AND contain plasma? Electric Plasma is just that! While it doesn’t use multiple colors at the same time the way Plasma Colour does, it still lets you choose one from many colors available, and the results are eye-catching enough for us to notice.

What? You’re looking for one featuring an eagle riding a T-rex with a gun that shoots electric plasma, riding a great white shark? You sure are hard to please but you haven’t seen everything yet.

Crazy Colors

This one is basically a soft, cloudy flame of colors dancing around on your screen, giving away colored smoke in all directions and changing its location based on your touch. Touching multiple spots on the screen in quick succession spawns multiple such flames but they eventually all die out or blend back at the center of your screen. You can choose between color schemes and even specify the colors of your own choice from the settings.

Rays of Light

Want the same bright colors on a dark background like Crazy Colors but in form of light rays? The same developer has taken care of that for you, in Rays of Light. While this one doesn’t react to touch, it’s pretty enough without that. See for yourself:

Flux

A cosmic-looking, twisting and turning flux of brilliant colors with OpenGL 3D effects bundled in a free, small package less than 90Kbps in size is definitely hard to resist, especially so if it looks like this:

Solar Wind

From the makers of Flux comes solar wind – a wallpaper similar to Flux as a concept but with a twist of its own, literally! While the motion of the flux pattern is quite abstract in Flux, it’s more twisty and wavy in Solar Wind and the results will make you keep looking at your device screen. If you aren’t satisfied with its default effect, there are a bunch of others to choose from as well, including a jiggly one.

Want to make it truly yours? Just choose ‘Customized’ as style and you’ll be able to control the particle number, size and speed as well as wind speed, motion blur, particle emission speed and the number of emitters in each gust of wind.

Euphoria

The next few wallpapers in this section come from GO Wallpaper Dev Team – the same guys who developed the immensely popular GO Launcher, GO SMS and GO Weather apps for Android so when we learned about these, we knew they had to be nothing less than superb, and we weren’t disappointed! The first amongst these is Euphoria. It is hard to describe it in words and even screenshots won’t do it justice but we’ll try.

You’ve got to see it on your phone’s screen to truly appreciate the brilliant colors and the animation and if you’ve got an AMOLED screen, it’ll truly bring it to life! The free version is limited to the style shown above while there’s a paid version available as well that adds several other styles and removes the ads.

3D FireFlies

Up next by the GO Wallpaper Dev Team is this swarm of colorful fireflies leaving trails of vibrant colors behind as they fly around your screen in a 3D motion.

As with their other wallpapers, the free version is functional but the paid one adds more options and removes the ads.

3D Skyrocket

Last in this section (but not the least) by the GO Wallpaper Dev Team is what they describe as the most realistic and stunning firework live wallpaper, and we find it hard to disagree. It lets you choose the quality of the firework explosion effect for a combination between looks and battery life that suits you. You can show or hide clouds and stars, choose star density. With this many options and a price tag of free, it’s hard to go wrong.

A paid, ad-free version available at the market adds the ability to enable touch sensitive mode that lets you control the viewing angle and camera animation by swiping along the screen.

Space Live Wallpapers

Want to stare into the infinite vastness of space? These stunning space-themed live wallpapers will take you on a breathtaking tour of the universe, right from your Android home screen!

Hyperspace 3D

Another masterpiece by the GO Wallpaper Dev Team, Hyperspace 3D is a blend between abstractness and space and can be put into both categories. It lets you travel through a time-warp tunnel across space while watching the stars and galaxies getting created and destroyed as you pass them by. If the concept of wormholes fascinates you, this is the live wallpaper for you!

You can choose your speed, star count and star size in the free version while more options such as depth of field and the size and resolution of the view port can be controlled by buying the ad-free, paid version.

Maxelus Galaxy Tetrology

This is a series of four stunning space live wallpapers set on different themes. We’re keeping these four together here because these are parts of the same series of galaxy-themed live wallpapers by the same developer. We’ll just let their screenshots speak for each of them.

Inferno Galaxy (Top-left), Ice Galaxy (Top-right), Vortex Galaxy (Bottom-left) and Shadow Galaxy (bottom-right) are all available for free from the market, have been optimized for tablets as well as phones and allow you to set the animation speed as well as battery consumption levels in the settings.

Galaxy Core

When Vega Galaxy and Lyra Galaxies, our own Milky Way’s galactic core and Orion, Aquila, Crab, Eta Carina, Rosette and Antenna Nebulae are combined together in one live wallpaper, its epicosity index is bound to be of astronomical proportions, no pun intended. Just two screenshots will not do justice to this one, so here is a whole bunch of them!

While the images might not be too realistic since all the portrayed celestial bodies seem to be composed of individual dots of the exact same size, this doesn’t make the overall result any less stunning so give it a shot. There aren’t any customization options for the animation but there really isn’t any need for them either. The best part is that it’s fully free, with all the galaxies included.

Galactic Core

Want to see a more realistic but by no means less fantastic view of space? Galaxy Core brings you a mesmerizing view of a rotating spiral galaxy just like our own Milky Way. While its concept is the same as Galaxy Core, there is just one unnamed galaxy available, though is it way more realistic than any of those featured in Galaxy Core.

The free version doesn’t let you change any settings though, and you’ll have to buy the paid version to get access to features such as changing camera zoom and speed, modifying colors, spin or touch sensitivity and enabling accelerometer tilt sensitivity.

Nature Live Wallpapers

Care for a serene, natural setting as your wallpaper? Let us bring interactive beaches, gardens, cloudy skies and aquariums right to your Android home screen!

Suburb Dusk

Tired of living in an urban environment and seeing concrete and metal all around you? If you can’t afford to move to the suburbs yourself, you can bring the suburbs to your Android phone’s home screen with the Suburb Dusk Live wallpaper. Vines crawling over a wooden fence next to a tree under a cloudy sky is about as serene and picturesque as it gets. It also includes a clock rendered in the colors of the sun.

Suburb Dusk offers options such as an extensive wallpaper editor, ability to run it in landscape mode, change animation speeds and performance levels, and even launch an app by tapping on it.

Celtic Garden Free

Celtic Garden Free takes you to a mystic garden with a predominantly green Irish Celtic theme, complete with an ancient fountain, a clover field and exotic mushrooms.

The free version of this wallpaper doesn’t offer any customization options but it doesn’t look bad without any changes, and you can always buy the paid version if you want more control over it.

Spring Zen Free

Brought to you by the developers of Celtic Garden, Spring Zen takes you to a beautiful Zen garden set in a Spring theme with eggs in a bird’s nest, falling pink Sakura flowers and a wooden bench on a lush green patch of grass with a pond in the background.

Like Celtic Garden, the free version doesn’t allow access to settings and you will have to buy the paid version to be able to customize it any further.

My Beach Free

Not a Spring person and craving for some sun, sand, surf and sea? Get your own private beach on your Android home screen with My Beach Free – yet another wallpaper by the developers of Celtic Garden and Spring Zen.

Like their other free wallpapers, this one is also as-is in the free version but settings can be unlocked by buying the paid version to customize it to your heart’s content.

Aquarium Live Wallpaper

Did you know why hospitals and therapy clinics often have aquariums? According to a research, watching fish swim has a calming and somewhat healing effect on us. Can’t afford an aquarium? Get one for your Android for free, using Aquarium Live wallpaper.

Set in a beautiful tropical reef with colorful tropical fish, Aquarium Live wallpaper is a joy to stare at. The fish have animations and respond to your taps too, by changing direction or swimming away faster. Need more options? There is also a paid version available that lets you unlock the settings.

aniPet Aquarium

Don’t wanna buy the paid version of Aquarium Live wallpaper but still want more control on your aquarium? AniPet Aquarium Free gives you an aquarium with you having a lot more control over it without buying the paid version, at the cost of getting fish and backgrounds in less brilliant colors compared to those in Aquarium Live wallpaper.

The options it offers include adding or removing fish from a large variety, change their sizes and speeds, set how the fish behave and even change the background, so take it on a spin and explore away.

A Playmio 3D Sky

This one left us utterly mesmerized. That’s why instead of writing much about it, we decided to get straight to taking screenshots – LOTS of screenshots. See for yourself:

With nine stunning sky themes to choose from including Stormy, Interstellar, Violent, Grim Night, Mirmar, The Alps, Blue Mountains, Red Mountains and Green Mountains, and access to settings such as frame rate and sky motion speed, all for a price tag of free, one really can’t go wrong.

Games Live Wallpapers

Colors, pictures and nature not your style? Want some cool, retro gaming goodness on your home screen instead? What better to satiate your thirst for retro gaming with than Pac Man, Mario and Doom?

PacDroid Live Wallpaper

What’s better than Pac Man eating dots, ghosts and fruit? PacDroid chomping away at dots and Apples, of course! Warning: The Apple fanboys are certainly not going to like this one.

You can customize dots, dot color, wall color, show or hide walls, background color and even behavior of Android and its rivals (or victims, if you will), but even without all these options, Android + Pacman + Apple-in-despair = a geek’s-dream-come true!

Super Mario Live Wallpaper

If you don’t like Mario, we don’t like you! Super Mario Live Wallpaper turns your Android home screen into Mario World, with the famous plumber in action stomping on the poor goombas and koopa troopas, and breaking bricks. See for yourself!

We have already covered this live wallpaper a few months back and it definitely deserves a mention in this list, so check out our review of Super Mario Live Wallpaper for Android for more information as well as a video of the wallpaper in action.

Unfortunately, the version that we covered is not available at the Market so you’ll have to download the APK file and sideload it to your device. There is another similar live wallpaper available at the Market that you can find here.

Doom Live Wallpaper

Want something bloodier and more violent than Mario and Pac Droid? How about Doom, with all its demons? Doom Live Wallpaper brings the old classic to your home screen where you can see the hero fire away at all sorts of bloodthirsty beasts as they storm in on him from all directions.

You can not only watch him in action but also help him out by tapping on the screen, which drops power ups. Want to make things tough for him instead? Just move the app shortcuts on your home screen by dragging and dropping them here and there to spawn extra daemons to make his life more of a hell than it has to be. This live wallpaper uses pixel art sprites from Doom and thus, its battery use is quite low compared to other similar live wallpapers, so that you get more Doom nostalgia with little battery loss.

Bonus: StickMan Free

While not exactly a game, the ubiquitous stick man has starred in several games such as hangman, Fancypants Adventures and many more, and now he’s ready to invade your Android home screen as a live wallpaper. Watch him workout, skateboard or just stretch and relax as he attempts to keep himself busy, or even tap on him to interrupt him in his activities.

The free version doesn’t give you many options except for selecting the background from three images already provided but more backgrounds as well as other features such as a more active StickMan, custom background of your choice, or even a StickDog can be bought in the paid version.

Photo Live Wallpapers

While we have already seen in our Ultimate Android Wallpaper guide how to use an app to automatically change the wallpaper after a set interval with images stored on your SD card, it lacks many advanced features such as using online sources to grab images, showing transitions when switching images etc. There are many live wallpapers available that offer the same basic functionality, with these and more added features. We have taken the trouble of checking out literally dozens of such apps to select some of the best for you.

