It is completely baffling to me why the standard Android launcher (and even launchers like Samsung's TouchWiz and HTC SenseUI) only has a 4x4 icon grid on the main home screen regardless of screen size. Whether the screen is a measley 2.6" screen (e.g. Huawei Boulder) or a huge 4.7" screen (e.g. HTC Sensation XL) the icon grid size is the same. Likewise, it does not appear make a difference regardless of the screen resolution whether 320x240 or a huge 540x960.
I know there are a few launchers that do allow this to be customised (e.g. Launcher Pro) but why do so many other launchers not handle proper scaling of the icon grid size or offer a configurable setting to properly utilise the screen size?
I'm hoping this is resolved in the standard Android launcher for ICS.
If 5x5, When you rotate the launcher, it is squeeze like butter... just try 5x5 in a custom launcher and you will know about it
Accidentally sent from my Google Nexus S using XDA Premium
melvinchng said:
If 5x5, When you rotate the launcher, it is squeeze like butter... just try 5x5 in a custom launcher and you will know about it
Accidentally sent from my Google Nexus S using XDA Premium
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It doesn't need to be specifically 5x5 but just something that will scale appropriately for the screen size and resolution. If a 2.6" 320x240 screen can display 4x4 fine then a 4.3" (or higher) with 800 x 480 should easily be able to handle more than 4x4.
Techno79 said:
It doesn't need to be specifically 5x5 but just something that will scale appropriately for the screen size and resolution. If a 2.6" 320x240 screen can display 4x4 fine then a 4.3" (or higher) with 800 x 480 should easily be able to handle more than 4x4.
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Yeah.. I understand. But problem happens when you rotate the screen...
Accidentally sent from my Google Nexus S using XDA Premium
melvinchng said:
Yeah.. I understand. But problem happens when you rotate the screen...
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That's exactly what I'm saying, most current launchers have problems with how icons are arranged. The usable part of the screen for displaying application icons is generally not square. I'm not specifying how many icons need to be set out, but I think most large screen phones e.g. (HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S2 etc) can take far many more icons. It may be appropriate for icons to be displayed in 4x5 grid in portrait orientation and then 5x4 in landscape orientation. Whatever is appropriate for the device (which will vary from device to device).
The fact that most launchers are fixed with an icon grid of 4x4 is what I'm saying the issue is.
Related
Guys when applying my fiancees photo as a wallpaper it streches over multiple screens, how can i apply to fit it to the whole screen and stop the scrolling, it isnt rooted etc its completly stock and new today.
If your pic is not 480 x 800 resolution you can't set the whole pic as wallpaper. Any 480 x 800 pic will fit perfectly for portrait wallpaper. Select the portait mode when setting wallpaper: you have 2 options when choosing the pic, to fit on all scrollable screens or just on one screen.
Thanks mate that's brilliant.
Sent from my HTC Pyramid using XDA App
Ah didn't know that about the stock launcher. I wanted to recommend you Launcher Pro that has an option to not scroll the wallpaper when switching homescreens.
use launcher pro plus,because its very good and it has that option you want
He asked about wallpaper, not your preference of launcher.
I noticed that some of the Samsung widgets fit the width of the screen, but a lot of them are not long enough to go all the way across the screen. Is there anyway to make them wider?
yeh, by using a different launcher
u can adjust widgets with go launcher.
That's the 2 reasons why I don't use the stock launcher : can't resize the widgets and they are not scrollable.
My last phone was a HTC Desire, now I use the Galaxy S3.
It's a great phone, but what a king size icons and a loss of screen space. On the home screen I have 4x4 space for icons, a large slider 4x1 and a dock for 4x1. When you use some widgets that are 4x2 the half of the screen is filled.
Starting the contact app shows me a few rows of contacts. But with a font size that can be read from outer space.....(font size in settings set to tiny)
Do you agree with this ?
Are there any opportunities (custom roms) to improve this ?
Maybe Apex launcher can solve some of these things...
Change your dpi
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
Nice to have such a choice!
Good to know that the dpi can be changed. But these middle aged eyes of mine will be thrilled that stuff is bigger on the screen. Awesome!
Download Apex Launcher or Nova Launcher. Both are smooth, free and have customizable desktop grids. I really loved the smoothness of the stock GS3 launcher but the lack of space was a dealbreaker for me.
Can anyone recommend a application that you can use in place of setting a wallpaper the stock way. I have tried Wallpaper Wizardrii which allows me to crop the picture the way I would like, but I still get a black bar on the bottom and the wallpaper doesn't extend behind the notification bar. Any help is appreciated as this is incredibly annoying.
