Android App Reviews

Popular clock and weather widget pack HD Widgets has been treated to a beautiful new upgrade. HD Widgets 3.0 has been updated to have an Ice Cream Sandwich style updater that makes it much easier to style your homescreen. The app now has a WYSIWYG editor showing exactly how each change made will affect the final look, and it includes current time, weather, and orientation settings.

HD Widgets 3.0 also turns the widget selection process on its head. Users now have complete control over the widget settings, allowing for the mixing and matching of certain elements. A full-screen widget can have a black background while the clock area is orange, clock styles can be changed, fonts and colors altered, and settings switch colors are adjustable. A new Random button will create a random mix of settings that can then be tweaked to get just the right look.

Cosmetics aside, HD Widgets has multiple weather services – Accuweather, Google Weather, WeatherBug, Weather Underground – that can be changed to get more accurate readings. The app supports multiple locations when launching the weather service to look at forecasts. There’s also a new Theme Pack that can change the graphics in HD Widgets. A High Res Pack that increases the size of graphics on tablets is available now, and two more packs will be available later this month.

HD Widgets is available now in Google Play for $0.99. This is a temporary sales price that ends Friday afternoon (June 8, 2012), so grab it now if the app interests you. The app should be available starting at 1 PM today.

 

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Here's a friendly notification that Cloud.tv's newest version of their HD Widgets app will be available today, June 7.  We're up to the 3.0 release (already!) and things just keep getting better.  We've played with the release candidate for the last few hours and have come away extremely impressed.  There's an extremely high level of customization for the widgets, including colors, gradients, sizes, fonts, themes, and more.

Whether you've got a smartphone or tablet that needs a little home screen sprucing, this is where you should start.  For a limited time (48 hours on June 7-8), you can grab it for a one-time 99¢ download.  You'll be glad you did!  Look for a pair of widget packs in the next few weeks: Colourform & Photostream.

HD Widgets 3.0 is slated to debut at 11:00AM EST in Google Play.

Completely overhauled HD Widgets 3.0 arrives for Android originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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Most of us struggle with keeping our busy lives organized, especially if you throw a family into the mix. That is why there are so many apps in the Play Store that deal with personal organization – but it’s hard to weed through them all to find true help. When all the dust has settled, Cozi is one Android app that’s left as a real winner.

Organization requires three separate tools: a calendar, a to-do list, and a shopping list. They are all needed in our every day life and it’d be nice if they all worked together in tandem, and worked for the whole team (or family). Cozi is all of these tools in one convenient app, and they’ve included a journal to boot…

Getting Started With Cozi

Getting started with Cozi is as simple as heading to Cozi.com and signing up for an account for your family. It’s easy to invite the rest of the members and they all log in with the family password. The Android app is available in the Google Play Store for free (and also as an ad-free paid version).

The Tools

You’ll be impressed by the tools you’ll have at your fingertips:

A Calendar

Many people stick with the same ol’ Google Calendar to keep life on schedule, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Using the Cozi Calendar just adds that little bit of synergy working together with the rest of the app and staying accessible to the whole family. Each family member can have their own calendar events and can even view them together on one easy to follow family calendar.

Adding and viewing appointment dates is as simple as in any other calendar app, and you can even have a weekly summary of the family calendar – an appointment guide of sorts – emailed to each family member each week so you can all stay on the same page.

A to-Do List

The to-do list part of the Cozi app has everything you’d want in a to-do list app. You can easily add and delete tasks, cross them off as you go, and even switch up the order as importance changes.

As Cozi does well, each member of the family can have their own to-do lists. This means that the husband’s to-do list widget on his Android can turn into his honey-do list for the wife at home adding tasks for him on her laptop (using Cozi’s web interface, of course).

Then there is room for a general to-do list for the whole team to work on and cross off as the tasks are accomplished.

A Shopping List

Shopping lists are a dime a dozen in the Store but it’s hard to find a good one. I haven’t personally found a better shopping list app than Cozi. It works very similarly to the to-do list but is more catered to reminding you what you need to get at the store. You can have several categories of shopping lists going at once, letting you keep your head on straight while out and about.

Just like the to-do list, the shopping list is made super easy to update on the go. One family member can be at the local market tearing through their list of grocery items, and someone else can remember something they forgot to add to the list and go ahead and edit it and have it sync on the fly. You may want to shoot the person a message just to make sure they notice the new item though.