Photos Around Me

Photos Around Me does what it says – showing you interesting Flickr photos from around your street, neighborhood or city. It’s a simple way to learn more about what’s there in the neighborhood or town if you have recently moved there, or even to discover things around you that you never knew were there.

While an image is displaying, you can tap on it to get controls, allowing you to skip to the next or previous image, zoom into the current image, get the information about the image, pause auto-update to keep the current image set as wallpaper or go directly into settings of the wallpaper.

In the settings, you can choose the update interval, specify whether you want to use images from around your street, neighborhood, city, state/region, country or the whole world, set the quality of images to be downloaded based, use images matching only certain keywords or get images from only a particular Flickr user. You can even set to display images randomly or interesting first.

picofday

So just Flickr isn’t enough for you eh? How about almost two dozen sources of the most stunning photography, such as Astronomy Picture of the Day, National Geographic Photo of the Day, EarthShots, Kodak Photo of the Day, bing Picture of the day, and many more? Picofday lets you have ‘em all.

You can choose to download pictures on Wi-FI only, store downloaded pictures to SD card, show download progress or even store every downloaded picture on your SD card for a collection.

If the sources already provided in the app aren’t enough for you, you can even suggest new sources and they will be included if enough people are asking for them but with all the sources already there, who needs that?

Photile Live Wallpaper

Feel your current wallpaper getting too stagnant but don’t want to change it? Why not add some twist – and lots of tiles – to it with Photile Live wallpaper! It takes your current wallpaper and lays out several animated tiles on it with a plethora of options to customize the effects.

As you can see, tiles can be set to use random levels of transparency for each. Animations like sliding tiles can be added, with an option to turn your desktop into a tile-sliding puzzle as well, though you will not be able to play it.

Apart from the customization options, there is also a theme chooser with a few pre-installed themes, which are basically just sets of different customizations to directly apply if you are feeling too lazy to do so yourself from the settings. Once you have it all setup the way you want, you can even take a screenshot to save or share with others, right from the settings, which you can launch right from the home screen using a widget that comes bundled with it.

Foto Tiles Slideshow & Live Wallpaper

Want the tiles but not just one image? Foto Tiles Slideshow & Live Wallpaper brings tiles of different images to your home screen. What’s more…you can use photos from your gallery, Picasa or Flickr.

There are plenty of options to choose how to display the tiles including random, Metro, two-by-four and many more. You can choose to display just one photo at a time too, if you want. There is even a built-in editor for further customization of the style, apart from the options provided in the settings. You can also set an app to be launched when the pictures are tapped.

Foto Tiles is actually a full-blown app that can be used standalone for a slideshow as well as a Live wallpaper, and supports all screen sizes. It is one of the most feature-rich Live wallpapers in this list.

PhotoWall Live Wallpaper

Who doesn’t love stacks of Polaroid pictures? With PhotoWall, you can fill your home screen with Polaroids of pictures in your gallery, stacked up randomly and more getting added automatically to the stack with cool fading effects.

Photos can be loaded from the phone’s gallery as well as other sources such as your Picasa Web Albums, your own Facebook photos, your friends’ Facebook photos or Facebook photos tagged of you.

Tapping a photo can open it for viewing and different effects can be applied. The free version includes just a few effects but more effects as well as more ways to display the photos on your home screen can be unlocked by buying the pro version.

Floating Image

Floating Image is similar to some of the other Live wallpapers we have just seen, but there are a few differences. Firstly, while some other Live wallpapers that we have already seen do let you display tiled images from your phone’s Gallery, Facebook, Flickr or Picasa, some can only display your own images from these services, while others display the images in a much more cluttered-up way. If you want to give your images more space, see the 500 top-rated Flickr images or Picasa images matching only certain keywords, Floating Image does that!

There are plenty of options to customize how the images display, including transition modes, shuffling options, speed and frame rate settings.

Floating Image has multi-touch support and uses 3D OpenGL for rendering, resulting in buttery smooth animation and effects, so grab it and bring all your favorite images right to your home screen.

MultiPicture Live Wallpaper

So far, we have covered most of the options one can explore with Picture Live wallpapers but we have missed one. How about having a different image for each of your home screens? While it may seem pointless or even weird to some, there might be others who can use this to add a variety to their screens when scrolling between them. That’s where MultiPicture Live wallpaper comes handy.

It can load the images from your gallery, a folder on your SD card or a Picasa Web Album. You can set different transition animations when scrolling between the screens and change the picture by double-tapping or after a set time interval.

There is one known limitation: if you use a device running HTC Sense 3.0 interface, be warned that MultiPicture Live Wallpaper will not work for you in its current version.

Special: My Water Honeycomb Tablet Live Wallpaper

My Water Live Wallpaper for Honeycomb tablets is a popular live wallpaper that originally came with the Asus Eee Pad Transformer but was quickly ported to other Honeycomb devices in its original form as well as several modified flavors. Here is the original followed by just a few of its variants.

My Water Live Wallpaper works only on Android tablets running Android 3.0 Honeycomb or later. You can grab the original from the XDA-Developers forum and its flavors including the ones shown above as well as all the rest, from the Xoom Forum links given below.

Original My Water Live Wallpaper at XDA-Developers

Flavors of My Water Live Wallpaper at Xoom Forum

That’s it for today’s episode of our Android Wallpaper Weekend. Come back later, when we will take a look at the best functional Live wallpapers available for Android.

UPDATE: Our review of the Best Free and Amazingly Functional Android Live Wallpapers is up so don’t forget to check it out and see how Live wallpapers can add a lot of functionality to your Android home screen that goes beyond mere cosmetics.

How To Enable 64-Bit Mode In Internet Explorer 10 On Windows 8

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:55:19 +0000

As most of our desktop computing devices move from 32 bit towards 64 bit platforms, more and more programs are being made available in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. While Windows 7 has already had Internet Explorer 9 in both these variants, they were available as separate apps. That changes with Windows 8, as both versions have been consolidated into one version of Internet Explorer 10. For further details on switching between the modes, continue reading.

Most Windows 7 users must be familiar with having both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Internet Explorer 9 installed on their 64-bit computers. For those who haven’t noticed it before or haven’t used 64-bit version of Windows 7, here is how things were.

In Windows 8 however, things are done a little differently with the new Internet Explorer 10 – there are no two separate versions of the browser in the start menu. However, the browser still retains both its 32-bit and 64-bit modes. To choose which mode to use, you will have to take a different approach.

Open Internet Options from the Tools menu of Internet Explorer (the gear icon in top-left) and switch to the Security tab. Under the slider for changing different security settings, you will notice a new check box saying “Enable 64-bit Mode (requires restarting Internet Explorer)”. However, enabling/disabling it has been associated with security zones, just the way the remaining security settings and Protected Mode are. This means you can set 32-bit mode for the Internet zone while using 64-bit mode for your local intranet, or you could use 32-bit mode for trusted sites for maximum compatibility and 64-bit mode for untrusted sites for maximum security.

Once you have chosen your preferred settings for all the security zones, simply restart Internet Explorer. You will now be able to browse the zones in the corresponding 32-bit or 64-bit modes. This new method seems to be a welcome change considering it removes the necessity of having two versions of the same browser installed while still granting access to both versions.

Windows 8: Extended Wallpaper And Taskbar Across Dual Monitors

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:54:19 +0000

After years of offering only the bare minimum dual monitor support with its operating systems, Microsoft has finally decided to change things for the better. The recently released Developer’s Preview of Windows 8 has added better dual-monitor support natively to the OS, letting you extend your wallpaper across multiple monitors as well as extending your taskbar across them automatically, without the need for any third-party apps. For more information and how to get it going, continue reading after the jump.

In the previous versions of Windows like Vista and 7, dual-monitor support was there but at the very barebones level. Windows extended neither the wallpaper nor the taskbar to the secondary monitor, so users were left with duplicate wallpapers and no operating system control on one of the screens. Many users installed third-party apps to add this functionality and while it worked for some, it didn’t standardize things in any way. With Windows 8, all that has changed.

Extended Taskbar

The taskbar is extended in Windows 8 natively across both monitors. All the pinned and running tasks on the taskbar are displayed on both the monitors and the start button is there on the primary monitor but that’s not it. The secondary monitor features a switcher button in place of the start button, clicking which will swap it with the start button, bringing it to the secondary monitor and taking the switcher to the primary one.

This can come really handy when you want to be able to control Windows from both monitors, especially in scenarios when you don’t have both displays side by side or even visible at the same angle, like projector displays during presentations.

Extended Wallpaper

For extending the wallpaper, across both your monitors, you will need an image with the right dimensions that can span across both your screens, or it will appear pixelated or stretched. Once you have the image you want as your extended wallpaper, right-click the Desktop and click ‘Customize’. From the themes, select ‘Windows Extended’ under Aero Themes, as shown in the following screenshot.

Once you have the theme selected, you can then select your extended wallpaper. Click ‘Desktop Background’ to bring up the wallpaper customization interface. From there, browse to the location where you saved your extended wallpaper if it isn’t already being displayed there. Right-click the wallpaper of your choice and from the menu, select ‘Set for all monitors’ as shown in the screenshot below.

Windows 8 also lets you set different wallpapers for each monitor. Simply follow the above procedure but instead of selecting ‘Set for all monitors’, select the particular monitor you want to apply it on.

Google Launches The First Google+ APIs; Opens G+ To Developers

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:01:26 +0000

The wait is finally over, as Google has just announced the launch of the first Google+ APIs, opening the doors to developers to integrate Google’s social app into their apps. What this means for the end users is a more integrated experience with applications that till now offered integration with and authentication via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking services but had Google+ missing from the picture. Read on for our coverage of the press release..

The announcement just came from the Mountain View just moments ago via a tweet from Google’s official twitter account @google by Google Blog editor Emily Wood. Here is a screenshot of the tweet:

So all of you who had been waiting to use Google+ instead of Facebook or Twitter to log into other services or to integrate their Google+ streams into their websites, the wait is finally going to be over. Heck, these are just a couple of examples from limitless possibilities, and yet this is only the beginning. However, you will have to wait till developers actually build apps utilizing Google+ APIs, or add their functionality into their existing apps.

For developers, it means adding another way for the users of your apps and services to interact with them and each other. While the just released APIs allow access only to public data of users, this is clearly only the start and more APIs will be rolled out soon.

Now lets get down to the technical details, for those who are interested. These APIs use methods that are RESTful HTTP requests, returning JSON responses, with OAuth2 implementation for security and standard syntax payload formats for making this streamlined for developers as per industry standards.

To learn more about implementing Google+ APIs in your applications or just to read the full press release, visit the Google+ Platform Blog post.

