Most Efficient Setup?

[ejchis]

I really like a super efficient, clean, minimalist setup for my gadgets. I've been playing around with the Android OS since I picked up my EVO trying to figure out the most efficient setup. I think I've got a pretty good setup going now, and I'm curious what else like-minded people are doing.

Right now, I've got LauncherPro as my home launcher. I'm down to three screens. My main screen is Beautiful Smaller Home widget and Pure Calendar 4x3 widget with scrolling enabled.

To the left, I've got a page of Apps Organizer shortcuts with everything very specifically organized into the most useful labels for me. To the right, I've got a page of my most used applications that aren't on my dock.

Along the dock, I've got Gmail, Handcent, and Talk on one screen, Phone, Search People, and Navigation on the next, and Camera, Mixzing, and AppBrain on the third. Framing all three of my dock screens, I've got previous and next screen shortcuts.

Finally, to top it all off, I've got QuickDesk enabled by default with a long press of the search button. My QuickDesk screen is completely full with any sort of toggle option I might need (GPS, BT, Wifi, plane mode, sync, screen brightness, LED light, unlock pattern, PDANet, QuickProfile, and Wifi Tether) as well as the Pandora and Mixzing widgets. I've also got BatteryLeft on that screen.

The only thing I'm kind of missing is the Dolphin Bookmark widget. I'm thinking about removing the previous and next screen shortcuts in my dock to free up six more icons down there, which would get me close to having space for the bookmarks widget on my screen to the right.

 

[El Blacksheep]

Sounds very similar to what I've got going on. Here's a couple pointers:

My main screen is Beautiful Smaller Home widget and Pure Calendar 4x3 widget with scrolling enabled.

I ditched Beautiful Widgets for Digital Clock Widget (it's cleaner) and Weather Forecast Widget (also cleaner). Then I finally gave in and decided it wasn't necessary to have 2 clocks (notification bar + widget) so I dropped clock widgets altogether. And while a weather widget is nice to have, I find I never look at it; when I want to know the weather I look out the window or google the ZIP code of wherever I'm going.

This will clear up some room for a 4x4 Pure Calendar, or if you're like me, a 4x3 + 4x2 since I like to keep my P90X stuff out of my regular calendar. (You need to enable 5 rows in LauncherPro's settings).

Also, integrate SSI gTasks with Pure Calendar if you haven't done so already. It's great.

To the left, I've got a page of Apps Organizer shortcuts with everything very specifically organized into the most useful labels for me. To the right, I've got a page of my most used applications that aren't on my dock.

Along the dock, I've got Gmail, Handcent, and Talk on one screen, Phone, Search People, and Navigation on the next, and Camera, Mixzing, and AppBrain on the third. Framing all three of my dock screens, I've got previous and next screen shortcuts.

Woo boy, you can clean up big time here.

First of all, either stick with App Organizer or drop a couple bucks on Folder Organizer (well worth it IMO). Then use either one to further organize your apps... and put the App/FolderOrganizer folders in your dock instead of single apps. So now, instead of having GTalk, Facebook, and Twitter on your dock, you can have a Social Networking folder with all of them (and other stuff).

Next, get rid of those dots. They're eye-candy which really conflicts with a minimalist design anyways. Besides, LauncherPro has a screen indicator anyways so it's not like you need them to tell you which screen you're on. That will give you 6 more dock spaces (for more AppFolders)

Just by doing that you're going to clean up BOTH of those screens and find yourself in the same situation I was in a few weeks ago: "I only need 1 screen and yet LauncherPro requires 2 minimum! Blah!"

Finally, to top it all off, I've got QuickDesk enabled by default with a long press of the search button. My QuickDesk screen is completely full with any sort of toggle option I might need (GPS, BT, Wifi, plane mode, sync, screen brightness, LED light, unlock pattern, PDANet, QuickProfile, and Wifi Tether) as well as the Pandora and Mixzing widgets. I've also got BatteryLeft on that screen.

QuickDesk is great, I've only just recently discovered it so I'm still working at getting the most out of it. I find the best way to make use of it is to keep things on it that you would need from within other apps; also since you're replacing your long-press-search you'll want either the google search widget or the voice search app somewhere in there. However, you can get rid of all those toggles by getting...

QuickSettings. It's an app that launches a customizable "dialog box" of sorts that gives you access to all your most important and frequently used settings. After getting it, I haven't touched the Power Control widget or any toggle widgets since.

The only thing I'm kind of missing is the Dolphin Bookmark widget. I'm thinking about removing the previous and next screen shortcuts in my dock to free up six more icons down there, which would get me close to having space for the bookmarks widget on my screen to the right.

Take in some of the advice above and you'll have more than enough room for your Bookmark widget, however you may not need it. FolderOrganizer has a Bookmarks folder; you can put that on the dock or embed it in another folder (I keep it in an Internet folder with apps like Browser, Gmail, Email, etc).

Since I also took the time to bookmark 90% of the sites I most frequently visit, I almost never launch the browser directly anymore; it's always via the Bookmarks folder.


EDIT: Here's a sample of what my homescreens used to look like a little while ago. It's changed a bit since then.

 

[ejchis]

Wow, thanks for all of the great information. I'm going to play around with all of your suggestions and see what works best for me. I already did lose the dots. That happened right after I posted the other day. But it looks like there are a lot more things I can do to further clean up my visual space. I'm looking forward to playing around with it.

Also, integrate SSI gTasks with Pure Calendar if you haven't done so already. It's great.

I have Astrid integrated here. I've got a RTM premium account that I sync with Astrid. I'm not familiar with SSI gTasks though. I'll look into that.

 

[El Blacksheep]

if you already use astrid and RTM, then keep at it. personally i didn't like the feel of it and didn't use it as often as i could've. gTasks sync's with Google Tasks (accessible via the google calendar website) and I like to use their services whenever possible. I just have this hunch that at some point most (if not all) Google services will be integrated into the OS.