A Family Journal

Cozi’s Journal makes it very easy to keep the rest of the family aware of what’s going on. This tool can be used in several ways, such as letting others know how specific events went or just taking a quick photo of something interesting you come across that the rest of the family might find cool.

The app has a simple interface which allows the user to quickly add text or a photo for sharing. It’s kind of like a mini blog for the eyes of your family only. Just one more way to bring the family closer when everyone has their own busy schedules.

Widgets Are Wonderful

One of the reasons Android rocks is because of widgets. You can use one of your home screens to keep an eye on just about anything you can imagine. Cozi has several size options for each of the first three tools: the calendar, to-do list and shopping list. In fact, you can have several widgets housing several different lists. For example, you can have both your own to-do list and the shared to-do list as widgets on the same home screen.

Editing a list or calendar is as easy as tapping the widget. You also have simple access to the settings by tapping the gear icon in the lower corner.

Conclusion

Cozi really is several apps brought together into one synergistic app syncing the whole family’s lives into one convenient place. But as far as whether or not Cozi is for you… that depends. How many lives are you trying to bring together in an organized way? This could mean your family, or a group of work colleagues. If you’ve got a group of people you need on the same page, Cozi can work for you.

One downside of Cozi is that the Android app is currently only available in North America. They plan on opening it to the rest of the world eventually, but it’s not clear when. Meanwhile, the website is open and so is the mobile version of the website, albeit with limited functionality.

If you are lucky enough to be able to get the Cozi Android app, you will see how simple it can become getting your family organized, on the same page, and closer together through the Internet and Android phones.

Slider Widget - Volumes is an uber handy settings widget for your Android homescreen. Instead of the usual toggle feature most similar apps have, this app instead provides a floating slider which allows you to control levels manually. Arguably providing far more control, Slider Widget - Volumes works really well and gives you a new [...]

Slider Widget – Volumes. A handy homescreen widget to toggle common settings is a post from: AndroidTapp.com

N7player Music Player is a rich and smooth music player for your Android device. It boasts an innovative 3D user interface and cool multi-touch features. You also get a neat graphic equalizer, Dolby surround sound, widget, lockscreen controls and a fantastically easy-to-use interface. Price: Free (Only while in Beta) Tested on: HTC Desire HD Content [...]

N7player Music Player – Slick music player app with cool 3D interface is a post from: AndroidTapp.com

Beautiful Widgets has reached 4.0 status, bringing with it the ability to remix existing skins and browse the library of choices online.

Beautiful Widgets 4.0 has added some Ice Cream Sandwich browsing elements to the app UI, but it’s more impressive that users can now browse the Beautiful Widgets Skins library online. The new Skins Market displays all clock, weather, battery, and toggle widgets in a customizable and searchable gallery. Linked to a phone or tablet through Google account, the Skins Market can download and apply any of those features directly from the web. Users can also rate widgets or recommend them on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

There are more than 500 Super Clock widgets alone in the Skins Market, but that still may not be enough for everyone. Android fans wanting more can customize the look of their widget by using the Skin Mixer. Beautiful Widgets uses existing clock styles to let users pick and choose different backgrounds, numbers, AM/PM icons, and dots to appear together. So if you like the numbering on a particular widget but not the background, mix a new skin and save it for use on your device.

The new customization options are a great feature to have, as is the ability to see forecasts for multiple locations. Beautiful Widgets can now take someone’s geolocation or a list of selected cities and provide forecasts for all of them. So if you want to know the weather where you’re going and where you are, just swipe left or right between a list of designated places.

Beautiful Widgets is temporarily on sale for $1.29 USD in Google Play. Download it now to also get weather alerts, customizable settings toggles, great animations, moon phases, and one of Android’s top apps around.

Who says Android has to be dull and ugly? This is a misconception that has been perpetuated since the days of the T-Mobile G1 and the first version of Android. The UI might have been basic and quite square back then, but fortunately this isn’t the case now. Thanks to the openness of the ecosystem, a slew of launchers and themes, and various mods, it is now possible to customize every single nook and cranny inside your phone.

As a matter of fact, this world of customization is the main reason I love Android and never get bored of it, even after a year of tinkering. Below, you will find an assortment of tools to help you get started, improve and even master the art of modding your Android interface.