[via Twitter and Google+ Platform Blog]

The Ultimate Guide To Android Wallpapers

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:40:00 +0000

Ever wondered if you could do more with the wallpaper on your Android device, like choose it from countless options directly from your phone, rotate your wallpaper automatically after a set interval or even set a video as your phone or tablet’s wallpaper, you are at the right place. It’s Android Wallpaper Weekend here at AddictiveTips and we’re all hyped up about this phase of our Android modification madness, so stay with us as we take you through wallpaper customization like never before.

This guide is a part of our series on customizing the looks of your Android device. Other guides in this series include:

Introduction to Android customization
Make & Flash your own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator
How to Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation
How To Replace and Customize Android Lock Screen
The Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers (Currently viewing)
Launchers
Themes
Widgets
Fonts
Icons
Status / Notification Bar
Combining it all in your own custom ROM

Note that there may be changes in this layout as we proceed, and we will be updating the links as we keep publishing the parts.

Wallpapers go beyond serving as a mere background on your phone – they add a personality to it and in cases, they can even add to its functionality. Over the next couple of days, we will be looking at all the ways to customize the wallpapers of our Android devices in what we have decided to call our first ever Wallpaper Weekend and since it isn’t the weekend already, lets start with the basics for now.

In this guide, we will be showing you how to:

Set or change your Android wallpaper (for beginners)
Automatically change Android wallpaper using images stored on your SD card
Browse, set & share thousands of available stunning Android wallpapers
Browse and set plain colors, gradients, patterns and textures as Android wallpaper
Set a video of your choice as your Android wallpaper
Get the best cosmetic and functional Live wallpapers for Android

Don’t worry if all of this sounds too basic – while there really may be of resources out there to do all of this, we have tried to go through them all to bring you the best of the best so make sure to check them out. Still not happy? Over this weekend, we will be bringing you rundowns of the very best of cosmetic and functional Live Wallpapers available out there, so don’t forget to come back over the next couple of days for the updates.

UPDATE: Our guide to the Top Free and Most Beautiful Live Wallpapers for Android is up now so head over to it to enjoy our collection of the must stunning cosmetic Live wallpapers we could find.

UPDATE 2: Our review of the Best Free and Amazingly Functional Android Live Wallpapers is up so don’t forget to check it out and see how Live wallpapers can add a lot of functionality to your Android home screen that goes beyond mere cosmetics.

How To Set Or Change Android Static Or Live Wallpaper

One might ask why are we writing a how-to section on such a basic task as setting a wallpaper but trust us, there is good reason for it. While not even the least bright amongst us should ever have trouble figuring out how to set a picture file as wallpaper, there are many who get confused when it comes to setting live wallpapers because those are installed as apps rather than as image files. That’s why when many new Android users install a live wallpaper from the Market for the first time, they go looking for its icon in the app drawer and when they can’t find it there, they often leave negative ratings and comments on the wallpaper’s Market page.

How To Set or Change A Static Android Wallpaper

Static wallpapers can be set in several ways, but we will take a look at the universal method that should work on all Android devices.

At your home screen, press Menu.
From the options, choose Wallpaper. (You might find it under ‘More’ on some ROMs). You will be presented with several options, depending on your ROM, Launcher and installed apps.
Select Gallery, if you are using any ROM other than MIUI, as shown in the first screenshot below. On MIUI, select Home screen wallpaper, as shown in the second screenshot.
Note that you might now be given a choice to choose what app to use for Gallery, in case you don’t have any set as default yet, and have multiple apps installed for the purpose. Just select Gallery from that list as well.
From the gallery, browse to the location of the wallpaper of your choice and select it.
You will now be given an option to crop the image so if it isn’t in the correct dimensions or if you want to use only a specific part of it as the wallpaper, crop it accordingly.
Hit ‘Save’ when done, and your wallpaper of choice should now be applied.

Note that while standard options such as Gallery and Live wallpapers will always be there to choose from, the rest will depend on your ROM, launcher and installed apps. That is the reason we have chosen the gallery method because it applies to everyone with an Android phone (the only exception known by us being phones running the MIUI ROM, which has options that don’t need any explanations).

How To Set or Change android Live Wallpaper

While Live wallpapers can be installed just like apps, they differ from apps in that they have no launcher icon and they need to be set as wallpapers from the menu. To set any Live wallpaper as your background, simply follow these steps.

From your home screen, press the Menu button.
Tap ‘Wallpaper’. The options given to you here will depend on the apps you have installed, though some standard options such as Gallery and Live wallpapers should certainly be there.
Tap ‘Live wallpapers’.
Select the live wallpaper of your choice from the list.
You will now see a preview of the selected Live wallpaper. If it has any settings you can modify, the Settings button will be visible. Tap on it if you want to change its settings.
Tap ‘Set wallpaper’, and you are done. You can now go back to your home screen and see your live wallpaper there in all its battery-draining glory.

Automatically Change Android Wallpaper from Images on SD Card

Our previously featured Wallpaper Changer is an app that changes your Android wallpaper automatically using images already saved on your SD card. It can do so upon boot, each time you unlock your phone’s lock screen and/or after a time interval that you can specify. It even comes with a desktop widget that you can tap to manually change the wallpaper to the next one in queue.

To learn more, check out our review of Wallpaper Changer for Android.

Browse, Set & Share from Thousands of Available Android Wallpapers

There are several free apps that let you browse hundreds of thousands of popular Android wallpapers and choose your pick from them. Let’s now take a look at the most prominent ones of these.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds boasts a collection of countless wallpapers for you to browse from, updated daily. The wallpapers are high quality, and have been optimized for Android phones as well as tablets. You can search for wallpapers by category, popularity or your favorite features. Apart from setting them as wallpapers, you can also save the images to your SD card or share them with your friends using Twitter, Facebook etc. The developers are planning to built wallpaper auto-rotation into the app in the future.

Backgrounds 10,000 Wallpapers

Boasting more than 10,000 wallpapers and new ones getting added daily, this app has something to suit everyone’s taste, from sunsets and beaches to city life and fashion models to movies and space. You can browse through images by popularity or category, or go through the most recently uploaded ones. You can even add your own image and customize it as your background. A nifty feature is the ability to set the image as your contact picture – now that can help with getting rid of all those blank icons that make our contact lists appear ugly.

Wallpapers HD

While Wallpapers HD offers many of the same features as the previously mentioned apps like browsing through wallpapers by categories, it adds a unique Colors feature that can come pretty handy, as it lists wallpapers for you based on the main predominant color in them. It also has a Lucky! button to bring up a random wallpaper, and allows you to set the images you like as favorites for quick future access.

Set Plain Colors, Gradients, Patterns and Textures as Android Wallpaper

If you don’t fancy photographs of places, objects, people and animals etc. as your wallpaper and would rather go for something more simple such as a plain color or a gradient of two colors, there are apps that save you the hassle of manually creating an image with your desired color or gradient for the purpose.

Simple Wallpaper

Simple Wallpaper is what its name says – a simple wallpaper app that lets you select either a plain color or a two-color gradient for your wallpaper using colors of your own choice. It has a built-in palette and offers easy options for creating, previewing and applying your wallpaper right from the same screen.

I Love Color

This one is a more suitable for those amongst us who – like me – aren’t exactly great at choosing a tolerably nice color from a given palette (as obvious in the above two screenshots). It lets you choose from countless colors submitted by others to set as your wallpaper. The list is huge and most of the colors there are pretty cool.

In addition to solid colors, it also provides you with a list of color palettes that can be set as backgrounds of vertical color bars, as well as pre-designed seamless color patterns. The collection in both these categories is stunning, to say the least and there’s something to suit everyone’s taste. Setting or sharing the wallpaper is just one tap away from the preview screen, and you are even shown hexadecimal color codes for all the colors used in the design.

Colourful Backgrounds

Yet another app that features tons of colorful designs ranging from bars to swirls and polygonal shapes. An interesting feature of this app is the ability to filter backgrounds based on color, by tapping on the palette icon and simply selecting the color of your choice from the palette. You can also create your own backgrounds and apply effects to any pattern from countless effects available, turning bars into swirls or dodecahedrons if you wish. Happy with your choice and effects? You can even save the resulting image to your SD card and use it for any purpose.

Texture Wallpaper

This one offers a limited yet impressive collection of textures to turn your Android home screen background into a tiger’s skin, a wooden door, a graffiti-filled wall or a marble slab. Note that the app appears as HDWallpaper in your app drawer, rather than as Texture Wallpaper.

Set A Video As Your Android Live Wallpaper

Not satisfied with any of the above options? How about the ability to set any video of your choice as Live wallpaper? Free app Video Live Wallpaper lets you do just that, with lots of options to completely customize the experience! We have already written about it before, so head over to our coverage of Video Live Wallpapers to learn more and install it.

Our Selection Of The Best Live Wallpapers For Android

Over the next two days, we will bring you the best live wallpapers for Android. Tomorrow, we will be covering the best cosmetic Live wallpapers that bring your Android background alive with the most breathtaking scenes and animations, while over the weekend, we will finish our Wallpaper Weekend off with a rundown of the best functional Live wallpapers that go beyond mere animations and add functionality to your home screen background, so don’t forget to check back here for the updates.

UPDATE: Head over to the next installment of our Android Wallpaper Weekend - List of the Best Free and Most Beautiful Live Wallpapers for Android.

UPDATE 2: Don’t forget to check out our review of the Best Free and Amazingly Functional Android Live Wallpapers as well.

What’s Next:

So far, we have covered splash screens, boot animations, lock screens and wallpapers in our Android customization series. In the next installation of our Android customization series, we will take a look at Android themes, how to apply them in popular stock and custom ROMs and even how to make modifications to them for further personalization. Stay tuned!

How To Replace And Customize Android Lock Screen [Guide]

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:52:02 +0000

The Android lock screen is what you see whenever you resume your device from standby, making it one of the frequently accessed featured of the operating system. In the fourth installment of our Android customization series, we are going to show you how you can customize the Android lock screen both in looks and in functionality for a fully personalized experience.

This guide is a part of our series on how to customize the looks of your Android device. Other guides in this series include:

Introduction to Android customization
Make & Flash your own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator
How to Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation
How To Replace and Customize Android Lock Screen (Currently viewing)
The Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers
Launchers
Themes
Widgets
Fonts
Icons
Status / Notification Bar
Combining it all in your own custom ROM

Note that there may be changes in this layout as we proceed, and we will be updating the links as we keep publishing the parts.

Let’s proceed with our lock screen customizations now. In this guide, we will cover:

The Basics
WidgetLocker Lockscreen
- Configuring WidgetLocker
- Setting a Wallpaper
- Selecting Lock Screen Layout
- Adding / Removing Components
- Applying a Theme
Other Alternatives
- LockGo
- FlyScreen
- GO Locker
- MiLocker
Flashing a Custom Lock Screen
Disabling the Lock Screen

The Basics

Unlike the splash screen and boot animation, the Android lock screen is rather tightly integrated into the framework of the operating system. Therefore, replacing it isn’t usually as simple as flashing the splash screen or replacing the bootanimation.zip file, though in certain cases, it can be replaced by flashing a zip file from recovery. On certain devices that use their own customized user interface such as HTC Sense, Samsung TouchWiz etc., the stock Android lock screen is usually present but overridden by the version provided by the manufacturer.

