Gadgetory

what's up everyone jon rettinger from technobuffalo here there's been a lot of talk recently about Android handset especially as 4G LTE starts to make their way to phones and coming out of CES that you're really all the rage we've got the Atrix 4G coming out we've got the droid bionic got the HTC Thunderbolts the unnamed samsung 4g phone all running Android but running different skin sitting on top of Android each kin offers a bit of unique functionality and different UI tweaks a lot of will be interesting to sort of put these guys you know the demonstration show you what each one offers in the pros and cons and benefits so it comes time to make a decision for you for which handsets going to be best you can make the most educated decision possible and sort of demystify each of these skins do let's go ahead and get started so I figured before we look at the skins we're going to need throop of baseline comparison so what I've got in front of me right now is stock Android this is 2.3 Gingerbread running on the Nexus X this is what Android looks like in its raw form which is actually pretty nice and a lot of people and tend to prefer it oftentimes I tend to prefer even stock Android so you've got an array of icons of course one of the nice things about Android is that it does run widget so you can put little widgets running on top of it and we'll show you what those look like in different skins we've got a panel of homescreens you've got three buttons at the bottom go ahead and see what the icon tray looks like got a bit of a 3d effect right there the keyboard is relatively nice on stock Android go and show you what that looks like we'll jump into messages real quickly and go ahead and create a new message and you can get you can customize this really any way you like you can add different keyboards you could add swipe you can do a lot with Android you can get you can sort of make it to fit your needs that's really where these skins come in there's how the manufacturers thought that we might want to use the phone and improve on the stock Android experience so there's a very short overview of what stock Android looks like let's go ahead and bring in contender number one let's bring in moto blur alright so the first skin we're going to take a look at is Motorola's mo knobler can tell cuz got that moto in it this is a skin that we've seen and are going to continue to see on a ton of devices including the droidx the joy to the droid one droid 2 global motorola atrix coming out the droid bionic a lot of motor oil devices chances are if it's motorola device running android it's going to have a version of motoblur on it does have its custom unlock chain will go ahead and a mock it and chances are it's also going to have these three colored buttons at the bottom other some purchase of motoblur that don't pop with the majority do and there's three sort of custom buttons to make using android a bit easier the one on the left of course being gored dialer the one in the middle Binger menu button and the one on the right thing contacts you've got a little bit of few tweaks here to the dialer and stock Android but not much being done here the icon rate does look pretty standard I should mention that there is a bit of android fragmentation going on right now some devices are running older version of android this particular one is running 2.1 really up to the carriers in the manufacturers so when those updates are going to be pushed out so some features and looks may change depending on which version of android you are running so go ahead and at home what motoblur does and one of the things that it does very well is it integrates all of your social networking into one interface i'll pull in all of your facebook contacts and put it into your contacts and use their pictures and all that kind of stuff that we've seen a lot of other skins do a motoblur dozen sort of a very colorful almost cartoonish why you can see that some of these motoblur would look like they're very bright and very vibrant motoblur also offers offline sort of cloud functionality so you sign up for a motoblur account an automatically sync all of your information you've ever have to change phones or you'll lose your phone or get stolen you sign into new account all your information is going to be there as I'm scrolling you can see what those buttons look like across the bottom showing each of the I believe seven home screens I can see different dots array are showing up you can pick and jump to whichever one you like I'm go ahead and show you what some of the widget choices are right here I could get into more detail on each scambos return to probably a 40 Odyssey video so I'm going to breeze over some of the features and functionality and just talk about sort of the general UI looks if you want to see something in particular with one of these skins I'll leave a comment down below and I'll make a individual video going over each so you the motorola widgets you can see that there are quite a bit and that bright color mentality really comes through motoblur does add a lot of functionality it's probably not my favorite from an aesthetic standpoint but from functionality standpoint it is very good Motorola does actually offer a custom keyboard here on motoblur sure what that looks like very quickly and jump at the tech message new message here of course got an accelerometer as well a little bit different than the stock keyboard we saw on the nexus s and the Nexus S does have a different keyboard then most stock Android devices is currently the only android 2.3 device so sort of furthering the fracking taking the differences you've got between Gingerbread and previous builds of Android so go ahead hit the home button and that's actually another thing to bring up motoblur does have a different array of icons across the bottom so modal for devices will only have three some will have four the fourth thing a search button your menu button here is a bit different on motoblur it's got sort of that four boxes home and back are the same certainly as the trend now most phones are going to have capacitive buttons across the bottom alright so this is a quick look at motoblur let's go ahead and jump into the next skin which is going to be Samsung's own TouchWiz our right to here is TouchWiz and all of its TouchWiz II glory we're going to do this demonstration on the epic 4g for sprint but TouchWiz is what you're going to see on all of the Samsung Galaxy S series of devices one of the most popular series of Android phones ever as well as the galaxy tab and Samsung's upcoming 4g devices as well so things are a bit different hearings actually start with the lock screen which looks a bit different it's going to give you a bit more notification information as well let go ahead and lock the device and unlock it each galaxy s phone has a different unlock screen but the moral here is the same you move something somewhere else and you get all first and information will show us there so TouchWiz starts with four icons that are docked across the bottom then you can put whatever icons you like on the top above it as you go ahead and move screens as opposed to motoblur sort of dots on the bottom you've got dots across the top you hopefully you can see right there and they move actually the big one moves as you go ahead and scroll through the icons here shown very differently look at the application tray they're all encapsulated in their own little squares and the scrolling instead of being vertical is horizontal nothing drastic but it is sort of a bit of a difference the phone is asked in quite a bit as well I'm going to