Find The Inspiration

myColorscreen

Whether you’ve just decided to get started on modding or you already customize your Android device to the bones but have lost your inspiration, myColorscreen is, by far, the best place to get started. This website is a community-generated repository of Android (and iPhone) homescreens, sorted by popularity and views, with one screen of the day handpicked by the editors.

The great thing about myColorscreen – other than housing any and all homescreen styles – is that most screens are tagged with the appropriate Market application used to make each element, and some users are helpful enough to link to the icon sets and wallpapers they used. You can then easily see all the details that have gone into realizing a certain look and try to emulate it on your own. Here is, for example, a link to my BAZINGA! homescreen with all the details.

Lifehacker Homescreen Showcase

The Lifehacker homescreen showcase is a nice place to check if you’re getting started on Android modding. You are farless likely to find the tweaked-to-oblivion setups that are abundant on myColorscreen, but you will probably find some good ideas there. It is also harder to browse through all setups, and the amount of details regarding each one (widgets, wallpaper, icons) relies on how much the user decided to share. There are no direct tags on the screen, so you’re left to guess what each element is made from.

XDA threads

Another great place to look at is the XDA-Developers forums. Depending on your device, you can almost always find an XDA thread entitled “Show Your Device X’s Homescreen” in the specific subforums. The setups range from very basic to quite complex; the amount of details shared depends on the user who uploaded it; and most times you end up having to guess how to achieve a certain look. You are also bound by the forum-nature of the threads, so you have to scroll through replies, reposts, and questions, to get to the next shared homescreen.

Android.AppStorm (Here!)

If you’re still on the edge, thinking about modding your Android’s homescreen but not quite sure where to start, Kenny has covered and explained in details the basics behind the process of cleaning up your homescreen. Ashish has made a terrific roundup of different themes that go with several launchers and ROMs, as well as 60 beautiful wallpapers to get you inspired.

Getting Started: Launchers

If you’re serious about modding your Android device’s look, you can scratch off the default launcher that comes with it. Whether it’s Sense, TouchWiz, MotoBLUR, vanilla Android, or anything else, none of these allow for any real customization. The grid size is set in stone, the icons aren’t modifiable, and there’s likely zero chance of you removing the dock or notification bar if you need to.

A customizable replacement launcher should let you change the grid size to allow for more icons, support resizable and scrollable widgets, personalized app drawers, gestures to launch certain elements, customizable icons and wallpapers with varying themes, animations for switching screens, and more.

I will not focus on every feature in these launchers as most of them are quite similar and the details have been covered before with our pick of the best Android homescreen launchers. I will, however, highlight the striking differences and the reasons you consider each of them over any of the others, depending on your usage.

ADWLauncher EX

ADWLauncher, which comes included with CyanogenMod 7, has long been my favorite launcher. It’s fast, it’s stable, and it allows for a lot of customization without being bloated with options that are impossible to decipher. The EX version was offered for 0.10$ during Google’s 10 day Market sale and I was ecstatic to buy it as it offers more options. It was also updated, to add support for Ice Cream Sandwich and tablets, merge the Dockbar and dock into one, and most importantly add Folders. If you bought it during the sale too, do yourself a favor and start using it right away.

Price: $2.95

LauncherPro Plus

If you look at any of the homescreen showcase websites named above, you’ll find many setups with LauncherPro as their base. It has been available for a long time, and although updates are getting slow and stale, it has garnered a huge fan base thanks to its speed and exclusive Sense-like widgets that allow access to Facebook, Twitter, Contacts, Bookmarks, and so on, all from the homescreen.

Price: $3.49
Full review: LauncherPro: The Launcher You’ve Been Waiting For

GO Launcher EX

Out of all these launchers, GO is the only one that offers a free pro version with a lot of options. This has been one of the reasons for its marked success.

GO’s awesome distinctive feature, however, is that most themes can apply a certain shape and background to all icons, even if the corresponding application does not have a customized icon in the theme itself. So instead of ending up with half the icons modded and half still the same, you will have a more uniform look across all your icons. Add the fact that GO also boasts a set of dedicated widgets, à la LauncherPro, and you have a real winner for the theming freaks.

