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Widget, Lockscreen, Homescreen Help Needed for Former iOS User

C

consultant

Well-Known Member
Okay, I admit, less than 24 hours on this new HTC One X+. Loving the device, screen, speed, battery life a major issue but I'm learning about process monitor, the Carat App, JuiceDefender, etc.

What I can't get over is how ugly the widgets are compared to the comparable functionality on the iPhone lock screen notification center, especially when running Intelliscreen X on a jailbroken phone. Why does there have to be all this space around the widgets? On iOS they all just butt up against each other and you can expand and collapse them (collapsed they just show a total count). I think part of the problem is I'm still learning, but if anyone can throw me a bone, I can't believe on the homescreen I can only fit two 4x1 widgts and 8 icons, are you kidding me? (Widgets are Power Toggles and News Republic). There's all this wasted space around the widgets and huge icon spacing.

Also, on the lockscreen, can you get rid of the fricking big clock all together? The time is always in the upper right of the notification bar? I remember my last phone before iPhone 3 years ago had that stupid big clock on it then too. Can't believe people haven't gotten tired of that goofy thing. LOL.

My gut is, like jailbreaking the iPhone, I'm going to have to root this thing and install Cleanrom or CM10 when available. But for now, I want to see how close I can get with the stock ROM to where I want to be.

Oh ya, remember reading something about 'Beautiful Widgets' - will go check that out right now... But... I've heard widgets are typically just a waste of battery life? Guess you have to be careful which ones and how many to use?
 
If you want widgets on your lockscreen, try WidgetLocker. No root needed.

And why not just remove the clock widget if it annoy you? You could certainly do that on older Sense versions. Generally a long press on a desktop object gives you options, not used Sense 4 myself.

If you want more rows/columns of widgets, install a third party launcher instead of using the Sense one. Nova and Apex are commonly recommended for ICS.
 
if you want app badges too you can install Go Launcher and Go Launcher Notification (all free no root/jailbreak needed) and you can enable badge notifications on apps like Gmail, Facebook, G+ and SMS/missed calls. being a regular iPad user i find that a great idea that Android never came out with, and it saves the unnecessary clutter of notifications in the status bar. there are also a myriad of pretty functional iOS themes that make it look so much like iOS that even i get fooled until i notice it's not an iDevice running it. Go Launcher also offers resizing widgets beyond traditional limits like 4x1 and such, especially nice if your device has a smaller screen. you can resize them any way you want with that launcher.

my device (ZTE Merit) has sub-par battery life also, one of the worst in Android. i was lucky to get more than 6 hours use out of it. even in Airplane mode (used at work where the notifications don't bug others). for some reason when i installed that launcher with Go Taskmanager and Go Power Widget the battery life skyrocketed. i come home with well over 75% usually, even with heavy use.
 
Too much widgets use up battery life depending on what kind of widgets they are and how many you have, because basically, each widget is an actively running application.
 
Some widgets are better than others. There are widgets I don't care for either. There are a few that I really like. It just depends on what you like and what you find useful. There are a lot to choose from.

For a large phone like the One X+, you may want to consider some alternate launchers. I currently use Nova Prime. What I like about it is that I can get rid of the app dock at the bottom and increase the number of icons on my screen. I have an SGS3, and I have 6 rows x 4 columns of icons with no dock. By configuring our home screen with more rows and/or columns, I find I can make better use of the screen real estate. With more rows and/or columns, widgets will also have less space around it.
 
Ya, I've got Widget Lock setup as 6x6 and love having the 6 docked icons at the bottom and keeping the screen clear so you can see the wallpaper and then I was looking at the home screen wishing I had more than 4 docked icons. I was thinking, what is the purpose of the home screen if you have icons on multiple pages versus the normal apps pages? Seems the only difference is the dock and the icons are a little closer together on home screen(s). Was thinking, if I could only increase the grid size so I could potentially fit all my home screen apps on the first screen.

But then, I also try to avoid installing too much stuff. It means when time to upgrade phone to a new phone, (assuming on Android) you have to reinstall all these apps. I spent all weekend customizing this phone. Much of the time was just learning my way around Android and testing apps for the first time.

Have everything almost perfect for me. Only annoyance now is that the Go SMS pop-up, you can't directly start typing a response even though you see the pop-up, it is sort of transparent as if, underneath the Widget Lock screen so you have to unlock to enter a message. Just one swipe. No biggie.
 
You can change the home screen grid size if you are using a different home launcher like Nova or Apex launcher. You can instal it from the Play store. They also allow up to 7 icons on the dock.
 
consultant said:
Well not collapsible, the widgets in Taptu are fairly impressive, flip through stack of cards and scrolling.
Click to expand...

I use both Taptu and Pulse. I find widgets for these apps are not useful to me. The reason is that I have so many sources and feeds that showing a single feed is not useful to me. I think that if you have a few important feeds, it would be useful. I prefer just to launc the app and scroll through all of my feeds. I do think these particular ones look cool though.
 
Go Launcher had an ICS style sliding dock which has two docks, each holding five icons of your choosing, with a total of ten.
 
Gotta be kidding me. Hurry up XDA Developers!
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