Much of the customizations available for the lock screen are in form of apps that usually run as a layer above the stock lock screen. These allow you to change the lock screen’s look, add more functionality such as enabling widgets, adding information streams from social media and increasing the number of unlock options, letting you directly launch certain apps after unlocking.

WidgetLocker Lockscreen

WidgetLocker Lockscreen is like a Swiss army knife for all things Android lock screen. Unfortunately, it isn’t free but at US$2.99, it is quite a bargain considering all the features it packs. With WidgetLocker, you can revamp your lock screen beyond recognition. You can add more sliders to directly take you to certain apps upon unlocking, change the look of the sliders, add widgets and app shortcuts, choose whether to allow interaction with the widgets and app shortcuts or not, and whether to show or hide the status bar while on the lock screen etc.

WidgetLocker Lockscreen at Android Market (US$2.99)

Configuring WidgetLocker

Once WidgetLocker has been installed, launching it for the first time will take you through a tutorial that explains some of the functionality of this app. Once the tutorial is finished, you will be presented with a Tool Mode lock screen containing two sliders and the default lock screen clock. In this mode, you can edit anything on the screen by tapping and holding on it to drag or resize it.

The first screenshot is what you will start with, and the second screenshot is our end result, though yours can be as remotely different from it as you choose, considering all the options you’ll have.

To override the stock lock screen efficiently, WidgetLocker uses its own Home / Launcher app called WL HomeHelper. Don’t be alarmed if you want to stick with the launcher that you are already using – WL HomeHelper isn’t meant to replace it; rather, it is only needed for seamless operation of WidgetLocker and simply hands over the control to the launcher of your choice. During or after the tutorial upon first-time launch, WidgetLocker might prompt you to set WL HomeHelper as your default launcher, which you should do. After that, it might also prompt you to select your real launcher so that WL HomeHelper could give control back to you after unlocking.

In case you do not get prompted for these, just press the menu key, go to Settings while in Tool Mode, and select Advanced. Here, you will be able to enable/disable HomeHelper as well as another useful feature called RootHelper that lets WidgetLocker take further control of the lock screen using root privileges if your phone is rooted.

WidgetLocker comes with a plethora of options that can appear to be overwhelming in the beginning but thanks to the accompanying descriptions, a bit of reading and trying things out should get you going in no time. In the Buttons & Input section, you can set your device to wake the device from standby with any hardware button or even set it to unlock with selective hardware buttons or actions such as by sliding out the hardware keyboard in devices that come equipped with it. In addition, you can also choose what hardware button actions are allowed while in lock mode. The last few options of this section let you allow or block interactions with the items displayed on the lock screen in case you just want to just display information there without allowing tapping or editing.

Look & Feel is the next section in the settings and we will take a look at it in detail shortly. Next are Behavior, Screen Timeout, Popups and Built-in Widgets. All the options in these should be self-explanatory, thanks to their descriptions.

Setting a wallpaper

By default, WidgetLocker Lockscreen will use the same wallpaper that you have set for your home screen. If you want to use a different one, simply enable ‘Alternative Wallpaper’ in the Look & Feel section and select one of your choice. You can also add a tint to the sections of the lock screen here.

Selecting Lock Screen Layout

WidgetLocker divides your lock screen into two sections: Anchor and MainGrid. Anchor is basically has a five row layout while MainGrid gives you a more tightly packed grid for adding small-to-medium widgets as well as app shortcuts. In the Layout section of the Look & Feel settings, you can adjust the size of MainGrid and also optionally assign a custom grid size to it. The maximum allowed for grid size is 12 x 12, which can make great use of all those extra pixels available on tablets. For phones though, a smaller grid size would make more sense.

Adding / Removing Components

Now that we have chosen our layout and configured the options, let’s go back to the Tool Mode because this is where the real visual customization begins. Just tap and hold any empty space and you will get the options to add new custom sliders, applications, shortcuts and widgets to the lock screen. Tap and hold on any existing object and you can then drag it to a more suitable spot, move to the trash can to delete it, or release your finger to get the handles for resizing it, so it all works pretty much like the home screen.

Applying a Theme

So far, you must be asking “OK so we can add widgets and sliders but how do we change the looks of these sliders?” This is where the theming option comes in, though it’s hard to find unless you know exactly where it is. After you get a slider into resize mode by tapping-and-holding on it and then releasing after a couple of seconds, you will see a tiny icon in the top-right corner. This is where they hid the option that lets you edit the slider itself. Tap on it and you will be presented with a slider configuration screen.

Here, you can not only apply a theme from the list of default themes but also access hundreds of themes available online using the buttons provided. If you would prefer previewing and downloading the themes on your computer instead, visit the official WidgetLocker Theme repository or the WidgetLocker Theme Collection at XDA-Developers forum. The number and quality of themes out there is astounding and you will feel like a child in a huge candy shop, with the added benefit of all the candy being free.

Installing a new theme is simple. Just open the location of the theme on your SD card using any file browser, tap on the desired .theme.zip file and you will be asked whether you want to install and add a new slider with that theme applied or just install it for use with existing sliders later.

In addition to theming, you can also edit slider actions and icons for each action. There are three slider actions in most sliders, though some might have two or even one. To edit any action, simply slide that part as you would do on the lock screen and a screen will pop up with tabs for choosing the desired action and icon. For the central action (if applicable), simply tapping on it should bring up the same screen, if sliding doesn’t.

Note that if you add a custom slider from the Tool Mode, you get the exact same editing options that let you build your own slider from scratch.

Other Alternatives

For those of you who don’t want to shell out two bucks for WidgetLocker, there are a few alternative apps out there that are free.

LockGo

Amongst all the lock screen customization apps available, LockGo is pretty high on eye-candy. Apart from letting you tap on cutesy characters like foxes popping out of holes to unlock the device, it also provides you with multiple side-scrolling screens, each containing a widget for instant access to your important RSS feeds, calendar, weather, tasks and text messages etc.

LockGo at Android Market (Free)

FlyScreen

While not a full-blown WidgetLocker alternative, this free app does let you add data streams from your favorite web services such as Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and weather updates etc. right to your lock screen. While it doesn’t have the looks of LockGo or the huge feature-set of WidgetLocker, it does provide you with significantly more screens than LockGo does, for all your data stream needs.

FlyScreen at Android Market (Free)

GO Locker

GO Locker is a great free tool by the developers of GO Launcher, GO Weather, GO SMS, GO Contacts etc. that lets you endlessly customize the lock screen of your Android device. It hadn’t been released at the time of writing this guide, so we’re adding it as an update here now. With tons of themes available, support for custom wallpapers and lock screen shortcuts, and excellent integration with GO Launcher EX, it’s definitely worth a shot. To learn more, see our coverage of GO Locker.

MiLocker

MiLocker is the official standalone version of of the famous MIUI ROM’s lock screen for devices that aren’t running MIUI. It supports different themes, custom lock screen wallpapers and custom shortcuts and being by the MIUI team, the themes are eye-catching! Check out our coverage of MiLocker for more information.

Flashing a Custom Lock Screen

Another option for rooted users is simply replacing your lock screen at the operating system level by flashing a custom one from recovery using a zip file. You must be very careful with this option however, as the lock screen is integrated deeply into the Android framework and you must make absolutely sure that the one you are attempting to flash is compatible with the particular ROM that you are running on your phone. For example, flashing an HTC Sense based custom lock screen to a Samsung device running a TouchWiz based ROM will most likely result in a messed-up lock screen, locking you out of your phone.

You can find flashable lock screens at many online resources, the most popular being XDA-Developers forum. Additional sources can easily be found by doing a quick Google search.

Once you have found a custom lock screen compatible with your phone and ROM in a recovery-flashable zip format, installing it is simple. Just transfer the zip file to your SD card, reboot your device into recovery, perform a nandroid backup to be sure you can revert back to your previous settings if things go wrong, wipe cache, wipe dalvik cache and finally, install the zip file from your SD card. Once flashed, reboot your phone back into Android and you will have your new lock screen.

Disabling the Lock Screen

If you would rather disable the lock screen altogether and directly get your home screen when you resume your device from standby, free app No Lock is what you are looking for, but there is a catch – this app may or may not work on your phone, depending on the framework of its ROM. Nevertheless, being free, it is certainly worth a try.

No Lock at Android Market (Free)

What’s Next:

So far, we have covered splash screens, boot animations and lock screens in our Android customization series. Up next, we will be looking at customizing both static and Live wallpapers for Android, in our Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers, so stay tuned!

Android Partitions Explained: boot, system, recovery, data, cache & misc

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:27:42 +0000

Unless you have been using your Android phone just for calls, SMS, browsing and basic apps, you should know that Android uses several partitions to organize files and folders on the device. Each of these partitions has a distinct role in the functionality of the device, but not many Android users know the significance of each partition and its contents. In this guide, we will take you on a tour of Android partitions, what they contain and what can be the possible consequences of modifying their content.

Let’s start with a list of standard internal memory partitions on Android phones and tablets. These are:

/boot
/system
/recovery
/data
/cache
/misc

In addition, there are the SD card partitions.

/sdcard
/sd-ext

Note that only /sdcard is found in all Android devices and the rest are present only in select devices. Let’s now take a look at the purpose and contents of each of these partitions.

/boot

This is the partition that enables the phone to boot, as the name suggests. It includes the kernel and the ramdisk. Without this partition, the device will simply not be able to boot. Wiping this partition from recovery should only be done if absolutely required and once done, the device must NOT be rebooted before installing a new one, which can be done by installing a ROM that includes a /boot partition.

/system

This partition basically contains the entire operating system, other than the kernel and the ramdisk. This includes the Android user interface as well as all the system applications that come pre-installed on the device. Wiping this partition will remove Android from the device without rendering it unbootable, and you will still be able to put the phone into recovery or bootloader mode to install a new ROM.

/recovery

The recovery partition can be considered as an alternative boot partition that lets you boot the device into a recovery console for performing advanced recovery and maintenance operations on it. To learn more about this partition and its contents, see the ‘About Android Recovery’ section of our guide to ClockworkMod recovery.

/data

Also called userdata, the data partition contains the user’s data – this is where your contacts, messages, settings and apps that you have installed go. Wiping this partition essentially performs a factory reset on your device, restoring it to the way it was when you first booted it, or the way it was after the last official or custom ROM installation. When you perform a wipe data/factory reset from recovery, it is this partition that you are wiping.

/cache

This is the partition where Android stores frequently accessed data and app components. Wiping the cache doesn’t effect your personal data but simply gets rid of the existing data there, which gets automatically rebuilt as you continue using the device.