Price: Free

Zeam Launcher

If you’re looking for minimalism, you can’t go wrong with Zeam. It has undergone a huge diet in terms of features and footprint, in order to become a lean, fast launcher, but without themes, animations or any of the fluff that comes with ADW, GO or LauncherPro.

Price: Free
Full review: Zeam Launcher: A Minimalist Home Screen

QQLauncher Pro

QQLauncher differs from the above 4 launchers in that it tries its best to emulate a MIUI look, whether you’re running a MIUI ROM or not. There is built-in theme support, some included toggle widgets, and lots of animations. QQLauncher is worth a go if you’re already running MIUI, as it will keep with the same spirit while adding options that are non-existent in the default launcher, like resizable widgets for example.

Price: Free

SPB Shell 3D

SPB Shell is the opposite of Zeam, as far as launchers go. SPB embraces animations, effects, rendering, and all the fluff that only a fast, dual-core processor can handle on a daily basis, and churns out a gorgeous interface, that is tweakable only to a certain extent. I recommend using SPB Shell 3D only if you want to make the least effort, and still end up with something beautiful yet quite commercial.

Price: $14.95
Full review: SPB Shell 3D: Android Launcher Deluxe

Optional Addition: Lockscreens

While replacing the default launcher on your phone is almost a necessity if you want to customize your device’s feel, changing the lockscreen, on the other hand, is mostly optional. Some people like tweaking lockscreens with widgets, wallpapers and different unlock styles, but others are happy with the default lockscreen. We have previously put together 11 different lockscreen replacements, but the three most configurable ones are listed below.

WidgetLocker Lockscreen

WidgetLocker has long been championed as “the” lockscreen replacement app, and that’s for valid reasons. It supports widgets and shortcuts – just like on the regular homescreen – as well as a different lockscreen wallpaper from your home, and best of all, it can be modded with a multitude of themed unlock sliders.

Price: $2.99
Full review: Create A Minimal Lock Screen With WidgetLocker

MiLocker

MiLocker is based on MIUI ROM’s built-in locker. It carries on all the wonderful themes and unlock mechanisms available for that, which are quite a huge amount. It focuses on the actual lock aspect of the lockscreen, with calls and messaging accessible in some themes. MiLocker doesn’t support widgets or shortcuts and only allows for changing the image wallpaper.

Price: Free

GO Locker

GO Locker only works if you’re already using GO Launcher EX. It is quite similar to MiLocker in that it focuses on the unlock mechanism with themes, but also adds shortcuts for the dialer, messages and camera and allows you to modify these to your liking.

Price: Free
Full review: Lock Up Your Android With Go Locker

Pick a Great Wallpaper

Any good Android homescreen setup relies on a great wallpaper. It can range from a simple monochrome patterned image, to a colorful landscape or design; it can be abstract or real or 3D. What matters is having a good resolution, aligning it well so that the elements on top don’t interfere with it, and finding a homogenous mix between it and the rest of the widgets and icons.

Coveroid

Coveroid has one of the most impressive catalogue of wallpapers available, divided by categories and subcategories. They also offer an awesome Android application, with handpicked wallpapers, if you want to browse directly on your phone: Coveroid Wallpapers HD.

Wallbase.cc

Wallbase is the place to hit if you’re looking for wallpapers with a very specific color tone. They do offer regular browsing, searching by keywords, but their stellar feature is the option to filter wallpapers based on a hex color code.

DeviantART

If you haven’t heard of DeviantART, you must be living under a rock. It’s a community-based portfolio for anything related to graphics, imaging, and photography. Finding wallpapers there for your device is a matter of searching for your phone’s name, or looking inside community groups focused on Android, like #Android-Users.

InterfaceLIFT

InterfaceLIFT are quite famous in the computer wallpaper community, and they recently added the option to filter by and support Android phone and tablet screen resolutions. The quality there is usually stunning so be prepared to lose countless hours browsing their collection.

Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers

Zedge is another good source to browse for wallpapers, search by keywords, and find ringtones as well. Their Android application is free and works wonderfully.

Wallpapers HD

Wallpapers HD is an Android wallpapers application, quite like Zedge, except that it offers a similar feature to Wallbase right on your phone: you can filter and browse wallpapers by color. Unlike Wallbase however, you can’t set the hex color code, but have to use the built-in general color differentiation (blue, green, white, black…).

