Before notification center came along in iOS 5, Android had a bit of an advantage in terms of usability, mainly due to the availability of widgets. However, now, using the Notification Center provided by iOS, users can do a lot through that part of the platform, especially if you have a jailbroken device. We have covered a number of Notification Center widgets in the past, like our post on the best available NC widgets for iOS 5, and today, we bring you another useful addition to the arsenal of available tweaks dedicated to Notification Center. NCInstaCall is a Cydia tweak that allows jailbreak users to make phone calls right from within the notification center.

NCInstaCall is a free tweak, which can be downloaded from the Big Boss repo over at the Cydia store. Once you have done that, don’t try looking for any changes in your iPhone’s notification center. Even though the tweak does not have an app icon displayed on the Springboard, there is a dedicated menu for it in the Notification Center’s settings. So, after installation of NCInstaCall, you have to manually enable it. This can be done as follows.

1. Go to your iPhone’s Settings app.
2. Tap Notification Center menu.
3. You will find the tweak’s settings in that area. Just enable it, and you are done.

Once the tweak has been enabled, a new widget will appear in the Notification Center. Tapping it opens up a dial pad in the notification area, which is pretty similar to the stock keypad offered in iOS. Of course, there is no address book support in NCInstaCall, and you will have to dial any number just from your memory, but still, that is better than having nothing at all, and it’s not like you have to pay for the tweak. So, if you are on iOS 5, and have access to the Cydia store, do give the tweak a try.

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• NCQuickDismiss: Quickly Dismiss Notification Center & Banners In iOS 5 [Cydia Tweak]
• Kill All Background Apps From iOS 5 Notification Center [Cydia Tweak]
• Enable Semi Transparent Notification Center On iOS 5 [Cydia Tweak]

If you love having the apps on your Android device nicely organized, then you must’ve liked recently reviewed App Man – a free, comprehensive app management tool for Android. New to the Android Market, A-WAL provides you with yet another handy alternative to organizing your apps, allowing you to launch them via customizable, category-based homescreen widgets. Apart from sporting a neatly-designed and nifty little app launcher, A-Wal lets you decorate your homescreen with customizable widgets, each containing a group of apps of your choice. The app bases its design around tiles slightly reminiscent of the Windows Phone 7 metro UI. You can easily circle through and launch your favorite apps from within these widgets. Details to follow.

There are a couple of distinct ways to utilize the app’s functionality. You can either use it as a standalone app launcher, or avail the homescreen widgets that it has to offer. If you wish to take the former route, just launch the app, and start filling its homescreen with folders containing apps of your choice. To do so, hit Menu > New Folder. The screen that follows lets you name the created folder and add apps to it by tapping the plus (+) icon.

Each added app appears as a separate tile under its parent folder. The bottom of each tile bears the app’s name, tapping which takes you to its Android Market page, and a small square icon that lets you select a poster (image) for the tile. You can choose to use the official poster of the app from the Android Market (if there is one available), pick an image from your device’s gallery, grab a fresh one, or stick with the default poster.

The three buttons appearing at the right side of each tile can be used to position it on the list or remove it entirely. The option to save folder settings appears at the very end of the list of apps, right below a couple of customization options that allow you to change the tile background and font color.

Long-press a folder on the app’s homescreen to Edit or Delete it.

The only annoying aspect of an otherwise promising app is the dissociation between its app launcher and widgets. Simply put, A-Wal currently does not let you use the folders you create for the app launcher as homescreen widgets, nor does it display widgets as separate folders within the launcher. For each widget that you wish to add to your homescreen, you have to go through the entire tedious process of filling it with apps right from scratch. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue if you only wish to use the homescreen widgets. Hopefully, future updates will add the option to use folders from the app launcher as widgets (and vice versa).

For an app that is relatively fresh to the Market, and excels in looks and functionality, users might ignore any minor shortcomings.

A-Wal is a free (ad-supported) app. You can download the app via the Market link or QR code provided below.