/misc

This partition contains miscellaneous system settings in form of on/off switches. These settings may include CID (Carrier or Region ID), USB configuration and certain hardware settings etc. This is an important partition and if it is corrupt or missing, several of the device’s features will will not function normally.

/sdcard

This is not a partition on the internal memory of the device but rather the SD card. In terms of usage, this is your storage space to use as you see fit, to store your media, documents, ROMs etc. on it. Wiping it is perfectly safe as long as you backup all the data you require from it, to your computer first. Though several user-installed apps save their data and settings on the SD card and wiping this partition will make you lose all that data.

On devices with both an internal and an external SD card – devices like the Samsung Galaxy S and several tablets – the /sdcard partition is always used to refer to the internal SD card. For the external SD card – if present – an alternative partition is used, which differs from device to device. In case of Samsung Galaxy S series devices, it is /sdcard/sd while in many other devices, it is /sdcard2. Unlike /sdcard, no system or app data whatsoever is stored automatically on this external SD card and everything present on it has been added there by the user. You can safely wipe it after backing up any data from it that you need to save.

/sd-ext

This is not a standard Android partition, but has become popular in the custom ROM scene. It is basically an additional partition on your SD card that acts as the /data partition when used with certain ROMs that have special features called APP2SD+ or data2ext enabled. It is especially useful on devices with little internal memory allotted to the /data partition. Thus, users who want to install more programs than the internal memory allows can make this partition and use it with a custom ROM that supports this feature, to get additional storage for installing their apps. Wiping this partition is essentially the same as wiping the /data partition – you lose your contacts, SMS, market apps and settings.

With this, we conclude our tour of Android partitions. Now whenever you install a ROM or mod that requires you to wipe certain partitions before the installation, you should be in a better position to know what you’re losing and what not and thus, you’ll know what to backup and what not.

How To Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation [Guide]

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 19 May 2011 10:45:53 +0000

The boot animation is the first thing that you see when powering on your Android phone or tablet, after the operator or manufacturer logo. Although it does not serve a purpose functionally, an eye-catching boot animation can certainly make your device stand out while booting. In this third installment of our Android customization series, we will take a look at how to change or even create your Android boot animation and will feature some of the prettiest and geekiest boot animations we have come across.

This guide is a part of our series on how to customize the looks of your Android device. Other guides in this series include:

Introduction to Android customization
Make & Flash your own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator
How to Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation (Currently viewing)
How To Replace and Customize Android Lock Screen
The Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers
Launchers
Themes
Widgets
Fonts
Icons
Status / Notification Bar
Combining it all in your own custom ROM

Note that there may be changes in this layout as we proceed, and we will be updating the links as we keep publishing the parts.

Let’s now proceed with customizing the boot animation. This guide in itself will be organized as follows:

The Basics
Inside the bootanimation.zip file
Featured Boot Animations
Create Your Own Boot Animation
Apply a Boot Animation

The Basics

The Android boot animation is contained within a an uncompressed zip file called bootanimation.zip that can be found in the media folder of the system partition i.e. /system/media on the internal memory of the device. This single file contains all the information required to play the boot animation, and is loaded automatically when the device boots. Thus, customizing or changing the boot animation is simply the process of editing or replacing this file.

Inside the bootanimation.zip file

This section is for those interested in finding out how the Android boot animation works. If you just want to install one without bothering yourself about what’s in the file, feel free to move on to the next section, as this one will get a little technical. Though it should be easy and simple enough for anyone to grasp.

While the Android boot animation might appear to be in a video format during playback, it is in fact a little different. If you extract the contents of the bootanimation.zip file to your computer, you will see:

A desc.txt file
A part0 folder (Contains PNG images named in incremental numbers)
More part1, part2 etc. folders (May or may not be present)

As you can see, bootanimation.zip merely contains one text file and one or more folders with PNG images. The animation is played simply by displaying the images in a sequence, and the text file defines how they are to be played. In essence, first the PNG files in the part0 folder are displayed one after the other and afterwards, those in the part1 file – if it exists – are displayed, again one after the other, and so on. All of this is defined in the desc.txt file.

Let’s see how it works in a little detail by taking a closer look at the contents of the file.

The folders

These contain PNG images named in numbers, starting from something like 0000.jpg or 00001.jpg and proceeding with increments of 1. There has to be at least one folder, and there is no known upper limit to the number of folders.

The desc.txt file

This file defines how the images in the folder(s) are displayed during the boot animation, in the following format:

Width Height Frame-rate
p Loop Pause Folder1
p Loop Pause Folder2

An example of a desc.txt file is:

480 800 30
p 1 0 part0
p 0 0 part1

As you can see, in the first line, 480 and 800 define the width and height of the boot animation in pixels for this example. This must be the same as the screen resolution of your device for the boot animation to properly play in full screen. 30 is the frame rate in fps (frames per second) i.e. number of images to display per second.

The second and third lines have a same format, start with p, which stands for a part of the animation and end in part0 or part1, which denotes the folder in which the images for that part are present.

The number after ‘p’ defines how many times this part will loop (repeat playback) before switching to the next part (if present). Specifying 0 would make the part loop indefinitely till the phone has fully booted.

The next number is for the pause, and is expressed in the number of frames, which can be translated into time by dividing it by the frame rate. A pause of 15 for example, would mean pausing for the time it takes 15 frames to play and since the frame rate is 30 frames per second, 15 frames would take half a second.

Translating all of this in case of the above example, the boot animation will play at a resolution of 480 by 800 pixels, at a frame rate of 30 fps, starting with the contents of part0 folder and after playing them in one loop, switching to contents of part1 folder and playing them continuously till the device fully boots.

A note on resolution: Most high-end Android devices with large screens have a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, and are referred to as HDPI. Some mid-range devices have a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and are called MDPI. Lastly, the screen resolution of some low-end devices is 340 x 320 pixels and these are called LDPI, though these are either the really old Android phones or the cheapest Chinese models.

As a rule, a boot animation made for a lower resolution device will run fine on a high resolution one but it will be centered on the screen, with the extra screen space around it not being used. Using a high resolution boot animation on a low resolution device will result in the boot animation not fully displaying on the screen, with its outer parts being cut off due to being outside the screen’s bounds.

Featured Boot Animations

There are hundreds of boot animations out there for a range of device resolutions. Some of them come as stock with certain devices and get extracted by users to be made available for others to install on their devices, while others are custom built by users and shared with the community.

As promised, we are featuring here a few boot animations that caught our eye.

The Droids series by Dysgenic:

Download (XDA-Developers)

Android Particle Ring by Dysgenic (Modified by aph):

Download (XDA-Developers)

Android BIOS by frysee:

This one has both a phone version and a tablet version. The preview shown is of the tablet version.

Download (XDA-Developers)

Honeycomb by Google:

Click the above image for a full animated preview.

Download

More:

There are a lot more boot animations floating all over the internet and searching on Google is bound to return you several. An excellent resource is the XDA-Developers Forum where users share hundreds of ported and new boot animations, though if you truly want to make your device stand out, why not make your own? It’s easy as pie!

Create Your Own Boot Animation

So you want to put the artist inside you at work and create your very own boot animation? It’s so easy even a child can do it, and we are going to show you how.

If you have found a boot animation that is made for higher resolution devices and you have a low resolution one, you can use this method to edit those to fit your device as well.

Requirements:

A zip/unzip utility like 7-Zip
Image editor of your choice like PhotoShop, GIMP, Paint.NET, heck even MS Paint will do.
A plain text editor of your choice. Using Windows Notepad for editing text files that are to be used in Linux is not always a good idea, so use something like Notepad++ instead.
As much time and creativity as you are willing to put into the task.
You must know the screen resolution of your device if you don’t know it already. You can find the resolution by searching for your device specifications on Google.
Note: A high resolution device will be able to play a boot animation made for a low resolution device but it will not take up the whole screen, while a high resolution boot animation will not display completely on a low resolution screen device.

Procedure:

Go through the entire Inside the bootanimation.zip File section of this guide first, if you haven’t already done so.
Plan how your boot animation will run. This includes how many distinct parts it will have, how long will each part play and what will be the sequence of the parts.
Make a new folder at any convenient location on your computer, and name it bootanimation.
In this folder, create a folder for each part of your boot animation, named part0, part1 and so on.
In the image editor of your choice, make all the image files for each part of your boot animation with the proper dimensions equal to your phone’s screen resolution, and save them in the respective folder for each part, in PNG format. Up to 32 bit PNGs are supported.
Note: In case you are converting an existing boot animation to fit your phone’s screen, simply extract the images from it and resize each of them to your device’s screen resolution.
Make sure the images are named in numerical format and in proper sequence, i.e. the images in the first part should start with let’s say 00000.jpg and go on till 00075.jpg, and the images in the second part should then start off with 00076.jpg and go on till – for instance – 00123.jpg.
Once you have the images for all the parts done and saved with proper names in each folder, create a text file named desc.txt in the main bootanimation folder.
Open the text file in a text editor and edit it in the format described in detail in the desc.txt file section above. Do consider that a frame rate higher than 30 fps can give issues on many devices.
Note: In case you are converting an existing boot animation to fit your phone’s screen, keep everything the same as in the original desc.txt file and change only the resolution.
Now select everything inside the bootanimationfolder and zip them into a new uncompressed zip archive using your favorite compression utility. Here is the method using 7-zip:
1. Select everything inside the bootanimation folder.
2. Right-click on any of the selected files/folders and from the 7-zip menu, select ‘Add to archive’.
3. Use ‘zip’ as the archive format and ‘Store’ as the compression level, and click OK. This will create a file called bootanimation.zip in the same folder.

That’s it – you have created your own Android boot animation! The only thing left now is to apply it to your device, so let’s get on with it.

Apply a Boot Animation

So you have found a boot animation that you want to install on your phone? Created one of your own and can’t wait to see it in action on your device? All you have to do is copy it at a certain location on your device. There are two locations you can copy it: /data/local and /system/media, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of copying it to /data/local is that you will not require root access for it and it should work for all non-rooted devices without running the risk of changing anything in the /system partition. Furthermore, if a bootanimation.zip file is found in both locations, Android ignores the one found in /system/media and gives priority to the one in /data/local. A disadvantage of this method is that upon a hard reset (also called a full data wipe or a factory reset), the new boot animation will be lost.

Copying the boot animation to /system/media/ is possible only if your device is rooted and you have read+write access to the /system partition. An advantage of this method is that upon a hard reset, the new boot animation will still remain and there will be no need to apply it again. A disadvantage is that it requires ADB or a root level file browser such as Root Explorer or Super Manager.

Had enough of the details? Here’s how to get on with applying the boot animation. We will tell you how to copy the file to any of the above mentioned locations and will use ‘All devices’ for the /data/local path method and ‘Rooted devices only’ for the /system/media path method.

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that the following method will not work for some devices running stock ROMs because their manufacturers have made the ridiculous decisions of either using their own proprietary format for their boot animations (we’re talking about you, Samsung!), or choosing a non-standard path for the bootanimation.zip file and removing the ability to override it by copying a new one to /data/local (that would be you, HTC!).

