Another way to customize your Android phone

I bet you didn’t know that you can change the look of your home screen and app drawer, the way it functions and how you navigate your phone.  There are apps called home launchers that take your home screen and make it completely your own.  You can customize the number of rows and columns (therefore affecting the size of your icons and widgets) and the dock, that line of buttons on the bottom of the screen that may contain your app drawer and phone.

You can add your most used apps to your dock so they’re always there.  And the icons can be changed along with any theme you pick from the Android Market.

Many of the launchers offer their own widgets though sometimes extra widgets and themes are an additional cost.  Here’s the lowdown on the options I’ve tried for myself.  They’re all free, so download them and see what you can do with your phone!

• LauncherPro – My chosen home launcher for my rooted NOOKcolor, this launcher had the most options when choosing rows and columns and the widgets remind me of my beloved HTC Sense widgets.
• GO Launcher EX – In my opinion, this was the second best launcher.  Similar to LauncherPro but without the very cool HTC-like widgets.
• ADW.Launcher
• Zeam Launcher

There are more options, but these are the best.  Like more than one?  Use Home Switcher to go between your different launchers.  Play around, that’s the beauty of owning an Android phone!

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