Apps to Make Use of Great Wallpapers

Unless you push it further, a great wallpaper is just that: great. However, if you’re planning on going beyond great, here are two applications you should consider adding to your arsenal.

Image Color Picker

Open any image on your device and you can use Image Color Picker to pinpoint and find the RGB and hex color code of any pixel in it. It might sound like a gimmick or something only geeks and designers would be into, but if you’re picky about achieving a homogenous feel between your wallpaper and widgets (especially those that allow you to change elements’ colors), then you need this data.

If, for example, you wanted to use a black wallpaper with red elements, being able to find the exact red tone and use it in Minimalistic Text, Widgetsoid or Missed It – we will talk about these later on, don’t worry – can go a long way to maintain a certain harmony in your home setup.

Price: Free

MultiPicture Live Wallpaper

While browsing through the various setups on myColorscreen, one constant that keeps popping up is people using different wallpapers on each of their screens. Stock Android, and every other launcher, limits you to one wallpaper that is scrollable, so how can this be possible? With MultiPicture, that’s how. You choose how many wallpapers to include, crop them, change their order, and then apply it as a simple Live Wallpaper. If you want different styles for different aspects of your home setup, this is the way to go.

Price: Free

A Matching Set of Icons

If you open up your app drawer now and take a look, you’ll see icons of all shapes, colors and sizes. There is no escaping how much of a cacophony of design this lack of strict guidelines (like iOS provides for example) creates. Hence, any Android modder will tell you that there’s a lot of satisfaction in finding an icon set that is well-designed, looks clean, and fits the rest of their home’s setup.

It’s a simple process, but if you have never done it before, here is our guide to changing icons in several launchers.

Metrostation Icon Pack

Metrostation is an icon pack that integrates with launchers like ADW, GO and LauncherPro, and allows you to pick each icon separately. It follows the Windows Phone 7 Metro look, with small icons inside a circle which gives a similar look and feel to all your homescreen apps. However, it adds one wonderful feature: you can pick a color for all the icons, so you’re not bound by the white look, but can go for red, blue, green or any other color of Metro icons.

Price: Free

Tehkseven Iconsets

Last year, Paul from Tehkseven released a collection of 12 Android icon sets for free. These range from flat to glowing, from black and white to colored, but every iconset is quite consistent with shapes and colors being the same for all applications.

DeviantART

Like for wallpapers, there are a lot of Android icon sets available on DeviantART. You can search for these, but you can also look in user groups, like #Android-Users. Most sets are available to download for free; some are quite huge with over hundreds of icons; others are limited with a dozen or so – but the quality is usually spectacular.

Press It Icons

I am specifically highlighting this iconset, as it is quite different from the regular android square/circle icon size and shape. These are all rectangular icons, with text and images, and Melissa offers a black and white version as well as a colored version for you to choose from. You can apply them to your applications with Desktop VisualizeR (see below).

Other Sources

You can start by hitting our own 30+ Gorgeous Icon Sets For Android, you can try a Google search for other articles, or you can find good icon sets while browsing other people’s setups on myColorscreen, Lifehacker’s Homescreen Showcase or the threads on XDA-Developers. Generally, there is no central repository for icons, and you’re left on your own to try and find the ones that will suit you.

ROM Themes

Once you have all the elements that will define your homescreen’s setup, you should find an overall theme that suits this setup. Android interface themes change the popup dialogues, notification bar and drop down, settings screen, highlights and menus. They are exclusive to certain custom ROMS, like CyanogenMod and MIUI, and most times require root (except if you’re lucky enough to have T-Mobile Theme Chooser pre-installed on your phone).

If you’re running MIUI, you’ll know that it includes its own theme browser and manager. However, CyanogenMod and other ROMs with Theme Chooser don’t have this option, so you have to look around for them. You can start with our own 7 Awesome Themes For CyanogenMod, look on myColorScreen, DeviantArt or XDA-Developers, or use the sources below.

N3xGen Theme Manager

N3xGen is an Android application that acts as a directory for themes. It supports ADW Launcher and LauncherPro, but most importantly, it supports Theme Chooser themes. It lists themes by free, paid, and categorizes them by color, occasion, or certain categories. The themes link to their Market pages so you end up getting them from the official source.