Download A-Wal

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Add Home Screen Widgets To Android Lock Screen With Generic Widget Lockscreen
• Easypad: Good-Looking Notepad App With Home Screen Widgets [Android]
• New Launcher Widget – Recently Installed Apps On Home Screen [Android]

The Android Market has no shortage of weather apps. Some keep you apprised of the latest weather conditions via homescreen widgets while others may depict the actual ‘feel’ of the weather at a certain location via HD videos. Adding to the long list of numerous weather apps for Android with a few new features of its own is Weather Services. The app displays detailed 5-day weather forecast of various user-defined locations and has the capacity to cache data for offline viewing. Weather Services comes with 4 different types of homescreen widgets and displays live images of worldwide locations captured via various public webcams. Apart from displaying the current time of your location, the app’s Clock Widget, like that of almost every other weather app, provides quick access to the stock clock/alarm app. In addition , the app lets you select from multiple weather services (WeatherBug, Google Weather) and specify the interval between automatic weather updates. Details to follow.

The various details that the app displays for each location include current as well as forecasted  minimum and maximum temperature, amount of rain recorded for the day, air pressure, gust/wind speed, sunrise/sunset time, humidity, dew point and a “feels like” temperature.

Locations have to be added manually from within Menu > Locations. On the Locations screen, tap Menu > Add location to add one. Once all required locations have been added, you can tap on the ‘W’ icon to specify which location should be displayed on the widget. On the app’s main screen, you can view all aforementioned details along with a 5-day forecast of each location. Swiping up and down on the screen switches between locations while tapping on the weather icon of a particular day displays details of forecasted weather conditions.

To view live webcam images of a selected city, tap Menu > Webcams. If there are multiple webcams mounted for the location, you will be able to see various views of the city by swiping left and right across the thumbnails on the top of the screen. The app’s settings screen (tap Menu > More > Settings) lets you specify the time/date format, the weather provider, weather units, weather refresh time, font settings and more.

As mentioned earlier, with Weather Services, users get to pick from multiple widget types. These include the Clock, Forecast, Small (minimal) and Weather widget. Tapping on the clock takes you to the stock Clock app while tapping anywhere else on a widget launches Weather Services’ main interface.

Although the free variant of Weather Services is quite feature-rich, the Pro version adds quite a few goodies such as detailed weather charts, satellite maps, option to add more locations, hourly forecasts, provision to use your current location as default and a few other customization features. As of now, however, the Pro version seems to be in the pipeline. We weren’t able to find it on the Market and the in-app seems to be unavailable as well.

A link to the free version is provided below along with its QR code.

Download Weather Services

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Weather+ Brings Its Weather Forecast & Flip-Clock Widgets To Android
• Gismeteo Weather Forecast App For Android – Stylish & Customizable
• Smart Weather: A Fast, Intelligent Weather Forecast App For WP7 Mango

Most Android lockscreen replacement apps are just meant to decorate your lockscreen. Very few actually add greater functionality to it. FlyScreen is one such custom lockscreen; it adds a widget to the lockscreen that aggregates all your various RSS, social, weather and news feeds. Although FlyScreen has been around in the Android Market for quite some time, it was, till now, available as a smartphone app only. Now, a Honeycomb-optimized version of the app, FlyScreen for Tablet, has just been released to the Market with added content for the app’s widget, animated Ambient Themes and lots more. Details to follow.

Unlike its smartphone variant, the tablet-optimized version of FlyScreen has certainly been beefed up with a lot more options. It displays all your feeds via stylish animated themes (while in Ambient Mode). The app integrates nicely with your device’s custom lockscreen and can even be used as a standalone app.

Once activated, you can easily view selected feeds, weather, calendar, SMS notifications and much more right on the lockscreen via the app’s widget. Swiping left/right on the widget lets you switch between the different content it contains, while tapping on a feed takes you to the app’s native feed reader where you can explore the story in detail (as shown in the screenshot above).

To add new content to the app’s widget from the Widget Gallery or  manually update all content, tap on the Settings button.

Here’s the best part though; the cloud icon at the bottom-right of your screen triggers the app’s Ambient mode, which displays an animated version of all your feeds. As of now, you have the choice of selecting from three theme; Aquarium, Airplane! and Star Crawl. Each theme has its own distinct look and a unique way of displaying your feeds.

While the Aquarium theme makes your lockscreen seem as if underwater (with all the feeds floating across the screen in bubbles), the Star Crawl theme provides you with a starry background on which you can view an unending stream of your feeds flowing along the screen from bottom to top. While in Ambient mode, tap the Settings button to pick a new theme, set an animation speed and/or modify feed settings.