In case of the proprietary format used by Samsung, there is little we can do. However, the HTC devices use the same format but at a different path i.e. /system/customize/resource/ instead of the usual /system/media. This means users with rooted and S-OFF HTC devices can still replace the original one using the following method, by simply changing /system/media to /system/customize/resource/ but those without rooted and S-OFF devices are simply out of luck, as the /data/local method will not work on such phones.

Requirements:

Android phone or tablet running Android 2.2 Froyo or later. Tested to work on Froyo and Gingerbread; may or may not work on earlier or later versions due to different file locations.
A root file browser such as Root Explorer or Super Manager.
Note: If you already have ADB installed or if you are comfortable with the command line, you can use it instead. For ADB installation help, see what is ADB and how to install it. We will also provide you with the ADB method below.
The boot animation of your choice in bootanimation.zip name and format.
Note: To check which format is it in, open it using a zip/unzip utility and see its contents. If it contains the files and folders mentioned above in our ‘Inside the bootanimation.zip file’ section, it is the right format. If you see folders amongst which one is called META-INF, it is in recovery flashable format but you can still find the bootanimation.zip file inside the archive in the /system/media folder, and extract that file from the recovery flashable zip file, for using it with this method.

File browser method (Rooted devices only):

Connect your phone to your computer via USB and mount the storage card for file transfer.
Copy the bootanimation.zip file that you want to install, to your SD card.
Unmount USB storage and launch the file browser of your choice on your phone.
Browse to /system/media, copy the existing bootanimation.zip file from there and paste it somewhere safe on your SD card.
Browse to the location on the SD card where you copied the new bootanimation.zip and copy it.
Browse to /data/local and paste the bootanimation.zip file there to override the default system boot animation without replacing it.
OR
Browse to /system/media and paste the bootanimation.zip file there.
If you are using Super Manager, you will have to enable its root function first from the settings. Furthermore, you may need to mount the /system partition as read-write first too upon entering it.
Note: If you had earlier on copied a custom bootanimation.zip file into /data/local, you will also need to delete it or else the new one from /system/media will not be loaded.

ADB method:

Enable USB debugging on your device in Settings > Applications > Development.
Connect your device to the computer via USB.
Launch a command prompt/terminal window on your computer.
Navigate to the location where you have the bootanimation.zip file saved.

Rooted/Unrooted devices:Enter these commands:

adb pull /data/local/bootanimation.zip c:\
adb push bootanimation.zip /data/local/

OR
Rooted devices only: Enter these commands:

adb pull /system/media/bootanimation.zip c:\
adb remount
adb push bootanimation.zip /system/media/

Whichever method you used, you should now have the new boot animation successfully installed on your device. Simply restart it and you should see it running upon boot.

Restoring the original boot animation:

If you want to revert back to the original boot animation, you can easily do so, since we backed up the original one in both the above methods. In the file browser method, you can find it on the storage card at the location where you backed it up in step 4, while in the ADB method, it was backed up to the C drive. Simply follow any of these methods with the original bootanimation.zip file and you’ll have it back.

What’s Next:

That’s all we have for you when it comes to boot animations but it’s just the beginning. Stay tuned for our next feature in the series, in which we will tell you all about customizing the lock screen of your Android device.

Liked the boot animations featured here? Found better ones? Made one of your own and want to share it with us? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Make and Flash Your Own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:42:46 +0000

Splash Screen Creator is a batch script that lets you make and flash a splash screen of your choice to your Android device. If you are tired of seeing the same old splash screen each time your phone boots and want to change it or give it a personalized look, read on for details and instructions.

This guide is now a part of our series on how to customize the looks of your Android device. Other guides in this series include:

Introduction to Android customization
Make & Flash your own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator (Currently viewing)
How to Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation
How To Replace and Customize Android Lock Screen
The Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers
Launchers
Themes
Widgets
Fonts
Icons
Status / Notification Bar
Combining it all in your own custom ROM

Note that there may be changes in this layout as we proceed, and we will be updating the links as we keep publishing the parts.

Released by XDA-Developers forum member VibrantOwnr, Splash Screen Creator is a simple and newbie-friendly way to create splash screen images for your Android device and flash them to it as well. It is basically a batch script that utilizes an image conversion utility called ‘nbimg’ by Pau Oliva to create the images and then uses tools from the Android SDK to flash the resulting image to the device.

Another interesting feature of the tool is that it also allows you to convert a splash screen image file (with an .img extension) into a bitmap so that you can take any existing splash screen image file – be it a stock one extracted from a device, or a custom one downloaded from the Internet – and edit it before converting it back into a splash screen image to flash to your device, or simply use the bitmap in any way you want.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process.

Before you begin:

Before you attempt to use this tool, please note that conversion from bitmap to splash screen image as well as flashing the resulting image works with any Android device with any screen resolution but conversion of a splash screen image file into a bitmap works only with images for device having a screen resolution of 480 x 800 pixels.

Also note that to be able to flash a custom splash screen, your phone must be fully rooted and must have an unlocked bootloader.

Using the script is very simple and anyone should be able to do so by following these simple instructions.

Convert and flash splash screen to your device from bitmap file

Download Splash Screen Creator from the link given below and extract the contents of the zip file to a folder on your computer.
Put the bitmap file (with .bmp extension) that you want to convert into a splash screen and flash to your device, into the same folder as the files extracted in Step 1. Make absolutely sure that the resolution of the bitmap file is exactly the same as the screen resolution of your device.
Name the bitmap file ‘SPLASH.BMP’. Any other name will not work.
Connect your device to your computer via USB and make sure it is properly recognized by the computer i.e. its drivers are installed.
From the files extracted in Step 1, run the ‘RUN THIS ONE.bat’ file by double-clicking on it. You will see the following window:
In the DOS window, enter ‘1’. It will convert the bitmap to a splash screen image file.
Once the conversion is done, the script will ask you if you want to flash the image to your phone as well. If you want to do so, press 1 and wait patiently while it is flashed. If you just wanted the converted splash screen image, press 2 here and the script will end.
Do NOT unplug your phone from your computer while the image is being flashed.
Once the image has been flashed, you may close the script.

Convert splash screen file into bitmap file

Download Splash Screen Creator from the link given below and extract the contents of the zip file to a folder on your computer.
Put the SPLASH.IMG splash screen image file that you want to convert into a bitmap, into the same folder as the files extracted in Step 1. Make absolutely sure that the image is 480 x 800 pixels.
From the files extracted in Step 1, run the ‘RUN THIS ONE.bat’ file by double-clicking on it.
In the DOS window, enter ‘2’. It will convert the SPLASH.IMG file into a SPLASH.BMP.
Once the conversion is done, you may use the SPLASH.BMP file in any way, edit it the way you want and then convert it back into SPLASH.IMG and flash it to your device using the above method.

For more information or to contact the developer, visit the XDA-Developers forum thread.

Download Splash Screen Creator

What’s Next:

Up next in this series, we will show you how to change, customize and create your own Android boot animation.

Liked this guide? Want to share a splash screen with us? Let us know in the comments.

What Is NFC, How It Works And What Are Its Practical Applications

Haroon Q. Raja — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:10:11 +0000

Everyone in the smartphone world has been talking about NFC as of late, but what exactly is it and how is it significant to you, the end user? NFC stands for Near Field Communication and is all set to change the way we exchange information while on the go. In this guide, we will go through a detailed tour of this technology and how it is going to impact our lives.

NFC is a short-range communication technology that enables devices to exchange information with other NFC-enabled devices or certain NFC supporting cards, much like the way a card reader scans and reads a credit card. This has several obvious practical applications already developed and in use in some countries, most notably Japan. Furthermore, NFC is an open standard and therefore, there is plenty of room for innovation of further applications not yet developed.

We will now take a closer look at how NFC works, what benefit it carries over other short-range wireless communication standards, what are its practical applications and what lies in its future.

How NFC works

Before we move on to its applications, let’s take a look at how NFC works, without getting into technical details. You basically put the back of an NFC-enabled device against either the back of another NFC-enabled device or an NFC-supported card, and the device automatically recognizes it, showing a prompt on screen to read or write information to the device – it really is that simple.

Technical Specifications

NFC is an ISO 18000-3 RFID compatible short-range point-to-point communication standard governed under IEC and ISO specification 13157, amongst others. It operates on a frequency of 13.56 MHz and supports data transfer at a relatively slow rate of 424 kbps, though future improvements will most likely increase this. It has an operating range of under 20 cm and takes less than 0.2 second to establish the connection. Power consumption during reading the data is under 15 mA, though it can be more when writing data.

Benefits over other wireless communication Standards

Why use a whole new technology, one might ask, when we already have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth etc. that we can utilize for the purpose? The answer: convenience and security.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi communication has a broader coverage than NFC, often ranging between 1 meter to 100 meters. This can lead to two problems. If the devices are set to accept connections without authentication, anyone within this range can connect to them and access the information stored on the other device, creating a major security issue. While this security concern can be addressed by requiring a password for establishing the connection, this leads to another problem: pairing the devices securely using Bluetooth or establishing a secure connection over Wi-Fi involves navigating through the device settings and entering passwords, which takes away the convenience factor.

NFC addresses both these issues by requiring close contact between the devices to allow information exchange, and automatically presenting the available options on the screen for the user to select. Thus, a dozen people with NFC-enabled devices can be in the same room with no password set for NFC communication, yet none of them would run the risk of any unauthorized information access via NFC.

Current Practical Applications

We have seen what NFC is about, how it works and what benefits it carries over other short-range wireless communication technologies, but what in what practical scenarios can NFC be used? There are plenty, to be sure!

- As an RFID Tag Scanner

An NFC device can act as an RFID tag scanner, reading information embedded in form of RFID tags in media such as posters, billboards, brochures, leaflets, menus and other similar promotional or informative material. An example of this would be visiting a restaurant and scanning the menu card by touching your phone or tablet to it, to be presented with the link to an interactive, animated menu on your phone, with detailed descriptions of menu items, their reviews by other users and perhaps even videos of their preparation.

- As a Debit/Credit Card Substitute

NFC makes it possible to replace your plastic money with your phone. Once the information that is usually carried in your credit card has been stored in your phone and made accessible via NFC, you can simply touch your phone to a terminal the way you scan your credit card, and make payments accordingly. This can make mobile ticketing and payments a breeze.

- For Data Exchange

Two NFC-enabled phones can be made to exchange data after establishing a connection by bringing them within NFC’s operation range. This can replace visiting cards, as you’ll only need to touch your phone to that of someone else and your virtual business card can then be transferred to their device with one tap on the screen. Sharing photos and other media on your phone with others gets similarly easy.

- For Bluetooth Pairing or WiFi Authentication

Pairing two Bluetooth devices to establish a connection involves navigating menus to enable Bluetooth, scan for a device, initiate pairing and enter the pass code on each device. With NFC, you will just need to bring the devices together to be automatically prompted to initiate Bluetooth pairing by a tap on each screen. The same can also apply to establishing a secure Wi-Fi connection.

