Phone Customisation

Warning: This is a purely Android article, sorry Windows, iOS, Blackberry...Symbian ;)

One of the things I like best about Android is that you can easily customise your phone to make it personal without having to jailbreak etc. A couple of apps and some fiddling about gives you a unique user interface with minimal effort.

The default HTC homepage is as so:

Not bad, I hear you say, but it all looks a bit mis-match, nothing quite joins where some apps have text underneath, some have none, some are see-through widgets (weather) whilst others are blocks just sitting there (Google widget). Call me a perfectionist but I like a little co-ordination, is that so hard? Here's my rendition after a couple of hours tweaking:

Now isn't that lovely? Clean background with a couple of useful widgets fading into my most used apps that all have the same icon set. So, how did I do it? Here goes:

• Apex Launcher - this app allows you to customise the dock at the bottom to hold as many items as you want. It also handles transition effects eg. opening the app drawer. Downloading an 'icon set' also permits you to change the default icons used, which gives then uniform app visuals. 
• Next up, the widget in the middle. This is called Power Control. This is a highly customisable widget that can host as many shortcuts as you want. I've got wifi, brightness, battery, sound mode and torch all at the tips of my fingers. The colours, size and axis can all be changed to suit. 
• Finally, the top widget is SiMi Clock. This has the time, date and weather all in a nice minimalist format. This can also be setup to give access to apps by tapping certain areas of the clock. For example if I tap the time then the calendar app will fire up! 

And with that, my phone homescreen has been totally transformed. For more inspiration (and complicated) homescreens, check out the Lifehacker blog. Any questions hit me up in the comments!

Huzzah.