Android Geek Screen

First of all, I’m extremely sorry to be away for so long. The perils of being an engineering aspirant. *sigh*

Anyway, now that I’m back, I’ve got a sexy tutorial to make iPhone users go green with envy.
Android’s customizability is a well known fact.
I was quite bored with the bland, stock look of my Samsung Galaxy S and decided to pimp it a bit.
And, the result was this-

To achieve the same look for your Android device is quite simple. Takes only 30 minutes. You don’t even have to rrot your phone! So, here we go-

Download the following. These are paid applications (except for Launcher Pro). I have provided links by which you can download them for free-

1. A home launcher called Launcher Pro from the Android Market.
2. System Info Widget. You can get it for free from here.
3. Power Control Plus. You can get it for free from here.
4. Clockr Evolution. It can be found here for free.
5. Text Widget. It can be found here for free.
6. Wallpaper. It can be found here. I found this wallpaper online and I think it really suits this theme. You can go ahead & choose your own wallpaper, if you want! 🙂

Once you finish downloading these applications, install all of them one by one.
Once installed-

1. Click on the ‘Home’ button of your Android. It should give you a pop-up which asks you which launcher you choose to use. Choose ‘LauncherPro’ and make sure ‘Use By Default For This Action’ is ticked.
2. Transfer the wallpaper to your phone via Bluetooth/USB. Change the wallpaper of your device(I don’t need to emphasize on this!).
3. Remove any application shortcuts present on the homescreen. Click on ‘Menu’ –> Preferences.
   Go to the Homescreen Settings and set the ‘Number Of Screens’ to 1. Go back and then, go to the Dock Settings. Change the ‘Number of docks’ to 1. Other settings can be tinkered around with, if you want. But, make sure to change the Homescreen Settings & Dock Settings.
4. By default, at the bottom of the screen, there will be a few icons. Remove all of them by long-pressing on each and then, clicking on ‘Change Shortcut’. Choose ‘Blank’. Keep doing this till there are no icons left on the screen.
5. Then, long-press on the bottom of the screen again and choose “Swipe gesture action”. It will give you another pop-up. In the new pop-up, select ‘Open App Drawer’. By doing this, you’ll be able to just swipe your finger across the bottom of the screen to open your application drawer.
6. Long-press the top of the screen till a ‘Add to Home screen’ pop-up appears. Click on ‘Widgets’ and choose ‘Power Control Plus(1X4)’ from the list. There are many sizes available and you can choose the ones to your liking. Once you click on it, it will take you to a screen by which you can customize the widget to your liking. Once you finish, click on ‘Done’.  To achieve the same effect as I have, make the theme of the widget ‘100% transparent’.
7. Long-press the screen again and add a widget called ‘Clockr Evolution’. To customize the clock, you can click on the clock to access its settings.
8. Long-press the screen again and add another widget called ‘System Info Widget(1X4)’. By default, the widget will have weird graphic icons. To make them look like the ones I have, click under the widget to access its settings. It is quite tricky and took me some time. Once you access the settings, change the ‘Theme’ to ‘Icons Only (Eclair)’.
9. And, for the last time, long-press the screen again and add a widget called ‘Text Widget 4X1’. This widget is a quite a pain in the neck and only allows 20 attempts. So, make sure you get what you want in the first few attempts. To change what is shown, edit the text string. I have kept a computer terminal’s output to make it look a bit geeky and complicated.
   Before you exit the settings of the widget (& waste an attempt), make sure you set the background of this widget to be transparent. To do so, go to the ‘Background Settings’ and click on ‘Background color’ and set the ‘Alpha’ bar to the extreme right and click on ‘Ok’.
   Make sure you don’t click on the widget accidentally since it counts as an attempt! Each attempt wasted is each attempt less at customization of the widget!
   

Et voilà! You now have the same look on your Android device! Enjoy! 🙂