If customization is your passion, aHome is your home replacement. It even includes a Cupcake like soft [...]]]> One of the most fun things to do with your T-Mobile G1 with Google is to customize the overall appearance and functionality of the home screen. aHome is currently the most popular home replacement in the Android Market.

If customization is your passion, aHome is your home replacement. It even includes a Cupcake like soft keyboard.

aHome: Extreme Customization

There are a number of home replacements for the G1 available in the Android Market. Of all them, aHome has been rated the highest and downloaded the most. aHome is a highly customizable home replacement that supports an incredible number of features. There are an incredible number of free themes that can be downloaded and stored on the SD card. There are also a good number of paid themes available. Paid themes are stored in the phone’s memory.

Widgets
aHome comes with a couple of additional widgets. The first is a customizable weather widget that shows forecasted highs and lows and wind speed for a particular location. The other widget is a horizontal digital clock, which can be used in place of the default analog clock. aHome supports third party widgets. A number are available in the Android Market, including several fun battery monitors.

Extreme Customization
Customizing aHome is particularly easy via the aHome console. The console connects to aHome servers and the Android Market to make downloading customizations quick and easy. The console offers access to free themes, font packs, and widgets.

On the off-chance that you don’t want your wallpaper to scroll, aHome allows you to turn off that feature. It also supports auto-rotation of the home screen. Simply tilt your phone and the wallpaper rotates. A really handy feature of aHome is Auto Clear Item. It clears the icons from deleted apps from the home screens, saving you a step when you remove an app.

Custom Screen Names
aHome supports up to 10 screens and allows for modification of the screen indicator. By default, the screen number is indicated by the number of dots between the screen and the dock bar. Screens can be given custom names, or can be labled with Arabic (1, 2, 3, etc) or Roman numerals. An interesting feature is its support of Chinese numerals and Chinese celestial stems. It also supports naming of screens with sequential upper or lower case numbers. Any of the screens can be set as the main home screen.

Soft Keyboard

Drawers
Another interesting feature is the app drawer to the left of the screen and the widget drawer to the right. The app drawer works like the app drawer in the native home screen app. It contains all of your applications listed alphabetically. The widget drawer contains all available widgets. It is also sorted alphabetically. The contents of the widget drawer can be replaced with icons for the most recently used applications. The widget drawer can also be disabled.

Dock Bar
The most unusual and unique feature of aHome is the dock bar. The dock bar keeps track of your most recently used apps and displays them across the bottom of all screens. A combination of the doc bar and the ability to customize the widget drawer to show recently used apps make getting to your most frequently used apps a breeze.

Conclusion
For people who like extreme customization, aHome is a great home replacement. All of this functionality does come at a price, though. aHome and its associated themes, fonts, and widgets are big. The developers seem to be aware of this and are allowing more and more custom features to be stored on the phone’s SD card.

aHome for Android
Version: 1.6.0
Developed By: mAPPn
Price: $4.99
Filesize: 513KB

Swapping out different themes is easy [...]]]> If you want to completely change the look of your Android phone, there are many home replacement applications.  If you have browsed the Market recently you may have come across  one of the 128 aHome themes that are available.  With a recent release, Open Home also supports aHome themes.

Swapping out different themes is easy once you get the hang of it, but some users might need help their first time.  Our friend Yamil from The Rebeldroid has posted a series of videos that will show you how to download, install, and remove custome themes.  Some of the themes cost $0.99, but there are many free ones available.  Try out some of the new themes and let us know what are your favorites.

aHome Tutorial

[YouTube Link]

Open Home Tutorial

[YouTube Link]

The Rebeldroid - This guys makes videos every day. Subscribe.

The developer, Better Android, already [...]]]> Looking for a Home screen replacement? Might want to give Open Home a look. Similar to the other home replacement applications Open Home gives you additional Home screens, 7 total. Unlike aHome or dxTop, Open Home only slides either left or right, not up or down.

The developer, Better Android, already has a number of themes available and is being assisted by users over on xda-developer forum. Better Android is offering a free copy of the full application to the original artists of any available themes. The wording in the theme descriptions seem to imply he may have modified them from themes intended for another purpose and without the artist’s permission. I hope that isn’t the case, as it would be a copyright violation. Several of the themes are quite nice, a few don’t suit my taste nevertheless, are nicely done.

Soft Keyboard on Home Screen

What makes Open Home standout at the moment is the newly Open Home – Cupcake Full edition giving users a peak at the infamous Cupcake update, expected in April in the U.S. The demo features Live Folders and touch screen keyboard (search only) , screen rotation and something called Rename Work Space. Cupcake has additional upgrades beyond what Open Home can emulate at the moment most of which are beyond what Better Android could develop with the current API release.

To demo Live Folders install the Live Folders demo. This demo offers two previews, Contacts With Numbers and All Contacts. When added to the Home screen and launched each Live Folder displays contacts with a translucent background that appears like a “windowed” application. I didn’t have any trouble with All Contacts but Contacts With Phone Numbers displayed contacts multiple times and when a contact was selected displayed the wrong one, proof this is in fact a demo.

Additional features shown is an application dock which appears on the right side of the screen as a white star. The white star is difficult to see on the default skin, so be sure to look for it. In portrait mode a small magnifying glass appears on the left side when activated switches to whichever screen has the search window and shows the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard is responsive enough, certainly as responsive as the iPhone or Storm’s on-screen keyboards. I’m not a fan of on-screen typing but is handy for a quick one or two word search without opening the keyboard.

Application Dock

The last feature worth noting is the auto-rotating screen giving Android the much sought after ability of the iPhone and S60 devices for quite some time. Auto-rotate works reasonably well although could use a sliding sensitivity setting for better sensitivity if desired. Auto-rotate will be handy for those few apps the don’t fit on the screen in landscape or portrait however, without a landscape on-screen keyboard its functionality is less useful.

All of these options can be enabled or disabled from Open Home’s settings. There is an option for Renaming Work Space. I’m not sure what is defined as Work Space. I didn’t find any area that could be renames, as such appears to be a useless option at the moment.

Better Android is offering this application for $2.99 until more features are available, persumably when Cupcake is released. Better Android says this update is nearly the same as the Lite edition but also states the Cupcake edition may or may not go up in price with Cupcakes release. For this reason I don’t know I would recommend purchasing this app just yet. I might just stick with the lite version at least until Cupcake is released.