Future Prospects

Apart from the above-mentioned applications of NFC which are already implemented and in use in certain regions of the world, the future prospects of this communication standard are also bright. Let’s take a look at some of the ways NFC is bound to play a part in our lives in the years to come.

- Personal Payments

In the not-too-distant future, NFC will enable you to give your daughter her pocket money simply by touching your smartphone to hers, choosing to transfer money and selecting an amount, which she can spend by using her phone as her debit/credit card substitute at the café, as explained above.

- Keyless Security

Your NFC-enabled mobile device will act as the key to the locks on your car, your safe and your house. Though to ensure no one else can use your phone to gain access, NFC will only act as initiating the unlocking mechanism, which will have to be verified by facial, iris or retina recognition by your phone’s camera, voice recognition by its microphone, fingerprint scan by its touch screen or a combination of these. The result would be secure, keyless access to your vehicles, safes, workplace and dwellings.

- National, International and Corporate Identification

NFC-enabled devices will be used to store to replace your social security/national identity card, drivers license, employer card and passport, with added security measures in form of biometric scanning.

- Social Networking

People will use NFC to exchange personal information with others in social interactions, as well as form personal social networks to share location-based information such as opinions and reviews of others on a business or recreational venue. You can leave your opinion of a place at an RFID tag and other visitors can read it, as well as those left by others, with their NFC-enabled device. NFC-based check-ins at locations can also be used to reward people and offer them services accordingly.

- Entertainment

NFC will make playing multiplayer games with someone a breeze, as you will be able to initiate the game simply by bringing the devices close together.

- Health and Public Safety

Doctors will be able to use NFC to scan their patients phones for live health statistics such as pulse, blood pressure, body temperature etc., which will be gathered by the patient’s device using certain censors. Thus, without directly scanning the bodies of patients and having to keep records of hundreds of patients in their devices, doctors will have quick access to such vital statistics in order to treat them better. This can come especially handy under medical emergencies. Furthermore, patients will be able to use their devices to convey their medical situation at hospital receptions, to be more efficiently and quickly directed to the appropriate department.

Conclusion

The above mentioned scenarios are just a few examples of how NFC will change our lives for the better. With the high level of interest by corporations, NFC bring brought to Android phones by Google starting with the Nexus S, as well as involvement of individual developers and users in this short range communication standard, the possibilities are endless.

An Introduction To Modern Mobile Operating Systems

Haroon Q. Raja — Fri, 13 May 2011 23:56:33 +0000

Over the past decade, smartphones have taken the world by storm and recently, tablets have entered into the arena as well. These mobile devices are having a significant impact on our lives and are in fact redefining the way we access information and communicate with others. This is due to not only the hardware but the specialized software that these devices run and most importantly, their operating systems. In what follows, we will take an informative tour of modern mobile operating systems, their different types and usage across smartphone and tablet platforms.

Just like a PC can run different operating systems (like Windows, Linux, BSD etc.) or different versions of the same operating system (like Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 etc.), most smartphones can also run different versions of the operating system they were made for and in exceptional cases, they might even be able to run operating systems they weren’t made for. In general however, an Android phone will only run a version of Android while an iPhone will only run an iOS version.

To give you an idea of what we will be covering in this guide, here is the table of contents:

Manufacturer-built proprietary operating systems
1. Apple iOS
2. RIM BlackBerry OS
3. HP WebOS
Third party proprietary operating systems
1. Microsoft Windows Phone 7
2. Microsoft Windows Mobile
Free & open source operating systems
1. Android
2. MeeGo
3. Symbian
Which smartphone OS is the best

Manufacturer-built Proprietary Operating Systems

Some device manufacturers use their own proprietary operating system for their phones and tablets. A good example is Apple, with iOS being the operating system developed by them for their iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad devices. Other examples include RIM who use their proprietary BlackBerry OS for all BlackBerry phones and tablets, and HP, using their proprietary Palm Web OS for their Palm series of smartphones and tablets. A characteristic of such operating systems is that they have a very consistent look and feel across all devices that they run on, the way Mac OS X appears and behaves the same way on a Macbook Pro as it does on an iMac or a Macbook Air.

Let’s now take a look at some popular operating systems in this category.

- Apple iOS

iOS is the operating system used by Apple in all variants of iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. While smartphones have been around since the 90’s, it was Apple that successfully managed convincing masses to switch to them with the release of the first iPhone in 2007 running the first version of iOS. At the time of its release, iOS wasn’t even capable of performing what most other smartphones operating systems had been doing for almost a decade – things such as true multitasking, data connection tethering, task switching, Bluetooth pairing, PC-like application installation using installer files, and dozens others – yet the first iPhone was received with immense enthusiasm by the masses, perhaps for not knowing any better.

The key to this success lay in an interface we would call ‘idiot-friendly’ that was targeted primarily at the least smart users to enable them to use a smartphone that was only a pseudo-smartphone back then. Other factors contributing to the success of iOS included smooth graphics, consistent user interface elements across apps, built-in iPod application, iTunes integration, an App Store for buying and installing apps and perhaps most importantly, a multi-touch finger-friendly capacitive touch screen that eliminated the use of a stylus while offering finger based gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, twist-to-rotate etc. These, coupled with the similarity with the hugely popular iPod Touch, resulted in the iPhone going viral and ended up in most people buying it as more of a status symbol of owning an iPhone, than for the utility of having a smartphone.

The introduction of the iPad in 2010 only added to the popularity of iOS. Much like the case of smartphones, tablets had been widely available for over a decade but it was again Apple that built upon the success of iPhone to bring them to the masses in form of the iPad, creating a modern tablet boom and leading to other competitors joining the market. With the iPad and the iPad 2, Apple still leads the tablet market share by a huge margin.

Due to its restricted nature, iOS limited users to only the features Apple decided appropriate. That’s when the development community decided to intervene and came up with Jailbreaking. This allowed power users to install additional apps not available in the official App Store and customize their iPhones beyond the standard features provided by Apple.

By now, iOS has improved a lot and as of the current version 4.3.3, it supports multi-tasking, audio and video playback to AirPlay devices, data tethering and several other enhancements, in addition to the above-mentioned features. Jailbreaking continues to play an important role in iOS devices and enables users to take their iPhones beyond the often ridiculous limitations set by Apple.

- RIM BlackBerry OS

This is the operating system used in all BlackBerry devices. Despite having been popular in corporate sector, BlackBerry devices are losing market share to Android and iPhone. However, they still have a loyal following of users who are used to the signature hardware keyboard of BlackBerry devices and the convenience of the built-in corporate features of BlackBerry OS. RIM’s attempts at entering the touch screen smartphone market haven’t been too successful due to the limited number of quality apps available, though their recently released tablet called BlackBerry Playbook appears promising. Playbook is the first BlackBerry device to ship with their latest OS called QNX which is set to replace the older BlackBerry OS. Future phones by BlackBerry are also expected to ship with QNX.

A recent development that might change things for the better for RIM is the Android App Player that promises to bring support for running hundreds of thousands of Android apps on BlackBerry OS devices, as demoed at the recent BlackBerry World 2011 keynote.

- HP WebOS (Previously Palm WebOS)

Palm – despite being one of the initial players of the smartphone market – experienced declining market share and dropping revenues due to their old PalmOS devices not being able to keep up with iOS and Android. Palm tried to counter it by replacing its dying PalmOS with an entirely new operating system built from scratch – WebOS. Although WebOS was built by Palm as a pretty solid and feature-rich operating system having a killer interface to match, it wasn’t enough to keep the company’s lost reputation. Eventually, at the verge of bankruptcy, Palm ended up getting acquired by HP in 2010. The acquisition was followed by HP’s announcement of continuing development of the Palm devices as well as WebOS under HP’s brand name.

At its core, WebOS derives heavily from Linux and uses several open source components, maintained at the Palm Open Source website. HP is heavily promoting Palm OS and releasing several devices running it, including HP Veer & HP Pre 3 smartphones and HP TouchPad tablet. While WebOS doesn’t have a prominent market share at the moment, things seem promising for this platform’s future.

Third Party Proprietary Operating Systems

Another scenario is proprietary operating systems built by companies that do not manufacture devices, but license their operating system to manufacturers for running it on theirs. The biggest examples are Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7, built by Microsoft and found running on smartphones by HTC, Samsung, Dell and LG, amongst others. These operating systems also have usually a consistent appearance and behavior across all devices, just like Windows 7 appears and behaves the same regardless of what brand of computer you are running it on.

Let’s take a look at these operating systems in detail.

- Microsoft Windows Mobile

You might be wondering what this now-obsolete operating system is doing in an article on modern mobile operating systems. However, no discussion on mobile operating systems can be complete without the mention of Windows Mobile. Back when PalmOS devices featured a grid of icons offering only the most basic built-in apps, BlackBerry OS and Symbian devices didn’t even have touch screens. and iOS wasn’t even around, Windows Mobile devices did almost all that modern smartphone operating systems do, and then some.

Windows Mobile devices were called Pocket PCs and were true to their name! The operating system had true multitasking, installation of apps using cab files, full file system access, registry access, options for replacing the entire user interface with another, integrated data tethering support, personal information synchronization and a complete office suite.

The platform enjoyed a loyal following amongst enthusiasts and lead to the creation of the famous XDA-Developers community where developers and power users from the whole world gathered to share their customizations and hacks for Windows Mobile devices. Later on, this community expanded to Android devices and is today the largest smartphone customization community online. Installing a heavily customized version of Windows Mobile to a device was as simple as connecting it to the computer via USB and running a standard software installation wizard on the computer, no ridiculous jailbreaking/rooting/recovery/commandline use required.

The primary reasons behind the fall of Windows Mobile were the inability of Microsoft to market it to the masses, little-to-no focus from Microsoft on developing an app ecosystem that would encourage developers to build apps for the platform, and the popularity gained by Apple’s iPhone, which Windows Mobile couldn’t compete against due to an interface that wasn’t finger-friendly and required the use of a stylus.

In 2010, Microsoft decided to abandon Windows Mobile altogether in favor of Windows Phone 7. It’s legacy however, remains. HTC Sense – hugely popular on Android – was initially made for Windows Mobile devices. Furthermore, Android’s default interface involving multiple home screens, home screen previews and widgets on each screen derives heavily from the interface of SPB Mobile Shell – a third party Windows Mobile interface that innovatively introduced users to this concept.

- Microsoft Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 was Microsoft’s answer to the flourishing smartphone world. With Windows Mobile left abandoned, Microsoft built Windows Phone 7 from scratch, and presented users with an interface like no other. Given the name of Metro, this user interface takes a break from the conventional icon grids used by most competitors and brought the concept of live tiles on the home screen, focusing heavily on the presentation of information to users in a fluid, unobtrusive way. The result looked impressive, to say the least. However, many of the signature features of Windows Mobile such as true multitasking, app sideloading etc. were dropped, drawing heavy criticism by loyal Windows Mobile users.