push it off to the side so I don't reveal any phone numbers you can see that this looks modem noticeably different than what we saw previously with motoblur serve one example of the skin here go ahead and hit home I think that's a home button we now have four buttons across the bottom service standard Android you notice that the menu button is different than what we saw in the past I go ahead and get it to light up there it is you can see it's not that sort of four squares that we saw before it's sort of standard Android menu button so we'll go ahead and jump back home and take a look at some of the widgets that we're going to get here a TouchWiz does a lot in the widget eyes department as well go ahead and see what all of your choices are here and there's quite a bit accuweather clock but is now and the buddies now sort of thing we'll bring in all of your contacts as well a similar to motoblur you're going to find that's a common theme among smoke most orderly all of the android skins so go ahead and jump back here and we continue the torch go ahead take a look at the keyboard you can go and put yourself aside for just one minute and show you what the keyboard is going to look like you because the keyboard is definitely different this is more of a stock android keyboard android 2.2 however it does ship was something called swype which is a completely different keyboard never flipped up your finger they do some typing trip going to get a very sort of different typing experience of course particular device also has a slide-out qwerty keyboard but that's something that's unique to a particular phone and isn't representative of TouchWiz have a hole so go ahead and hit home and we'll go ahead and go back you can see what somebody's wouldn't look like they are very bright and colorful as well I found him to be a bit more subdued though sub dude I should say as opposed to motoblur I can see they make the icon sort of bright and colourful two up top there so that was a very short and quick overview of TouchWiz next let's go ahead and look at HTC Sense alright so next and last up and our skin tour is the HTC aria this is of course when demonstrating HTC's Sense go ahead and show you at the unlock screen looks like I can slide this down I should mention that there is a newer version of HTC Sense available see some of the cool weather stuff going on right there available on the desire HD which is actually not released in the US so I don't have it here demonstrate when the key differences you're going to see on desire HD version of HTC Sense is the ability to tie in with HTC Sense calm oh if you're going to let you download custom skins that will change how these icons to the bottom look lets you sort of further customize your device and there's an even newer version coming out which we saw demonstrated CES on the HTC Thunderbolt which is a 4G LTE device coming to verizon wireless sometime this year I'll probably make its way to other HTC devices but enough of what's coming and what might be available let's talk about what you were going to get available now with HTC sense which is really one of the first DUI skins that we've seen permeate the marketplace so actually first saw HTC Sense which is previously called sent to you I on the old windows mobile is actually windows mobile maybe six or 6.5 was the first that had a version of HTC Sense we sort of saw that transition over to Android and serve once they moved over to Android's really coming to its own as one of the premier my actually preferred Android skin so you've got three buttons across the bottom again remembering sort of that Android cuts in the tub fragmentation these icons may like a little bit different depending on what device you're using so go ahead and go back to the home button and again you've got the four sort of standard buttons although instead of a an icon representing menu this Victor one actually says menu then depend on which device you are running so HTC Sense has a cool new fuel new cool features you saw that clouds sort of swarm through here got some 3d weather action you can jump from screen to screen like all the Android skins we've seen by swiping across and there's a little indicator the bottom right above now phone and the swooping icons you can see where it is but you can also do a little pinched action good and see if they'll work there we go I can go ahead and jump to whatever home screen you choose and you can move those around and do some tweaks so you can see my battery's almost dead go take a look at some of the custom skins and custom would say you're going to get HTC Sense on HTC is always adding quite a bit more so your device may have different widgets than what we have right here let's go and check a look at widgets so you get more HTC widgets on the cool thing you can go ahead and download a lot more I find these to look a little bit more professional they're less colorful and less bright perhaps gear to maybe an older audience but they all are very very very functional so go ahead and go back those will also pull in and combine all of your social media and integrate your facebook contact me to contacts so use it pictures and you rest so this does have a custom keyboard to go and see what that looks like go ahead and jump into new message tap for new message and there is what HTC's keyboard looks like and certainly you can put in your own keyboard if you like this is primarily what you're going to see with HTC now they've taken the skinning probably a few steps farther than motorola and samsung have even things like the menu and settings I've also been skinned you can see that goes through even deeper and you go through sort of two or three steps and you still see sort of little notices that sense you why is there an eight you're not running stock Android it's probably a deeper skin that we had with the other two one of its hallmarks is the sort of big clock with the weather integrated into it now we've seen that imitated on a few other devices in fact you can actually download that widget from the Android Marketplace least you could may have been removed it really has become very well known of course all these skins support multitouch browsers on the all sort of take advantage of the webkit-based functionality that android has in its browsing system it's got a great Twitter functionality called Pete but of course you can download any Twitter application you want from the ever growing and increasingly awesome android marketplace this has been sort of again a short overview here of HTC Sense I hope you guys enjoyed and it got a sense of what different teams were going to look like because maybe you see what's best for you so we take a look at moto blur we took the TouchWiz we take a look at HTC Sense they all offer something unique they all bring something kind of fun to the table there's a lot of really interesting things you can do with each skin and they all have a very unique look and feel all the devices that are going to offer these bring a tug to the table but the most notable thing that brings that table is what they have in comment android which is an awesome offering system which going to tweak and customize it to best suit your needs for me I prefer HTC sense but I've used plenty of touch with devices and plenty of motoblur devices and they all are really good not be happy to use any of the three so guys which do you prefer any skin that you like do you prefer Android naked and raw like we saw on the Nexus S or you like it all gussied up and ready for the ball in one of its skins and I guys i'm jon rettinger from technobuffalo see you the next video bye bye