Part Two: Android Intermediate
As Android becomes more and more popular, people are increasingly looking for advice on which phones to buy, which apps to download, and what settings to use to optimize their Android experience. Lucky for you guys, I’m here to help. I’ve had my Android phone (a Verizon Droid Incredible) for almost a year now, and I’ve done just about everything you can do to one.
This is the second in a series of three articles, each covering a different aspect of using and playing with your Android device. This article will cover three intermediate level Android areas: launchers, rooting, recovery, and what root apps to get.
Launchers: Because Stock Sucks!
So, you’ve got a spiffy new Android device, you’ve got some great apps, and you have your phone humming along nice and smoothly. These are all good things, but frankly they’re no different from anything that you can do on iOS, and that’s not why people buy Android devices.
Android’s strength is in its customizability, and nothing demonstrates this capacity better than launchers.
Launchers are applications that you can download from the Android Market that allow you to change the home-screen and applications drawer functionality and appearance. Think of it like the desktop on a computer. Each manufacturer implements their own launcher, whether it’s HTC’s Sense, Motorola’s Blur, Samsung’s TouchWiz, the default Android launcher, etc. to give their users a unique experience. Unfortunately, this “unique experience” is usually crap, and fails to take advantage of the unique benefits of Android. So, the Android developer community has stepped up and created new launchers that take advantage of Android.
Here are my thoughts on three of the most common launchers.
ADW: ADW has a lot of fans, and I can see why. It was one of the first to market, it’s highly customizable, and it does a lot of things very well. However, when stacked up against LauncherPro and GO Launcher EX, I feel like it doesn’t offer the performance and features that people expect. If you have a really specific reason for using it, then go for it. Otherwise, best to check out one of the other options.
LauncherPro: LauncherPro is my launcher of choice. It’s fast, stable, customizable, and easy to use and configure. That being said, it has the least number of customization options of the three launchers tested (worth noting: the author of LauncherPro is currently rewriting the software from scratch, and has promised many of the features present in other launchers will be available soon). What keeps me on LauncherPro instead of jumping ship is LauncherPro’s suite of widgets, something no other launcher software has. The developer has included a full suite including Contacts, Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Friends (Twitter and Facebook combined), Gmail, Messages, and Bookmarks. Their inclusion makes for a great, integrated user experience. Yeah, you can assemble all those widgets, but it’s nice to have that unified look and functionality available.
GO Launcher EX: I’ll admit, were it not for the widgets feature in LauncherPro, I’d be all over GO Launcher EX. It’s gorgeous, highly customizable, and well supported. It probably offers the most options out of any of the launchers I’ve used. It is a very nice piece of software. Even better, it’s free! So, if you have a suite of widgets that you love already and aren’t interested in any of the ones included with LauncherPro, go with GO Launcher EX.
Rooting: “Sudo Make Me A Sandwich.”
Now that we’ve covered some of the fun stuff you can do without voiding your warranty, let’s talk about rooting.
IMPORTANT NOTE: ROOTING WILL MOST LIKELY VIOLATE YOUR MANUFACTURER’S WARRANTY, AND THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT IT COULD RENDER YOUR PHONE NON-FUNCTIONAL. IF THESE ARE NOT RISKS YOU’RE WILLING TO TAKE, TURN BACK NOW. CONSIDER YOURSELF DULY WARNED.
First, let’s understand what rooting is. Android is based on the Linux operating system, which uses user accounts to allow access to the system and applications based on various permissions like read, write, and execute. The main user account that Android assigns has a high, but not unlimited level of permissions, which means that certain files and functionality are unavailable or limited. The reason this is done is because some of the things that full rooting does can cause problems with the operating system, which is why it’s not done by any manufacturer. The way rooting works is it exploits security holes in Android to change the permissions of the user account so it becomes what’s called a superuser account, or root account. This gives it full access to all the files and functionality of the Android device.
The obvious next question is, “How do I do it?” Well, that depends on what kind of phone you have. If you have an HTC phone, like me, Unrevoked.com will probably be your best bet. If you have something else, a quick Google search should turn up whether it’s possible, and how to do it. Most rooting is automated or comes with simple instructions. If you don’t trust yourself to do it, find someone that already has and let them do it for you. But, stare over their shoulder and ask questions while they do it so you at least learn something.
The first thing you’re going to need to get comfortable with about rooting is called recovery mode. Recovery mode is a stripped down operating system that allows for certain functionality not available in Android. It’s where you’ll be doing a lot of the things I’ll discuss in my next article.
The most common recovery mode software is called ClockworkMod, or commonly just CWM. Most of the functionality of ClockworkMod isn’t going to be applicable here, but there is one functionality that is useful right out of the box, and that’s the ability to create backups of your Android OS, so that if something goes catastrophically wrong, you can restore it to a working version. Here’s how you do it.
- Boot into recovery mode. How you do that varies from phone to phone; on mine, it’s holding the down volume key while the device boots, and selecting recovery from the available options.
- Select Backups and Storage.
- Select Backup.
To restore a backup, it’s almost the same process.
- Boot into Recovery mode.
- Select Backups and Storage.
- Select Restore.
So, now that you’ve got root and ClockworkMod setup, there are a few root-only applications you can download to improve your Android user experience. Here’s my recommendations:
Titanium Backup – Titanium Backup is an application that allows you to backup the applications on your phone. It’s basically an app-focused counterpart to ClockworkMod. It keeps you from having to re-download everything if something happens and you have to start fresh.
AdFree – AdFree is an application that modifies your hosts file to block the ads delivered in certain applications and websites. Its not 100% perfect, but it gets a lot of them.
Root Explorer – Root Explorer is an application that gives you read and write access to the system root directory. It’s great for removing the bloatware that certain carriers (*couch*VERIZON*cough*) install on their phones.
SetCPU – SetCPU is an application that allows users to overclock and underclock their phone’s processor based on certain conditions. For those of you unfamiliar with the terms, over – or under-clocking is when the CPU runs at a faster or slower than its normal speed. As an example, when my phone drops below 50%, I only let it run at 75% capacity, and 25% is 50% capacity. When I turn the screen off, it’s reduced to it’s lowest possible setting. This is a great way to save battery life.
ROM Manager – ROM Manager is an application that allows you to update ClockworkMod, as well as download and install new ROMs for your phone. We’ll cover ROMs next time, so for the time being just worry about updating CWM.
So, in addition to some sweet apps and killer battery life, you’ve got a custom launcher, you’re rooted, and you have some great applications to take advantage of it. What’s next? Well, we’ve only scratched the surface of what Android is capable of.
Be sure to check out part 1 if you haven’t already.
Next time! Part Three: Android Advanced – ROMs, Theming, and Metamorph!
