It's all about the experience man...totally.

     I'm addressing user experience more specifically. user experiance as it relates to android of course!
All of us fans know that Android delivers. Sure it's not some super polished, appliance, plasticky -dare i say cartoonish feel, that our fruity competition does so nicely. Android grabs the user in a different way. A good analogy would be automobiles -isn't it always? anyway, lets remember were talking about a couple of the best mobile operating systems on the planet. Apple's iOS4 could be akin to say...a Cadillac, It is defiantly a good car, plush and comfortable, really a nice ride. The engine is smooth but most of the R&D seems spent on the finishing touches. Android is more like a Ferrari F50. Sleek and Stylish. a little rougher on the road but operating one makes you grin like a teenage boy at a wet tee-shirt contest. Get it out on the open road and give it some gas and all of a sudden it screams like a banshee and takes off so fast it rips your lips off of your face. Ok maybe automobiles don't always make the best analogy. Sure you got entry level phones, tablets etc. but the bottom line is this. Android works great and provides an awesome user experience. What is lost in shiny polish is made up for in responsiveness, multi-tasking and overall usability.

  Here's the best part. with Android it doesn't have to be that way.

This is a screenshot taken from my Samsung Vibrant. Now if any of you are into theming, you most likely recognize some of the features here. I have an accurate round battery icon that displays the percent left as digits in the middle of circle. The notification bar is shiny with a couple of nice grooves. A large red Bluetooth icon that turns blue when a Bluetooth device is connected, new polished looking drawables in the TouchWiz quick menu. A blue Android in a new black metal pulldown and colored settings icons to name just a few mods. I have incorporated many different mods that all flow and match together into a complete theme. And the best part is this is NOT a "skin". A skin would suggest a layer on top of the OS needing ridiculous amounts of precious RAM to operate. Nope these mods are the actual drawables now embedded into the framework thanks to Stephan Stericson and a bunch of other brilliant folks at XDA developers.
The point is that even though android is pretty decent looking from the gate, i have to say there is something to be said for a little polish, and actually choosing that polish myself and in a few cases designing it myself. It's a much more rewarding experience. Not only does my device smoke the competition in performance it does so also in style..

If you like what you see head on over to the XDA forum and just look around. find your device, check out some of the really cool things you can do with Android.

I want to thank Stericson for making Metamorph, NinjaMorph, busybox installer and others. Junkdruggler for the tips, Mr_Tricorder for ClearBar, hockey for ibox and Androdena?, jr33(for the Swype mods not shown) and Fightspit for the battery indicator. And anyone else I may have missed.

Chicagoland's Top Power-User Android Applications

Whether your an app developer, platform developer or just a geeky power user/design hack like myself there a many applications that give you either access to your devices internals or crucial information as to the state of hardware/software at a given point in time. Here are some of them:

*Disclaimer - I'm going to assume that your savvy enough to have your phone rooted or at least know what rooted means, most of these apps require you to have root access. Also, before you run off with the proverbial pair of scissors that I'm about to give you, I have to say first that I am in no way a responsible person therefore inheritance suggests that I'm not responsible for anything you do to your stuff, or to put it plainly: It's not my fault your dumb ass didn't make a Nandroid/backup. Also, unless otherwise noted these apps are free from the market, that being said they should have a donate version with more functionality. These people work hard to give us this cool "!@#$" so a few bucks from us is a good idea.


1)ROM Manager by ClockworkMod. If your going to mess with your Android device that can in any way whatsoever be considered hacking, cracking, modding, theming, over-clocking, rooting, wining, dining, or otherwise, you had better get this app or find a custom recovery. Even if you don't plan on flashing a new ROM, this app gives you the ability to make a solid backup image of your current OS. I'm talking apps, settings the whole bit. And if your tired of holding back, home and menu while pushing volume up 3 times, spinning around in a circle then wrapping your thumb around the phone to hit power to get into recovery this app makes it easy as the push of a single button object.

2)SystemPanel App/Task Manager I originally had Quick System info pro here, and that is still a great app but this one is better. This is a double five star app all the way. It's an all in one system info and task manager with both a free "lite" version and a paid version for $2.99. for all intensive purposes the free one just about does it all, but I paid the 2.99 for for the monitoring feature. It will monitor your system over time. What sets this app apart from the rest is the UI. It's gorgeous in the geekiest fashion. Very easy to read charts and graphs put all your systems information into perfect visual context.


3). Root Explorer by Speed Software. This app costs £2.50 ($4.04) and is worth every penny. As the name implies this one requires root access. When it comes to file managers this one can't be beat. I've tried everything on the market rated above 3 stars and although there a lot of good file managers, they all lack in 2-3 areas for what i need.

4)Titanium Backup by Joel Bourquard. The best application and settings backup program period. This app also requires root access. Why get a backup application if I got Clockwork and nandroid? right?...Wrong. What if your rocking Froyo and here comes Gingerbread. Want to update and be able to re-load all your apps no problem? This app has your back. Or say you just flashed the newest Cyanogen. That's the scenerio. Not just for restoring broken stuff. But carying over all your hard earned app research and easily restoring them to your device. You can also create an update.zip so you can flash Titanium Backup from recovery restore all your apps and not even need access to the market!

5)Android Hacker's system tool by Jack Yoo This app costs $3.99 but essentially is like having 5 apps in one. It has a good deal of system info, CPU scaling selector, I/O benchmarking, Task Manager and a great Terminal Emulator that actually allows you to delete command line characters before pushing enter! you would think thats a given, but go download some emulator apps and see how many times you typo before wanting to throw your phone through the window. turns out $4 < $200-$500. go buy the app.

 6)Superuser by ChainsDD Chances are if your phone is rooted you most likely have this app. I know its not actually required to have root, and some rooting methods use a different program but it's just so good that most developers include it as the default Superuser control. This app is your gaurdian on what has access to your root internals. Now being the die hard geek that I am, I have hacked and replaced the new pirate icon with the old ninja with a machine gun, but other than that It's perfect;)

7)Metamorph by Stephen (Stericson) This app allows you to flash themes to specific areas of your device such as the notification bar, icons or even the buttons and checkboxes that make up the overall look and feel of your OS. I can spend hours messing with this one. You can find plenty of already made themes online or watch some videos on YouTube here about how to make them yourself.

I'll add more to this list as I find some and feel free to share some of your own choices.
I hope that this list is helpfull. Stay tuned to Chicagoland for some more Android goodness.