The big thing is to make sure your wallpaper is the right dimensions
Slithered from my HTC One X+
This is incredibly annoying on HTC Sense. It doesn't support scrollable wallpapers, it doesn't rotate into landscape mode (without a mod) so then why does it insist that I need to crop a perfectly fine 720x1280 image that should otherwise fit the screen just fine?
What apps do you use to force such an image as a wallpaper, without any gratuitous cropping? I just want a static image on all the screens, no scrolling, I don't care for landscape.
What about a fancier setup with a different static image on each screen? Possible with Sense, without using a different launcher?
I've tired multiple apps but none of them seem to work long term. The "solution" I've come up in the mean is making a Photoshop file with the dimensions of the phone in landscape mode and putting the image I would like add the wall paper in the center. Then save the file as a jpeg and download it to your phone. I don't really consider this as a "solution" as it should not take this much work to apply a simple wallpaper. For now this is the best I could come up with.
Sent from my HTC One X+ using xda app-developers app
Try "Simple Image Wallpaper Free".
It works great for me.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ridgelineapps.simpleimagewallpaper&hl=de
What I use to apply images as wallpaper is an app called image 2 wallpaper. It's a free app and it's pretty good I hate how the stock wallpaper app does this weird zoom and splits the wallpaper 3 ways. Idk it's weird so I use that app and I'm pretty much happy with it
Sent from my HTC One X+ using xda premium
I played with it a bit and it seems the key here is that at least when using Sense, the required wallpaper size is 1440x1280. Yes, that's 2 x 720 (the screen width). I'm guessing that's to allow for scrolling across screens and for landscape mode for launchers that support it. I looked at the stock Jelly Bean wallpapers and they are also exactly 1440x1280. Note that other launchers may have other size requirements and they have their own options to allow scrolling the wallpaper or not. The stock Sense launcher does not scroll the wallpaper or allow landscape and it has no preference to enable it.
So if you have an image that's exactly 720x1280 (as I tried to initially use), what apps such as Image2Wallpaper do is turn it into 1440x1280 by padding it with a solid color (border). You can play with the options and set a white border color for example and then save the image from Image2Wallpaper and look at it, it will be obvious what is going on. Of course, you can do all this yourself in a photo editing application and then set the wallpaper via the stock Gallery, making sure the crop rectangle is fully expanded.
I haven't tried "Simple Image Wallpaper" yet, that may work in a different way as it's implemented as a live wallpaper. I wonder if there's any impact on CPU and battery with using such an app as opposed to a static image.
There's also MultiPicture Live Wallpaper which allows cycling through an album and has plugin for some online services such as Picasa.
Bottom line is that the native wallpaper format is 1440x1280. Here are some nice ones in this size to get you started:
http://euphoricarythmia.com/showthread.php?t=31291
Image2Wallpaper is also valuable to see what the wallpaper and true screen size a device claims to have. Hit the "Info" option in the menu. E.g.:
HOX+:
Wallpaper size: 1440x1280 (with HTC Sense launcher)
Screen: 720x1280
Nexus 7:
Wallpaper size: 1406x1280 (with stock JB 4.2.2 launcher)
Screen: 800x1205
Weird numbers for the N7, I'm guessing because of the soft buttons menu bar.
Landscape Wallpaper is decent if you want to get scrolling wallpapers with the stock Sense launcher.
Here's what I settled on after playing with wallpapers for a couple of days:
Image2Wallpaper: the best app I found for dealing with static images. It has just the right options and lets you save a correct size image that you can later on set via a different app.
Landscape Wallpaper: great if you want scrollable wallpapers with HTC Sense launcher. Not perfect because of the Sense limitations, but good enough if you must have scrollable wallpapers.
MultiPicture Live Wallpaper: great app if you have a bunch of wallpapers and want to switch between them quickly to see what they look like (all you have to do is double-tap the screen in an empty area while your device is "live"). Also nice because you can set it to automatically change your wallpapers if you like that style of random wallpapers every few hours.
Every other app I've seen mentioned and I tried was not worth keeping installed.
I hope this helps someone. Unfortunately the only way to really understand how wallpapers work is to play with them for a bit.
I recently saw that HD Widgets released a new theme pack that is still under development.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...wsMSwxLDIxMiwiY2xvdWR0di5oZHRoZW1lcy5iZXRhIl0.
The widgets are very nice, but if you try and use them on a ROM at the standard DPI, you will find only the 1x1 widget available in the Colourform theme.
To get them working, you have two options:
1) In HD Widgets settings you can enable all of the widget sizes that are not enabled by default. HD Widgets determines your screen size on first load and disables a bunch of the widget sizes.
2) If you are using a ROM like Jelly Beer, you can set the DPI to 213, for example, for HD Widgets and a different set of widget sizes became available, including the rest of the Colourform widgets.
I just thought I would post this to help someone out who might be wondering why they can't use the all of the Colourform widget sizes.
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