FlyScreen for Tablet is free on the Android Market and works on Android OS 3.x (Honeycomb). You can download the app via the Market link or QR code provided below.

Download FlyScreen For Tablet

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Timekiwi Creates A Beautiful Timeline Of Your Social Media & RSS Feeds
• Ripple Lock Is Honeycomb-Inspired Lockscreen Replacement For Android
• View Calendar Events On Android Lockscreen With Lockscreen Calendar

Love tinkering with the looks of your Android’s screen? Try Full Screen Launcher – a free homescreen replacement app for Android that takes an altogether different route to display your homescreen and the various contents that are present on it. Apart from sporting graphically appealing UI and a brand new concept of merging various homescreens into one large, unending wall, all packed with contacts, shortcuts, widgets et al, Full Screen Launcher provides you with 3D folders that are displayed on your screen as rotating cubes, whose each side carries thumbnails of the content that is present within. What’s best is that you can even place widgets, as well as contacts, within those folders, and access them in the same way as your homescreen or app drawer. The eye-catching animations and transition effects while navigating to various segments of the launcher and reflection of all the icons at the bottom of the screen are nothing but sheer feast for the eyes. The ability to zoom in/out of the walls (screens), effective support for the launcher in landscape/portrait orientation and the extension of all the elegant animations/effects to the app drawer are some of the other highlighting features of Full Screen Launcher.

It’s been a while since we last stumbled upon a homescreen replacement app of note. However, Full Screen Launcher instills a breath of fresh air to your Android screen, and presents you with a chance to view all your homescreen elements on a single unified wall that is backed by OpenGL rendition support to enhance the display quality of various icons, 3D folders and the overall graphical interface itself.

Long pressing on a vacant spot on homescreen lets you pick from Shortcuts, Widgets, Wallpapers and New folder. To call/text a contact or to view their contact details, just tap their thumbnail and pick the required option from the dock bar at the bottom.

From the app’s settings screen, (tap Menu > Settings) you can tweak various design, behavior and general options of the launcher. For instance, you may select a preferred mode of Tile decoration (colored/black & white, full screen, with/without displaying icon texts), enable/disable dock bar, tiles reflection or clear app’s cache.

All the beautiful and stylish aesthetics of the app aside, Home Screen Launcher, on the downside, force closed several times during our brief trial run, especially while navigating in/out of folders and while adding various widgets (News & Weather, Twitter etc.). Also, the app, as of now, does not support adding bookmarks and other commonly used content as homescreen shortcuts. Still, provided it’s free, and a relatively fresh concept among other alternative homescreen launchers, you could take Full Screen Launcher out for a spin.

The free version of Full Screen Launcher displays Ads at the top of your screen. However, a Pro (paid) version of the app is present on the Market that can be availed to lift this restriction for a mere $2.82.

Full Screen Launcher is available in the Android Market. Download the app from the Market link or QR code provided below.

Free

Paid

Download Full Screen Launcher (Free)

Download Full Screen Launcher PRO (Paid)

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• NetFront Life Screen Launcher For Android Is A Great Home Replacement Screen
• Get The iOS Springboard On Your Android Homescreen With Espier Launcher
• Bird Bar – Access Notification Bar Within Full Screen Apps [Android]

Easypad is a simple-to-use notepad for Android that helps you quickly take notes on your device using some basic text editing tools and allows you to create/access notes through homescreen widgets that come in as many as six different designs and seven various sizes. You can add multiple pages to your notes, create new notes using templates, use various font sizes/colors to make your notes appealing and easily distinguishable and share notes with your online friends.

There are many alternative notepads and sticky note apps for Android already present in the Android Market, but Easypad has a design and quality of its own. Apart from a neat, clean and user-firendly interface, the app helps you manage your notes in a better way. While the app itself takes care of all your note taking needs, its widgets provide easy access from the homescreen.

To create new notes, launch the app, tap on the notes icon at the bottom, pick the ideal design and font size and tap on the green check button. In the text editing mode, you have buttons to edit your notes, clear all text and save/send notes . To edit your notes, tap the edit button (the one that looks like a speedometer). All your saved notes are displayed on the app’s homescreen. From within this screen you can delete notes one by one or all at once.