Price: Free

Sonny Sekhon’s Ice Cream Sandwich themes

These themes are worth featuring on their own as they are free, based on Ice Cream Sandwich and extremely well made. Sonny started with a first Ice Cream Sandwich theme, then moved on to create eight other color variations of it: cyan, dark blue, green, gingerbread, red, orange, pink and purple. They are also complemented by matching LauncherPro Widgets and Android Widgets Pro themes.

Price: Free

Going Beyond the Theme: Morphs

Morphs are modifications to the aspects of the interface that regular themes can’t touch, like the lockscreen, power menu, and call screen. Some CyanogenMod themes mention in their Market description that they require a certain morph to be applied to achieve the same look as in the screenshots. Other morphs aren’t specific to a theme, but can be applied on top of any. All of them however, are provided as zip files that aren’t specific to any device so you will have to use ZipThemer (below) to repackage them for your phone, and head into Recovery Mode to apply them, like you do with any ROM update. Obviously, morphs require your phone to be rooted.

ZipThemer

ZipThemer is a simple application that will allow you to load a modification morph as a .zip, repackage it with your current ROM’s files (no matter what it is), and turn it into a flashable file that you can apply in Recovery Mode. ZipThemer can also package an “undo” flashable for you that will allow you to go back to the way things are, in case the morph isn’t to your liking.

Price: Free

Some Morphs to Get You Started

This thread on XDA-Developers is focused on providing lockscreen, volume control, dialer and boot animation morphs, of several colors. It’s a good place to look for your first morph if you’re running CyanogenMod. And here is Sonny Sekhon’s Ice Cream Sandwich theme thread, with the corresponding morphs.

Top It Off With a Nice Font

Font Changer (root)

Font Changer is the application you will need to apply any font to your Android device. There’s a Basic tab that allows you to pick a font and apply it, changing almost all the current fonts on your phone, and an Advanced tab. Tinkering with the Advanced settings will let you change specific fonts independently.

Price: Free

Fachadick’s Fonts For Android

Fachadick has a blog dedicated to fonts for Android. His entries list the font name, and provide screenshots with it applied and a link to the zip file. You can either flash the zip in Recovery Mode, or unpack it and paste the font in the Font Changer directory then apply it from there.

djjonastybe’s 100000+ font pack

djjonastybe, an XDA-Developers forum user, provides a link to a three-part pack of over 100,000 fonts that can be applied with Font Changer on Android. I believe he did a terrific job of finding every font that was ever made and packing it into that file. The collection supports several languages, and ranges from fonts that lack certain symbols, to complete fonts. Basically, with one hundred thousand fonts, there are bound to be some of poor quality, some of excellent quality, and a lot that are average.

Roboto, Nokia Pure and Segoe

If you’re looking for high quality fonts that do not hinder readability and were made with mobile phones in mind, then these are the three you should start with. Roboto is the new Android font that Google is championing for Ice Cream Sandwich, Segoe is the font known in Microsoft’s Windows Phone Metro, and Nokia Pure is Nokia’s new interface font (use this if you’re running MIUI ROM).

10 Highly Customizable Widgets

Desktop VisualizeR

This set of widgets is your ally if you want to use special or no icons to create shortcuts to applications or actions on your homescreen. Desktop VisualizeR lets you pick any widget size, set an image, or no image, and the action it should perform with its label. This is the application to use to apply the quirky Press It Icons mentioned previously.

Price: Free

Beautiful Widgets

If you’re looking for a highly customizable clock and/or weather application, Beautiful Widgets is it. I personally never gave it a chance, as I was always appalled by the Sense-like feel of the Market screenshots, but I eventually got it; lo and behold, there are hundreds of skins to choose from, and many are clean and well put together.

Price: $2.55
Full review: Beautiful Widgets: Spruce Up Your Home Screen

Minimalistic Text

You haven’t really modded your Android homescreen until you have mastered Minimalistic Text. The application can be used to create anything, from small widgets that launch an application, to big widgets that offer a ton of information: time, date, weather, custom text, battery level, available RAM, and more.

Minimalistic Text is highly customizable with colors, and this is where your hex color codes found with Image Color Picker can be put to good use.

Price: Free
Full review: Create Your Own Custom Homescreen Clock Widget

Missed It!

