A lot has been said about the lack of UI polish in Android (sometimes rather obnoxiously), but over the last few months I have started debating how much of that is still relevant. When I first saw Android (around version 1.6) I was not a fan, but over the last couple of years having it as my primary mobile phone, I realize that while a lot of the applications lack UI polish, there are a lot of parts of Android that can be customized with very beautiful options. Most of the time these seem to be the work of communities of passionate developers and designers and often lacks mainstream visibility. Thats what prompted me to write this post.
HomeScreens, Launchers and Icons
Nothing gets the point as immediately across as http://mycolorscreen.com/, a site dedicated to customized homescreens (regardless of Android, iPhone, etc). The number of entries under the Android category however completely outweigh iOS since iOS offers almost no homescreen customizations on non rooted devices. On Android however, you can use a variety of launchers, custom icons and homescreen widgets to create a pretty amazing experience. DeviantArt for example is a great resource for custom themes and icons for different launcher themes (for example LauncherPro themes)
MyColorScreen recently also posted a blog entry on the 10 best customizations for 2011, definitely worth a look for some inspiration.
LockScreens
LockScreens is another area of a lot of visual explorations in the Android community. For the last few months I have been using WidgetLocker as a lockscreen app which lets me not only use background images, but also widgets on my lockscreen. Additionally WidgetLocker also lets you create custom themes and apply them. This XDA link has a HUGE list (374 pages) of some good ones.
Recently however I also tried MILocker which seems to have even more polished themes (though lacks Widgets-on-lockscreen functionality). MILocker is a port of the LockScreen app from MIUI Rom for rooted Android devices (I talk a bit about that below)
Core Apps
One of the teams that do awesome visual work are the guys behind the Go Apps. All of their apps are completely themeable and often replace (or override) the default Android apps. For example Go SMS (which I used till I recently rooted my phone and swapped for the new MIUI SMS interface) works seamlessly overrides the default SMS app on Android, and has some really fantastic themes available for it. Go Apps are available for very core Android functions including Keyboards, Dialers, etc.
Live Wallpapers
I have also recently come around to Android Live Wallpapers which I originally considered useless and mostly a battery suck (turns out the battery consumption is not that bad at all). These are animated backgrounds that you can use on your launchscreen. While some of them are just beautiful visually, others are actually very functional. For example I used to use Go Weather that had different animated backgrounds for the desktop based on the weather at the location. This kind of ambient information is pretty awesome. More recently I have started using the Aurora Live Wallpaper (see my current homescreen below) since I find it very soothing to look at the Northern Lights every time I am on the home screen 😉 .
Custom ROMS
Finall, rooting your phone offers even more customization options since quite a few ROMs even offer themes that can be applied to the whole OS, though I imagine thats not for the faint of heart. I recently rooted my phone and am now using MIUI ROM that is just visually fantastic. It has customized all aspects of the OS like systemwide font, notifications and alerts and default applications for music, sms etc. The video below is a pretty comprehensive walkthrough of MIUI. Its just fantastic.
As a user interface developer who is passionate about design, I am pretty happy with my current experience on Android, but it took me a while to find a lot of the options to get there. There are a lot of communities like XDA Developers and ColorMeAndroid (on DeviantArt) that most people aren’t aware of. Hopefully these grow and Android gets more designers on the platform. The open nature of the framework and the apps that allow communities to customize them truly make the visual possibilities exciting.
Code Zen 
This is the stuff I’d LOVE to be able to do on my iPhone but I still won’t buy an Android until they get the support mess sorted out and carriers stop installing garbage on them.
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Yeah the only way to go right now is to get THE Google Phone, which is on Verizon I think…
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Updates are definitely frustrating and the weakest part of Android, but the carrier garbage is a lot more manageable in ICS that allows you to disable these apps. I dont know if other launchers do that but LauncherPro also allows you to hide any app. Thats a decent combination.
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It’s worth noting that one of the best things about Android phones is that it’s pretty easy to run your own ROM on them; I run CyanogenMod on my Sensation, and my Nexus One before that, and it’s *fantastic*. All the fancy switches and toggles for me to geek out with, none of the carrier crapware, and a whole lot of features that I get to play with months before they make it into the Android trunk.
The carriers have definitely tarnished Android’s brand, but the fantastic thing about it being open source is that there are a lot of people working on genuinely awesome Android builds, and you have the choice to run them.
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Things why android would not want to be second to people’s selection.
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