Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe from pocketnow.com and back when I was in Windows Mobile guy I really like switching out the shell which is the stock UI that you get around with with third-party stuff and I really like some stuff by SPB soft you windows mobile guys know what I'm talking about well soon gives you that same capability by replacing its launcher apps or its home apps so today I'd like to show you what one really innovative designer did when he developed a soon interface for the Android let's go take a look okay so this is a nexus one running android 2.2 and what i've done is i've gone out to the marketplace and I searched for zune home by faded divinity and I found this app this is a replacement launcher app it costs 99 cents us you can try it and uninstall it within 24 hours to get a refund as evidenced by our little uninstall and refund button right there but I think it's pretty impressive for 99 cents still a little rough around the edges but it's a very nice app so without any further ado let's go ahead and jump into it now you'll notice right away you've got basically four parts to this you've got your wallpaper in the background and this reuses the stock android wallpapers any custom wallpapers that you have in even live wallpapers like the one I'm showing you right now it's got kind of a widget it's not really a widget it's just a weather information area if you will this is that my current weather is partly cloudy and 70 degrees which looking outside it seems like that's about right it's got a little quick launch tray or a pin tray over here which I don't have anything in right now but I'll show you that in just a moment and then you've got your stock list of frequently used apps now you can customize these through the settings and add stuff that you want remove stuff that you don't for example let's go in to the Settings down here and let's add facebook and let's add Twitter and go back home and now you'll notice we've got facebook and twitter right there do we want to call somebody let's tap on phone and it opens up the phone dialer simple as that but when i first got the app nothing else worked other than marketplace and settings everything else i'd tap & tap & tap and it would never ever ever do anything and it was frustrating in fact it was so frustrating i have to go out spend a few minutes googling it to find the answer so let me give you the short cut right here let's go into our apps you'll notice a little bit different looking at drawer here and let's say i want to wire up my browser to the internet word on the home page so i'm going to tap and hold and now i can either pin it to my quicklist or watch it from any one of these so i can launch from internet and then when I tap on internet right there it works just like it should but it doesn't have to and the reason that doesn't come pre-wired is for example music I've got music wired up to launch Pandora not to launch the stock music player because that's what I use to play my music so it's kind of nice that it's all of that configurable let's go ahead and jump in here and I'll show you the last part this is angry birds it's an awesome awesome game that we should be getting a full version here any time now let's say I want to pin that to my quicklist now over here on the side I've got that icon and when I scroll up and down it's stays stationary I can go in and look at my quicklist just like that and then if I want to remove it I simply tap and hold and it will unpin it from that quick list so really really kind of cool very soon like not entirely zune HD ish in fact if we go back in here to settings you can see some of the Metro style I don't know that the overall Metro ish look how do you really call that kind of neat really really ingenuity putting an entirely foreign you I on to an android phone and just really making it work for 99 cents it's well worth it for impressing your friends it's really worth it so go ahead and give it a try if you like this kind of video and you want to see other alternate launchers you're going to want to subscribe to the pocket now video channel if you haven't done so already I assume you already have but I got to keep reminding you if you like reading about this kind of stuff head over to pocketnow.com and read some of our articles we cover all kinds of stuff not just android not just launcher but all the different mobile platforms including that one from apple i forget its name on a phone I don't know but go ahead and take a look and yes that is humor so for pocketnow.com I'm Joe Levi go ahead and leave me comments and let me know if you have found a very cool home launcher or an alternate UI or if there's something that you'd like to see in the future