Missed It is a personalized widget that can show the number of missed calls, unread messages, email, and any other application that uses the notification system. You can pick the number’s color when or when not in use, choose numbers or letters, change the text written for every element, realign everything, add a background…

Price: $0.87

Make Your Clock

Like the name says, Make Your Clock is your own clock widget application. It feels a lot like a design application, as you can pick each element and move it, color it, and resize it, individually. Fortunately, there is a gallery of finished setups that you can download and even modify. The pro version adds access to other features like battery and stats.

Price: Free, or $1.91

Widgetsoid 2.x

I have tried dozens of toggle widgets, but none of them come close to Widgetsoid’s options. All toggles work perfectly, there are even stats icons and you can add your own application. Plus, every aspect is highly customizable: background, separators, switches, colors, trigger settings…

Price: Free
Full review: Create a Custom Power Control Widget With Widgetsoid

Phantom Music Control Pro

Phantom is a clean music controller widget that can embrace several looks: Metro, Sense, Minimalistic and more. The background, music player application, volume buttons, artist and song, can be removed or changed to your liking.

Price: $1.91

Pure Messenger Widget

Pure Messenger Widget is a set of widgets that are axed on social features: messages, email, calls, Twitter and Facebook. Several themes are supported, and many aspects of the widgets can be customized.

Price: $1.91

Simple Calendar Widget

For a clean and well presented calendar widget, Simple Calendar does a perfect job. It supports various sizes, styles, calendars, font colors and backgrounds for a look that can easily fit the rest of your homescreen.

Price: Free

Minimal Reader

Minimal Reader is a clean RSS news widget with a full news pop-up that can be personalized to your liking: refresh rates, backgrounds, colors, filters, scrolling…

Price: Free

Bonus: Lots of Transparent Widgets

There’s a good chance that you’re going through this whole article and thinking “great, but no matter how much I clean and customize my homescreen, the Twitter (or Facebook, Evernote, Google+…) widget will come with its white or black background and make everything look useless by covering it up and messing with my clean setup”.

For you, there’s a solution in this huge XDA-Developers thread that lists a series of community-modded applications whose widgets have been made transparent with white, black or blue text. You can even request an application if you don’t find it there and hope that someone answers you back.

Obviously, these are a departure from the secure official apps, so you might want to proceed with a bit of caution and common sense, and check each modded application’s permission requests before installing it.

Do You Know Others?

I have been learning and trying to mod my Android’s homescreen for many months now, and this list is a personal compilation of resources that I’ve accumulated over time. However, when it comes to modding, there’s a vast world out there, so be sure to mention any resources I didn’t list in the comments below.

With it being the time of year where looking out of the window can yield such a variety of results – especially for many of us here in the Northern Hemisphere – it’s often a good idea to have an idea of how conditions will pan out during the day. On Android, there are weather apps aplenty, so it’s a good time to round up some of the better efforts.

Now, you’ll probably be aware that many clock widgets also feature a weather function too. However, I have left most of these out here, instead focusing on more dedicated weather apps. There are few here that tag a clock into their app, but I hope you understand when I leave something out like Fancy Widgets or Beautiful Widgets. So, for some informative, beautiful and useful weather apps, read on…

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“What time is it?” A simple question, right? If someone asked you the time, what would you look at? I’m sure that most of you have a watch, but if you are here reading you probably look at your smartphone more often. Like most of our possessions we want to customize it and make it beautiful – so why not make the time and weather more pleasing to your eyes?

Clock, Battery, Weather

Beautiful Widgets are sets of widgets that can tell you the time, battery status and weather conditions. When you choose to add a Beautiful Widget on your home-screen you get lots of different options. Here are all of them:

• Beautiful Battery 1×1 – a simple widget that shows you your battery status.
• Beautiful Home Weather – a 4×2 widget that tells you the time, date, location and current conditions at a given location.
• Beautiful SuperClock 2×1, 4×1, 4×2, 4×3, 5×2 – the same as Beautiful Home Weather but with a different look and feel.
• Beautiful Text Clock 2×1 – just a simple text clock.
• Beautiful Today 1×1, 2×1 – a simple widget that shows you the current date.
• Beautiful Toggle Widget – as the name implies, it enables you to toggle different features (WiFi, GPS, Data, 2G/3G).
• Beautiful Weather 1×1, 4×1 – the small one displays the current weather, while the bigger one adds a 5-day forecast.

