Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

How I Android - Josh's Nexus 4 (Lockscreens and Launcher)

2013-02-14
probably one of the greatest things about androids the fact that it is so customizable you'd be pretty hard pressed to find to Android phones or tablets that look exactly alike so with that in mind we know certainly that sometimes you want to see how other people structure their android phones and devices and you're just kind of curious to see what kind of function not either taking advantage of so that's exactly what we're going to show you from our end so in this new segment we're going to take a look at primarily the home screens and the lock screens in jellybean 4.2 on the Nexus 4 and just how I structured them for my tastes so it's josh of a guard from android authority what's going on everybody and this is how I Android alright so let's go ahead and jump right in so obviously this is the google nexus 4 this is the there you go this is the phone sporting the latest version of Android jellybean 4.2 which added a lot of functionality to the two parts of the experience that we're going to take a look at today which is the lock screen and the launcher the main reason why I wanted to start how I Android with those two particular ones or because they're the first things you see before you get to any other part in the phone anyway so what better place is to start all right so let's go ahead and jump right in so we're going to start off with our lock screen obviously and our lock screen right here in jellybean 4.2 it added functionality to what used to be just a plane with the widget on it and now what they added our lock screen widgets but in reality of their really screams so if you swipe from the edge here you'll see that it starts to appear on the side so these are like a bunch of different screens actually and you can add a lot of them I only have three I usually like to keep things at three including my home screens which you'll see later so let's just jump right in on the left side there on the leftmost screen the first one I have my calendar pretty self-explanatory I just like to have my my appointments available so i can either add one or see what's coming up next and then on the other side you have the permanently placed camera widget which gets you right into the app real quick but in the middle you'll see that i'm using a not the stock android jelly bean clock but instead i'm using one called dash clock we just did a review on this application and actually turned out to be quite good I only thought about a day or two ago and i've added it right on after i tried it out so that just goes to show you how easily customizable android is because your particular setup could change at any given time really easy on the eyes it looks just like the stock jellybean clock on the left you have notifications on the other side and when you swipe down you get an expanded view of those you can do text messages your next alarm calendar entries email whether all of that so it's a really nice lockscreen clock to have very functional so a functional simplicity that's something that I'm always going for here and that only fulfills the criteria and of course you got the google now the bottom which I use quite a lot and then the unlocker right here in the lower third alright so we're going to go ahead and jump into the launcher so let's just unlock and here we are you'll see that i'm not using the stock the stock launcher that comes with jellybean 4.2 the reason being is as much as i love it there are a couple launchers out there that keep the same design motif as the stock launcher which is what i love about it but also add some extra functionality underneath to make things a little bit more a little bit little bit more customizable and a little bit easier one of the main things for example like i said before i like having three screens sometimes when you see 5 i've even had devices that had seven screens on them it's just kind of too much for me I like to keep only the things I need on my screens and three is the perfect number for me to put what I need so that being said coming from the top to bottom the launcher that I use is called nova launcher it's one of the most popular ones on the market right now stock Android user interfaces really good already so why not just be able to change those same elements rather than adding too much on top of it so we'll get into a couple of the more advanced settings that Nova allows me to do and the reasons why I like it so much and it's a really a look at how I put together my android but anyway here you go so I like the having the search bar at the top because it's an easy way to get to the searches also like i said before google now is an app i use a lot so this is another user way to get to it this wallpaper is one from a website called minimal wall and it's a very very good website full of a bunch of different apple wallpapers and backgrounds rather that helped to simplify the look of your desktop i like to put the wallpaper there and whatever space is not taken up by words i just populate with the widgets calendar on the first leftmost screen on the rightmost screen I have a reader widget it's the widget for greader which is a great RSS feed reader and I have it set of course to android authority so if i ever want to get some news reading done i can just go over to my right most screen and i will be able to look at the headlines and read from there so the one in the middle is a little bit more important it's called active photo it's another paid application that basically allows you to put a widget of a picture of whatever you want onto your screen and then you are able to click or press upon the active photo widget and it will do a number of different customizable functions primarily having to do with contacts so for me I have this picture right here for now but it's only for the purposes of this video because normally i have my girlfriend there and I would just press on the widget and it would give me the quick contact pop-up you can have it go straight to a call straight to a text or anything like that but for me I have all the options available call text email anything like that in case I need to do something different active photo is a great widget for your smartphone it's a easy way to get a picture of someone who's important to you onto your phone while remaining functional it's not just a static photo all right so you can see the picture that I have there in replacement six seasons in a movie anyway one of the cool things about Nova is that it allows you to have more than one dock space and that's really cool I group my applications into specific categories and those folders are then put into the dock so we have communications right there for obvious reasons messaging quite a few messaging apps there I always have an app drawer button in the middle because if someone takes my phone and they happen to be on the other doc and they're kind of confused they can always click on that and find what they want to find connecting right here for the browser and a few services and finally the photography of course at the end so these are the apps I use on a daily basis but on the other screen I you have ones that are regularly used but maybe not daily like readers like the geto like I told you before also read it all of my social programs right there AB drawer button navigation maps I do use the Oh quite a bit as well to find a nice little cafe nearby in order to work and finally the media so yeah that's pretty much it but I wanted to show you one last thing one great thing that I love about nova launcher is the ability to add gestures gestures in general like if you were going to just is a simple one if you were to hold on the home screen on any other blank space this would come up with different things you can add to the home screen kind of like earlier versions of Android but also you can double tap and that brings up the Nova settings but those aren't really the ones that I use the ones that I use it involve a two-finger swipe so let's imagine that I am talking to somebody and they want to schedule lunch with me I'll just bust out my phone unlock it do a two-finger swipe down and my calendar appears right there really really easy really fast and allows you to get right to what you need to do you can set these gestures to open pretty much anything so that's really awesome I can also swipe upwards and that one in particular is for Google Drive which is to me I use Google Drive yes but I use it primarily as the docs functionality I like using it because if I make a document inside of Google Drive it's just like in Google Docs since they've emerged the tomb I just kind of put down some thoughts quick notes or anything like that and I'll have like one whole document full of ideas if I come up with ideas and stuff like that so I hope you enjoyed the video we're going to be coming out with more versions or more episodes rather of how I Android dealing with a lot of different tasks that we need to do in our daily lives like taking pictures maybe even upload an Instagram for whatever reason or things like navigation or connectivity jotting down notes like for me when I do my google Drive all right so that was just a quick look at what I do on my Android device at least in terms of how I structure my launcher and the lock screens and it's just a quick look that is available for you so that if you look at someone else's set up on their phone will give you ideas on how to customize your phone and that's one of the great things about Android is that it is so highly customizable that no two phones are essentially the same now remember we have videos coming out all the time on the android authority channel so make sure you subscribe to the channel either down below on the subscribe button or we're going to put one up right there alright guys well thank you so much and remember to stay tuned to android authority calm because it is your source for all things android
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.