Let’s now take a look at the app’s widgets. To add Easypad widgets, long press on a vacant spot on your homescreen and select Widgets from the menu. Next, tap on Easypad and select the size of your widget along with its font size and design. Tapping on a widget takes you to the app’s editing mode. Widgets referring to notes with multiple pages show up with the last page that you added.

If you like Easypad, you can upgrade to its Pro version from within the app. Easypad Pro adds more widget designs and a few more features such as tags, text alignment, larger font size, integration with Evernote (if installed), auto-backup, option to clear notes from the notification bar and more. Download the app from the Market link or QR code provided below.

Download Easypad

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• A-WAL: Metro-ish App Launcher Home Screen Widgets For Android
• Add Home Screen Widgets To Android Lock Screen With Generic Widget Lockscreen
• NetFront Life Screen Launcher For Android Is A Great Home Replacement Screen

When talking of some of the most downloaded and popular homescreen widgets for Android, its hard to look past Beautiful Widgets. The entire suite of elegant and customizable Beautiful (SuperClock, Weather, Today and Toggles) Widgets is available in the Android Market  for around $3 but thanks to GetJar (and its Gold project), Android users can now download the full pack of Beautiful Widgets from their Android store without paying a dime. This is great news as it seems the developers have removed the free (Lite) version of the app from the Market.  Download link after the break.

Once you install Beautiful Widgets, you can modify app’s Home, SuperClock and Weather settings along with tweaking the skins settings for each.  Beautiful Widgets are comprised of as many as 17 different widgets that include:

• Beautiful Battery
• Beautiful Home Weather (large & small)
• Beautiful SuperClock (in 4 sizes)
• Beautiful Text Clock
• Beautiful Today (in 2 sizes)
• Beautiful Toggle (total 12 switches)
• Beautiful Weather (in 2 sizes)

The twelve (12) Beautiful Toggles include:

• Brightness
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• GPS (only a shortcut)
• Silent
• Vibrate
• Mobile (for data, not compatible with all devices)
• Plane
• 4G (only compatible with with HTC Devices with WiMax Support)
• Rotate
• Pattern (only for devices running OS 1.5 – 2.1)
• Time Silenced

To place one (or more) Beautiful Widgets, long press on a vacant area on your homescreen and select Widgets from the Add to Home screen menu. From the Choose Widget menu, select Beautiful Widgets and pick a widget of your liking.

The link to the app’s GetJar page is provided below. To download the app directly to your Android device from GetJar’s mobile site, proceed as follows:

1. Visit m.getjar.com from your phone’s browser
2. Navigate to the bottom of the page and select Quick Download
3. Enter the product code ‘231883’ in the provided box to begin the download.

Download Beautiful Widgets (GetJar Link)

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Beautiful Widgets For Android – Free Version Released
• Splashtop Remote Desktop For Android Available For Free On GetJar
• Paper Camera For Android Makes Your Photos Look Sketched [Now Free On GetJar]

If you are a hardcore Facebook user and like to have your Facebook friends, activities, events and notifications easily and quickly accessible to you through separate homescreen widgets, then INQ Social Sync and its whole suite of widgets could be your perfect choice. INQ Social Sync syncs your Facebook account on your Android and lets you explore your world of Facebook through its unique suite of widgets (each designed with a specific purpose). With INQ Social Sync, you can place separate homescreen widgets for your Facebook news feed, contacts, places, notifications and events that enable you to quickly access your favorite content with a mere tap of a finger.

The popularity of the pioneering social networking service, Facebook, has been on the rise despite so many other alternate services emerging onto the global scene. To make Facebook experience on your Android even more memorable, INQ Social Sync presents you all your Facebook content in a brand new way. INQ Social Sync provides quick access to your favorite Facebook features through a collection of homescreen widgets. Once you install INQ Social Sync client on your Android, it silently keeps your device synced with your Facebook account. Same is the case with its various widgets that are updated automatically so that you remain aware of all the latest happenings of your Facebook world.

As mentioned earlier, INQ Social Sync sports a handful of extremely handy homescreen widgets that need to be installed separately. The Social Widget Suite By INQ offers you separate widgets for your Facebook:

• News
• Feeds
• Events
• Notifications
• Places

In addition, you may install another widget, People By INQ to get a widget for your Facebook friends.

