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One of the more common complaints about Android is its lack of aesthetic appeal or polish, especially compared to that of iOS and even (or perhaps, especially) Windows Phone 7. While Android isn’t by any means ugly, it almost certainly seems to lack that special something its competitors have. In all likeliness, a quick glance at your phone will reveal a random array of icons, widgets, and folders scattered among your home screens in no particular order.
However, thanks to the flexibility of the Android platform, this doesn’t have to be the case. By employing the right launcher and widgets, you’ll find yourself with a layout that’s not only attractive, but more importantly, functional in all the ways your home screen is now. Sound interesting? Let’s get started.
After an enormous wait, it is now possible to bypass HTC’s locked HBOOTs and root your previously unrootable Android 2.2 device. Now HTC Android users who were unable to root beforehand (such as those with an original Wildfire) can enjoy custom ROMs, CPU Scaling, advanced WiFi Sharing and much more. This article will show you how to do just that.
This guide also applies to the Aria, Incredible S, Desire, and Desire CDMA.
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I remember when I was a 14 year old kid that I had a curious fascination with album cover art. Whether it came with the albums or I made them myself for my mix CD’s, my albums always had some sort of a cover.
Nowadays you buy a digital copy of your favorite albums and you typically get a cover embedded in it or included as a separate PDF or JPEG file. You can put those files on virtually any kind of media player and you’ve got your favorite music everywhere. But what happens when you put your music albums to your Android device and for some reason your player doesn’t see the cover art? You get Cover Art Downloader from the Android Market and fix it.
It’s raining media players in the Android ecosystem. All popular free, open source, and premium media players that we have cherished on the desktop are available for download in the Android Market. Well-known open source media player Songbird has an Android app too, and helps you sync with your iTunes and song library from the desktop.
Songbird comes also with a couple of interesting social features built right into the player. After the break, let us take a look how the media player can help making your on-the-go music experience awesome. (more…)
Call forwarding is the diversion of a call that Wikipedia defines as allowing “an incoming call to a called party, which would be otherwise unavailable, to be redirected to a mobile telephone or other telephone number where the desired called party is situated”. However, it’s a lot simpler than that sounds — basically, we’re talking about redirecting an incoming call to another phone number.
On Android, there are a couple of different ways that you can forward calls, including the ability to forward missed call information to an email address. This is especially useful if you left your phone at home before your commute to work, or if you just lost your phone but still want to keep on top of things. Let’s take a look at some applications to help in these situations. (more…)
Your ringtone is the most basic and common way of customising your phone to better suit you. I live in an apartment inside a bed and breakfast, so I’d like to set my tone to Madness’s classic track, Bed and Breakfast Man. I’ve already got the MP3, but how do I set it to play whenever someone calls me?
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How many times have you been out with your friends showing them your latest and greatest apps, but then had to go through the trouble of spelling it out because there are ten other apps with similar names.
ShareMyApps is here to help! It’s a fast and easy way to share app info with your friends.
What’s the name of that app? How is it spelt? Did you get the free version or the paid version? It was this one, right?
All these questions and your friend has yet to even download the application! There must be an easier way! That’s where ShareMyApps steps in. (more…)
You would be surprised to know the number of people who don’t know how to get Gingerbread on their phone for under $10. In some cases, depending on what you have to hand, it can be possible to get it even cheaper. Read on to learn the secrets!
Have you ever found yourself wanting to be able to use a launcher that only comes on a certain brand of Android phone but didn’t want to change devices? With the abundance of UI tweaks out there, it’s hard to find one and stick to just one.
The most popular are HTC Sense, and Motorola’s Blur. These “skins” that are placed over the Android platform act as a sort of “replacement” for the stock Android UI. If you are looking for an application that allows you to seamlessly change the look of your home replacement with one click, HeLauncher might be for you.
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Though it is a brilliant and compact smartphone, HTC did regrettably hinder the Wildfire’s CPU and graphical processing capability. Due to the small 528mhz chip, people have often complained that the eyecandy transitions, default applications, and general experience can be a bit slow, laggy, or unpleasant. I have found this to be the case myself.
Since getting mine late last year I have found a few ways to reduce these problems and better my Wildfire’s overall user experience, as well as increase productivity and gain a few great applications too. Now I would like to share these tips with you! No purchases are needed. Rooting of your phone isn’t needed either.
Some of these performance boost techniques will be unnoticeable on higher-end devices, but do apply to most Android phones.
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