Some of them are shown in the screenshot below.

They’re Resizeable!

If you have a launcher that supports resizeable widgets – such as GOLauncher or LauncherPRO – you can also resize all of the widgets. Each can be stretched without issues and adapt very well to new sizes.

Infinite Themes

Another thing I really like about Beautiful Widgets is the huge amount of of themes built for them. The application has a built in system for downloading new themes, as shown below:

SuperClock

The SuperClock widget is one of the most customizable widgets available. It’s similar to the Home Weather widget in a few ways. First, because you can customize how the clock is displayed (either in AM/PM mode or 24-hour mode), and second, because you can set up your weather service (Google Weather or AccuWeather.com).

In both widgets you can also set up what application starts when you tap the clock, the date, or the weather forecast. I’ve set it up so when I tap the clock it goes into the default clock application, so that I can quickly edit my alarms. When I tap the date portion, I’m taken to the calendar application.

The five-day weather forecast can be opened when you tap the weather portion of the widget. You’ll see a beautiful animation of the current conditions and a forecast for the next five days, and if you tap the forecast, another application can be opened. I’ve set it to open the News & Weather application – a little redundant I know, but I don’t have any other weather application installed.

If you want to have those “beautiful animations” when you enter a five-day forecast, you need to download the Beautiful Widgets Animation Pack. It’s free on the Android Market.

Speaking of animation, you can even set it up to animate when you unlock your device. This used to be unique to HTC Sense, but now everyone can enjoy beautiful weather animations on their Android. This has its bugs though. When you unlock your device, it plays the animation regardless of whether your phone’s screen is turned off (and locked) or in an application. HTC Sense, on the ther hand, only plays animations if the weather widget is in view. Beautiful Widgets’ animations can therefore be frustrating if you want to get quickly to an app or if you want instant access to your home screen. I’ve disabled it because it began to annoy me, but for you eye-candy fans out there, this feature exists.

I started this section talking about the SuperClock and Weather Home widgets. This is where the similarities end. On the Weather Home widget you can only change the theme of it and that’s pretty much it. SuperClock comes along and says: “Hey! I want a different layout!” and gives you the ability to change the layout of the elements. You can have the clock at the top, weather icon in the middle, date bottom left and temperature bottom right – whatever you want. You can also set it up to tell you your battery level instead of the weather.

But Wait, There’s More

So far I’ve focused on the SuperClock and Weather widgets, but there are also Toggle widgets. You can also add a toggle widget to enable/disable phone features such as WiFi, Data and 2G/3G – and, you’ve guessed it, they can also be themed.

Final Word

Beautiful Widgets is a great widget pack. Some of the widgets are just awesome and the number of themes is mind-blowing. It’s no HTC Sense, but it sure tries to be one.

The only thing I found a bit confusing are the settings. You can access them in the five-day forecast section, for your specific widget, or by the application icon in your drawer, for more general preferences. The themes for Time, Weather, Battery and SuperClock are linked together so if you change your SuperClock theme all the other widgets get changed to the same theme. The Toggle widgets and the Home Weather widget don’t follow this pattern, but that’s not too inconvenient.

All in all the application deserves a perfect score of 10. The small bugs are clouded by its sheer number of themes.

Note taking and memory-aid app Evernote has added three often-requested features to its Android app. Today Evernote announced that users can share notebooks and get “more sketch goodness” for annotation.

Evernote now allows users to mark a note as shareable to certain people named or with anyone who has a link to that note. That will make it easier to pass on notes you make to friends, family, or coworkers. Access can later be taken away by the note creator. And to put the cherry on top, Evernote premium users can allow others to edit notes. That might be useful for the folks who use Evernote as a productivity tool.

Skitch, the annotation company that Evernote acquired a short while ago, has been included. There’s now a link to open the Skitch Android app, edit an image, and then save the into Evernote. Users can save as a new image or replace the original with what was edited in Skitch.

By the way, if you’re storing Evernote on your SD card, you cannot gain access to the widget. That’s because Android doesn’t support widgets when an app is installed on the SD card. To remedy the situation, Evernote built a separate widget specifically for such users. Download the Evernote app and install to the SD card, then download the Evernote widget app (leave it on the standard phone memory) and you should be able to have the best of both worlds. Here’s Evernote’s developer page to download whatever you need.