To add widgets to your homescreen, long press on vacant area on your homescreen, tap Widgets from the Choose Widget menu and select your preferred INQ Widget. The INQ News Feed widget requires more space to be displayed properly so it is recommended to place this widget on an empty screen.

Lets explore these widgets one by one and check out their cool features. First, let’s go through the various widgets that come with the Social Widget Suite by INQ (4 in all).

INQ News Feeds Widget:

The INQ News Feed Widget brings you all the latest photos, videos, status updates from your friends right on your homescreen. You can browse various feeds by simple tapping on the left/right button on (top-right side of) the widget. You can tap on the refresh icon on the widget to retrieve latest feeds. Tapping on a particular news feed leads you to the actual news feed on the Facebook client so that you can like it or comment on it. It’s all presented in an elegant style on a widget and it’s extremely easy to use.

INQ Notification Widget:

The INQ Notifications Widget syncs and displays all your recent Facebook notifications so that you know what’s been happening in your Facebook world of late.

INQ Places Widget:

Use the INQ Places Widget to stay informed of your Facebook friends’ recent check-ins at various places.

INQ Events Widget:

Find out all your upcoming Facebook events and friends’ birthdays with INQ Events Widget. With such a useful widget at your disposal, never miss out on any friend’s birthday or you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

People by INQ Widget:

The INQ People Widget is intelligently built as it displays your top five Facebook friends (along with their Walls) with whom you interact the most. Just tap on the INQ people widget, swipe left/right on the screen to switch between friends and check out their Facebook Wall by navigating up/down on the screen. You can easily manage all your Facebook friends from this screen and choose your Top Friends manually that you wish to be displayed. Just tap on the Menu button on your device to manage your contacts. People by INQ Widget is available separately in the Market (download link provided below).

The entire suite of INQ Social Sync Widgets was tried on our Samsung Galaxy S and we must admit that it was a truly refreshing experience. Enough said, it’s time to download and try all the aforementioned useful INQ Social Sync Widgets and experience Facebook on your Android like never before. The app and all its widgets are available in the Android Market absolutely free of cost and require Android OS 2.2 or higher to run. Download links to the app and all the widgets are provided below.

Note: You must have the official Facebook client installed on your Android device to avail all the features of INQ Social Sync and its widgets.

Download INQ Social Sync

Download Social Widget Suite by INQ

Download People By INQ

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Android Pro Widgets Suite For Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Contacts & More
• Publish Sync For Google+ & Facebook Adds Two Way Status Sync In Chrome
• Social Jogger 2 Is A Sleek 4-in-1 Social Media Aggregator For Android

Here’s a good news for Android users who love digging deep into the technicalities of their beloved device and wish to access various device features through homescreen widgets and shorcuts. The developer of Elixir – popular and comprehensive Android system information tool – has just launched Elixir 2 with a better, more powerful set of features. With customizable/skinnable home screen widgets, shortcuts, add-ons and a plethora of detailed device (hardware, software, services) information tools, Elixir 2 lets you explore every nook and corner of your Android device.

Elixir 2 provides you ample information about each aspect of your device. With Elixir 2, you can learn about your device’s hardware & software information, running/installed applications, tasks, processes and services. The app also supports an array of widgets that include shortcuts, homescreen widgets and statusbar widgets. Also, there a couple of handy Elixir 2 add-ons that can be separately installed to access various personal and admin features of your device (details later on).

The proximity sensor, microphone, magnetic field sensor, accelerometer and other sensors running on your device can also be viewed and tested through Elixir 2. The app also allows you to check Logcat log (process log used for debugging) and Dmesg log (prints the message buffer of the kernel) of your Android.

Elixir 2 displays running apps, processes and/or services with brief info about sub-processes, file size, CPU usage, memory consumption and technical details for each.

You can view app details and open each app’s Market page form within Elixir 2. Generate Report feature lets you generate reports of your device, installed applications and running services and share them via email, Bluetooth or SMS.

Elixir 2 Widgets

Elixir 2 supports an array of skinnable widgets for various features such as app launcher, contacts, battery (current/temperature), internal/external storage, running applications count, time, device uptime, signal strength (network/WiFi), WiFi traffic and many more.

You may also create widgets for APN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, auto-sync, SD mount (refresh), silent, screen lock, auto-brightness and others. In addition, the app lets you create customized statusbar widgets that can be pulled down from the notifications drawer to access/toggle various functions/options.