Although Windows Phone 7 hasn’t gained a major market share by now, things look very promising as Microsoft has announced a major update for fall 2011, bringing true multitasking and several other important features to the platform in a few months. Developments on bringing app sideloading are also under way. Apart from this, Microsoft is concentrating heavily on the app ecosystem in cooperating with developers and the Windows Live Marketplace has become the fastest growing app market today. Furthermore, Nokia has decided to switch from Symbian/MeeGo to Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone platform, and this alone promises to boost the market share of this operating system to a significant extent across the globe.

At present, there are over a dozen Windows Phone 7 devices available in the market, built by manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, Dell and LG. Several other manufacturers including Nokia have also decided to join in, and many new Windows Phone 7 devices are expected to be released this year.

Free & Open Source Operating Systems

Last but not the least, there are open source operating systems built by a company, a group of companies or a community of developers and made available for everyone to modify them in any way they choose, and install them on their choice of devices.

Examples of these operating systems include Symbian, the upcoming MeeGo and most importantly, Android. Device manufacturers fine-tune such operating systems to best suit their devices and often add additional features or interfaces to set them apart from other versions of the same operating system, and this often becomes their selling point. HTC has had a history of customizing Android for its phones and including a graphically enhanced interface called HTC Sense in an effort to enhance user experience.

Furthermore, such operating systems have a lot more customizations available in form of installable software that changes their look, feel and behavior, providing different entirely user experiences. Being open source, these operating systems also offer independent developers the opportunity to modify them from scratch and run them on devices not supported officially, or to bring an entirely new user experience to officially supported devices.

Let’s now individually examine major operating systems in this category.

- Android

When an operating system is open source, based on Linux, owned by Google, backed by all major mobile device manufacturers including HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Dell, Sony Ericsson, LG and countless more, and allows for endless customization, it is bound to make an impact. Initially developed by Android Inc. and purchased by Google in 2005, Android has become the leading smartphone OS in the world today, and is our smartphone platform of choice here at AddictiveTips. While it appeals more to the techies amongst us, Android has been received well by the non-techies as well, and with an app market boasting over 200,000 apps, there’s plenty to do with it as well.

Android runs on literally hundreds of devices including smartphones and tablets. With multiple new releases each year, the operating system is continuously evolving. At present, the latest version for smartphones is 2.3.4 Gingerbread while that for tablets is 3.1 Honeycomb. The upcoming major release scheduled for Q3 or Q4 this year is called Ice Cream Sandwich and aims to bring both phone and tablet versions together.What truly rocks about Android is the level to which it can be customized. With different launchers and widgets, the entire way in which a user interacts with the device can be changed. If you are an Android user or plan on switching to it, you must check out our Android customization series to see how to personalize it beyond recognition!

Android has already beaten iOS to become the most widely used smartphone OS in the world, though its app Market still lags behind the Apple App Store in terms of the number of apps by roughly 100,000 apps, plus iOS apps in general tend to be more refined than Android apps, and this is the only reason we can see for any rational person to choose an iOS device over an Android device, but that’s our personal opinion.

- MeeGo

A few years back, Nokia and Intel decided to merge their Linux-based Maemo and Moblin operating systems to form MeeGo, and several other high-profile companies also joined in to contribute to the open source project. Things seemed to be promising, smartphone and tablet enthusiasts – including us – were eagerly anticipating developments to bear fruit in form of another Android to bring competition to the market and provide a further incentive for innovation, when all of a sudden a key player i.e. Nokia decided to abandon it and switch over to Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform.

While Nokia has still announced to stick with its promise of releasing one MeeGo device this year before abandoning the project entirely, things aren’t looking too well for the platform and unless Intel and the other companies involved really give it their level best, MeeGo might end up like one of those obscure Linux distributions that only the developers and their six friends use or worse, it could be entirely abandoned, though we hope that isn’t the case.

- Symbian

There is a saying, “If you don’t succeed at the first attempt, skydiving isn’t for you!”, and it applies too well in Symbian’s case. Symbian – in its various forms – has been the operating system of thousands of devices by dozens of manufacturers but despite its commercial success, it has failed to achieve any critical acclaim in the smartphone arena despite Nokia’s repeated efforts of trying to get it right. We are including it here only due to the number of smartphones running Symbian globally, despite a negligible share in the United States. In all other aspects, it doesn’t even come close to any of the other smartphone operating systems mentioned in this guide.

Nokia finally decided to let go of Symbian along with MeeGo to switch to Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone platform but without entirely abandoning it, as the company will continue to use it for its feature phones (phones that aren’t smartphones).

The future of Symbian in the smartphone world is practically over. With Nokia’s abandonment and more and more users switching to Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7 globally, it is safe to conclude that Symbian no longer has a place in the smartphone world.

Which Smartphone OS is the best?

Now that you are acquainted with all major smartphone operating systems out there, it’s time for this important question. The answer is: whichever works best for you! Here at AddictiveTips, we are all for Android and I personally don’t even like iOS one bit, yet I recommend iPhone to many people as it appears to suit them better. We would love to see MeeGo get released on a few high-end devices, HP WebOS gain more attention as well as apps and Windows Phone 7 become more open. Till then however, considering the development, the app ecosystem and the customization options, for most users, Android is currently the smartphone OS to go for.

How To Customize The Looks Of Your Android Phone / Tablet [Series]

Haroon Q. Raja — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:30:38 +0000

Let’s face it, looks aren’t exactly the strong point of Android. Some might say beauty is only skin-deep but we’ll say skin-deep is deep enough, as most people don’t exactly care for a handsome liver or an adorable pancreas. Same goes for Android phones and tablets. If you are tired of the dull stock looks or even of the same old HTC Sense, worry no more, as we bring you an entire series on customizing the looks of your Android phone or tablet to your heart’s content and we will try to include every aspect of skinning your phone or tablet to make it uniquely stand out as your own!

This series will be laid out in parts, as follows:

Introduction (Currently viewing)
Make & Flash your own Android Splash Screen with Splash Screen Creator
How To Change, Customize & Create Android Boot Animation
How To Replace and Customize Android Lock Screen
The Ultimate Guide to Android Wallpapers
Launchers
Themes
Widgets
Fonts
Icons
Status / Notification Bar
Combining it all in your own custom ROM

Note that there may be changes in this layout as we proceed, and we will be updating the links as we keep publishing the parts.

That said, let’s begin with the first part – an introduction to customizing the looks of of Android devices.

Introduction

While Android is perhaps the most powerful and versatile smartphone operating system out there, it isn’t the best looking in its stock form. That is why many leading manufacturers release their Android devices with a customized look, such has HTC Sense by HTC, MotoBlur by Motorola, TouchWiz by Samsung etc.

These customizations however, often leave much to be desired for those who want their device to look just the way they want. Fortunately, doing that is possible to a significant extent, thanks to the developer community. Tons of launchers, themes and widgets as well as mods are available all over the web but all of this can tend to be rather intimidating to non-technical users. To worsen this problem, clear and concise instructions for applying the advanced modifications are often lacking.

We at AddictiveTips love Android, as evident from our daily and extensive coverage of Android apps, ROMs, themes, hacks etc. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time testing these out ourselves and in this series, we are going to share our experience with you to help you modify your devices the way we modify ours and in this process, we will debunk the myths that Android is ugly or making it pretty isn’t easy.

A few words before you begin

In general, this series should apply to any stock or custom version of Android your device may be running. However, some apps or modifications might not work on old versions of Android or custom ROMs. The themes in particular are often custom-tailored to specific phones or ROMs. For this reason, getting acquainted with what Android ROMs are all about can particularly come handy, and for that purpose, we will be featuring a guide shortly.

Furthermore, to be able to apply the advanced modifications during the process of customizing your device, you must have root access. We have you covered in that aspect as well, in our rooting guides.

Top 10 reasons to root your Android device
How to root your Android phone or tablet

Note that if you are using a custom ROM, your device is most likely already rooted.

Easy Solution: Custom ROMs

In fact, a custom ROM might very well be the only thing you need to customize your phone beyond the stock look and feel. There are literally thousands of these out there, with hundreds being available for a single device in cases, and if you find one that suits you well, you might not need to proceed any further at all. A custom ROM often comes themed with a distinct look and bundled with apps, widgets and other interface as well as usability enhancements that make it unique. To give you an idea of what a custom ROM alone can do to the looks of your device, here is a classic ‘before and after’ comparison:

There are several resources to find custom ROMs for your phone or tablet:

AddictiveTips Mobile Section
To spare our readers the trouble, we take it upon ourselves to go through all the ROMs released daily for most Android devices and feature in our mobile section the most important ones based on feature-set, looks and new functionality. Therefore, searching on our site for your phone’s name will most likely return several custom ROMs featured for it by us.
XDA-Developers Forum
If for some reason you can’t find a ROM at our site for your phone that suits you, simply visit the XDA-Developers forum where you can find a plethora of ROMs for most Android, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices. Custom ROMs are found over there in the development section for each device. A word of warning though: while we take the trouble of presenting the instructions to you in a newbie-friendly manner, the instructions that accompany the ROMs over there are often intended for advanced users, so you must be careful and proceed at your own risk.
Google
Although this should be common sense, we’re still mentioning it just in case… Simply searching on Google for your phone’s name followed by the term ‘ROM’ can get you several results (amongst which many should point to the above-mentioned resources). Be careful in your choice though, and proceed with the installation of any ROM entirely at your own risk, after understanding the process.

Before we move ahead, here are two ROMs worthy of mention. These are available for many devices and we feature them here often, besides using them heavily on our devices as our daily use ROMs. Despite that, we have said it before and we will say it again: proceed with custom ROMs at your own risk.

MIUI
This one is the most aesthetically pleasing Android ROMs we have found that doesn’t require any customizations to make it look wonderful. Aimed to merge the functionality of Android with the look and feel of Apple’s iOS, this ROM gives you the best of both worlds. For more information, see our complete guide on what is MIUI ROM.
CyanogenMod
Unlike MIUI, CyanogenMod looks as close to totally non-customized Android as possible. However, it is a dream-come-true for the customizers. It is also the most widely used after-market ROM for Android devices and is available for dozens of different phones and tablets. To learn more, see our coverage of CyanogenMod.

Once you have decided upon the custom ROM you want to install, you will need to install it on your device. The installation process is called flashing and it can differ from ROM to ROM, though a general method is flashing it using a custom recovery. Here are a few links to help you through this:

What is clockworkMod Recovery and how to use it on Android
How to flash an Android ROM from a zip file in recovery mode

What’s Next?

Join us in our the next session, where we take a look at splash screens and cover topics such as where to find and how to apply them, as well as how to create your very own, in our Android Splash Screen Customization Guide.

Found this guide useful? Got an Android customization tip, theme or hack of your own that you want to share with us? Want to show off your extensively customized Android device? Share it with us in the comments!

AddictiveTips » Haroon Q. Raja

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