You Can Go Home Again

It is always fun to see what areas garner innovative attention on a new platform. Right now, for Android, one such area is the home screen - what you would think of as your "desktop" on a regular PC.

Android ships with a home screen application, cunningly named "Home", that offers just a few basic features: shortcuts to applications and a search box, spread over three screens (swipe left and right to move between them). It also offers the launcher, the drawer that slides out from the bottom of the screen to display all launchable applications. It works, and until recently, it was pretty much the only game in town.

Not any more.

Replacement home screen applications have burst onto the scene in recent weeks. aHome, dxTop, Open Home, and Sweeter Home are already available, and others are in development. These home screens offer a plethora of features above the stock home screen, such as:

• Themes

• Home screen widgets (bits of functionality embedded in the home screen)

• More individual screens for organizing your shortcuts

• Alternative "launch tray" patterns

• Information from the contacts or call log applications

I am quite certain these developers, and others, will continue to add more capabilities and make the home screen that much more powerful. One or more might even be lucky enough to score OEM deals to be the default home screen on some device manufacturers' handsets.

Of course, at the end of the day, home screens are not going to cure cancer, rid the world of hunger, or even be the apple of some VC's eye. However, they do show interesting potential for the platform and add just a pinch of sizzle. Besides, who knows what these talented developers will go on to build next?

• Wireless / Mobile
• ahome
• Android
• dxtop
• open home
• sweeter home