To create a new Elixir 2 widget, long tap on a vacant area on your homescreen, tap on Widgets and select an Elixir Widget of preferred size. Newly created widgets need to be configured before you can start using them. Depending upon widget’s size, you may add multiple apps/features. In case, you don’t want to use a slot, you can opt to hide it on the widget. For further customization, you may label a widget, select custom background, label widget position/color, toggle vibration upon click and opt to show/hide labels. Once done with editing your Elixir Widget, tap Create. You can also save and backup your widgets from within the app.

Elixir 2 Personal Add-on

Also provided with the app are a couple of add-ons: Personal Add-on and Admin add-on. Personal add-on enables features that are required to access personal data (contacts, missed calls and unread texts). This add-on can be used to specify certain actions when you tap on a particular contact (call a contact, compose a message, send an email etc.).

Elixir 2 Admin Add-on

Admin add-on, on the other hand, enables those features on the device that require administrative privileges. Once enabled, this add-on can only be uninstalled by disabling said privileges.

If you want to know your Android, know it with Elixir 2.  For an app that supports so many useful features and extensive functionalities, it is a pleasant surprise to find that Elixir 2 is and its support tools are available in the Android Market free of cost. Download the app, its widgets and supported add-ons by visiting their respective Market links. The provided QR code will take you to the Elixir 2 Market page.

Download Elixir 2

Download Elixir 2 – Widgets

Download Elixir 2 – Personal Add-on

Download Elixir 2 – Admin Add-on

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• AppFresh: Update Installed Mac Apps, Plugins, Widgets And System Tools
• Weather+ Brings Its Weather Forecast & Flip-Clock Widgets To Android
• Cool Tool For Android Displays System Info On An On-Screen Panel

Android Pro Widgets is a comprehensive set of customizable, skinnable widgets for your contacts, calendar, bookmarks, messaging, Facebook and Twitter etc. Each widget supports ample customization options and packs multiple features that allow you to easily access/manage your tasks, bookmarks, contacts and social media buddies . Moreover, auto-update interval can be set for each widget and updates can be delayed while your phone is in sleep mode.

To add Android Pro Widgets to your home screen, proceed as follows:

• Long press on vacant area on your home screen
• Tap Widgets > Android Pro Widgets and pick the required widget. Selected widget is activated once you are done with its configuration.

APW People Widget displays your phone contacts and lets you set click actions for each. As of this writing, available click actions include Show contact badge, direct dial, direct SMS as well as the default action for a selected contact. The widget can be configured to display contacts according to their groups. You can also sort contacts in alphabetical order or according to their call frequency. ADW Bookmarks Widget displays thumbnails of the stock browser’s bookmarks that can be tapped at any instant to access the corresponding websites.

With the APW Calendar Widget and its Quick Event feature, you can add and check the agendas, scheduled meetings and events on your calendar. The widget offers multiple customization options such as providing you with an option to select your calendar provider. There is also an option to hide recurring and declined events on the calendar.

APW Facebook Widget lets you post status updates, switch between your Facebook profile page and news feed and refresh/update your Facebook feed. With APW Twitter Widget, view your Twitter timeline, tweet, view and send direct messages right from the home screen.

Widget themes, the APW Timeline Widget (which seems like a Facebook-Twitter aggregator) and various agenda options within the APW Calendar Widget become available on purchasing a license key. You can download Android Widgets Pro from the Android Market free of cost and upgrade to the full version later by purchasing the license key.

Download Android Pro Widgets

Purchase License Key

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• INQ Social Sync & Widgets Suite – A New Way To Use Facebook On Android
• GO Launcher EX For Android Gets Task Manager & Contacts Widgets
• SMS Board Forwards Incoming SMS To Facebook, Twitter & Email [Android]

If, for some reason, the stylish and feature-packed GO SMS Pro for Android was not enough to fulfill the messaging needs of users, Go Dev Team have decided to show up with a sleek widget to compliment the app. With GO SMS Widget, you do not need to peep into your inbox anymore. Instead, you can always resort to this smart little widget for all your messaging needs. The widget shows all your messages with added controls that allow you to perform message-related tasks right from your home screen. More after the break.

Like any other widget, GO SMS Widget can also be added by long pressing on a vacant area on your home screen. Once the menu pops up, select Widgets > GO SMS Widget > GO SMS Widget (4×2). The widget allows users to reply back to their messages, navigate back and forth their messages and recall More Actions button with just a single tap on the widget.

The Settings option of the widget lets you select whether you want all the messages to be displayed on the widget or just the unread ones. Also, the number of messages and style settings can also be configured from this menu. As of now, the included styles contain just a couple of options: black and white.

Although GO SMS Widget can work independent of GO SMS Pro, it is recommended that users install the latest version of GO SMS Pro to maximize the capacity of the widget. Both the app and the widget are available for free on the Android Market.

Download GO SMS Widget

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Add Home Screen Widgets To Android Lock Screen With Generic Widget Lockscreen
• GO Launcher EX Gets Widget Skins & A Twitter Home Screen Widget
• New Launcher Widget – Recently Installed Apps On Home Screen [Android]

Remember Screenlets, the application which provides a large range of widgets for the Ubuntu desktop. It is the same app which we used earlier to show you how to get stylish wallpaper clocks. Screenlets Version 0.14 has just been released with app-indicator support and many bug fixes for Ubuntu 11.04. This is nearly the second update in two years which means that the project is moving forward with more exciting “Screenlets” for Ubuntu users. In this post we will tell you how to get the latest version and app-indicators (Widgets) for Screenlets.

The latest version of Screenlets can be installed from the following Terminal commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:screenlets/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install screenlets

Alternatively, you can use the PPA given below to install Screenlets with all available widgets. It’s worth mentioning here, that doing so will install a large number of Screenlets (widgets). The available Screenlets include Ring Sensors, Google Related widgets (such as Google Calendar and Gmail), Dropbox (sync indicator), wallpaper clocks, weather, clocks, system load indicators, battery indicator, calendar, folder organizers and much more.

sudo apt-get install screenlets-pack-all

To get an overview and to launch available Screenlets from the Screenlets manager main window or by right-clicking on the system tray icon.

To get more options for customizing your widget, use the right-click context menu. This will allow you to change the size and theme of the widget and allow you to make further configurations. For example, the Google widgets require Google account credentials to display updates, you can enter you login credentials from Properties (after right-clicking on a wideget).

To download the setup file and to get more information about available widgets, you can visit the Screenlets website from the link given below.

Download Screenlets

[via WEBUPD8]

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Make Your Gnome Desktop More Useful With Screenlets
• Beautiful Widgets For Android – Free Version Released
• Ubuntu One Indicator Displays Synchronization Stats From System Tray

Currently in beta, Sony Ericsson’s life.contacts for Android is a free homescreen widget that automatically generates shortcuts to frequently used contacts, syncs contacts with Google and Email accounts, and provides an additional background service that forwards information on missed calls and SMS from said contacts to the selected Google/Email account.

As good-looking as it is handy, life.contacts is a splendid addition to the the Market and, even in beta, is definitely among the best contact widgets out there.

The widget comes in two sizes. The smaller one arranges 5 of your favorite contacts in a single line and the larger widget displays 9 as shown in the screenshots below.

For each displayed contact, the widget houses shortcuts to phone call, SMS, mail, contact details and social media (Facebook, Twitter) profiles. In addition, a life.contacts profile is generated for each contact in the widget. A shortcut to said profile is added alongside the aforementioned and a preview of the contact’s last social media status update. The shortcuts bar displays three shortcuts at a time. Swipe across the bar to reveal additional shortcuts.

You may manually remove any contact from the widget by enabling the Hidden option in the contact’s life.contacts profile. Said profile is accessible from both the widget and the contact’s details.

You can sync life.contacts with your Facebook account to get profile pictures for each of the displayed contacts and to receive online SMS and missed call notifications on the affiliated Email address. Tap on life.contacts on the homescreen widget to access life.contacts online. Once you’ve registered an Email account with life.contacts, you may disable SMS and missed call info forwarding from within the Settings screen.

Notifications for unviewed SMS and missed calls are sent to your Email address with “My phone” specified as the name of the sender and “Sms received/Missed call from Contact Name” as the subject. The message body of a missed call notification merely specifies the time said call was connected while unviewed SMS are forwarded complete with the time of reception followed by the text message itself in the message body.

The app was tested to work without problems on the HTC Desire. You can grab the beta version for free from the Android Market via the provided link or QR code.

Download life.contacts Beta

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• GO Contacts For Android Is Ideal Alternative To Stock Dialer & Contacts
• teXty For Android Provides A Two-Tap Shortcut To Frequently Sent SMS
• Live Locker – Sleek, Shortcut-Filled Lock Screen Replacement [Android]

New to the Android Market, Regina 3D Launcher shows much promise with its opulent 3D interface and an assortment of new, handy features that takes homescreen customization to a new level, and while it might be more than a few laps behind SPB Shell 3D when it comes to 3D slickness, it does not, unlike the latter, come with a hefty price tag. In fact, it has no price tag at all. That’s right. Regina 3D Launcher, along with all its component apps (AOTW), is absolutely free. Join us after the jump for more.

Though it goes unnoticed at first glance, the overall render quality in Regina Launcher has been kept low, probably on purpose, for better performance. A closer look at text and icons reveals jagged edges and dithered gradients.

Despite that, the interface looks quite amazing and is, in itself, quite a lot of fun to play with. Swipe across the screen to switch between multiple homescreens. The slower you swipe, the more “3D” the inter-screen transitions become. Swipe slow enough, and the launcher arranges all your homescreens in a 3D homescreen browser.

As of this writing, the launcher does not include the option to speed up the transitions so you may find it a little slower than older, more popular launchers the likes of Launcher Pro and Go Launcher. And when we say “slower” we don’t mean “laggy” – the launcher has been tested to run quite smoothly on the HTC Desire and Desire HD.

Each homescreen or “workspace” can have a different wallpaper and a title, or rather “Workspace Name”, that describes its contents. To edit the properties of a workspace, swipe to it and hold down anywhere on the screen to bring up the Add/Edit menu. You’ll find the mentioned options in the Edit tab.

As per default settings, workspace names appear both on each workspace temporarily while swiping normally, and atop each workspace in the 3D “workspace browser”. You can prevent said titles from appearing on one or both of these places by disabling them from Settings > Regina Settings > Workspace Name.

The launcher comes loaded with support for five Regina widgets, some of which need to be installed separately from the Market. Hold down anywhere on the screen to add widgets, shortcuts or folders. The folder feature isn’t available yet and, as promised by the developers, will be included in a future update.

You don’t need to search for these widgets on the Market. Simply navigate to Settings > Regina Settings > Version x.x.xx (Check For Update) and you’ll find direct links to all available Regina widgets and updates.

The ToDo and Calender Regina Widgets can be customized to show a user-defined number of rows, allowing users to fit them in with other widgets on a single homescreen/workspace. Tap the “i” icon at the upper right corner of mentioned widgets to edit them.

A feature that we found particularly interesting was the Secret Workspace, a tap-sequence password for which can be set from the launcher’s settings menu. Secret Workspace is basically a second, hidden layer of multiple homescreens that can be employed to house shortcuts or widgets for, you know, personal stuff.

The password is a sequence of taps, each at one of the four corners of the screen. The screenshot below should clear things up.

From the app drawer, you can place shortcuts to any app on the homescreen. Simply hold down on it, and the app drawer fades away to reveal the homescreen. The launcher also allows you to uninstall apps directly from the drawer using the same method.

The homescreen icon-grid isn’t as “strict” as it is in other Android launchers. Regina Launcher allows you to place icons anywhere on the screen and arrange them anyway you want. You may choose to align icons vertically or horizontally with respect to each other or not.

Additional homescreens/workspaces can be added and existing ones can be rearranged or deleted by pinching in anywhere on the screen.

View the video demo below.

Most users might not consider adopting Regina Launcher as their primary home app as of yet, but clearly, it has loads of potential and a lot to offer – slick transitions and animations, customizable widgets, themes, a hidden workspace and what not. And this is only the debut version. Future updates will have more surprises in store for eye-candy-hungry Android users.

You can grab Regina 3D Launcher for free from the Android Market via the provided link or QR code.

Download Regina 3D Launcher

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• MXHome Launcher For Android Brings New App Drawer Concept And 3D Graphics
• Android Theme Launcher Is A Unique Launcher-Style Live Wallpaper
• Full Screen Launcher: Homescreen Replacement With 3D Folders [Android]