Saturday, April 30, 2011

Three coolest apps to download free Wallpapers for Google Android phone - HD Wallpapers App

In my earlier post I had explained in detail how you can change your home screen using adw launcher and how you can download and use adw themes to quickly change the look & feel of your Android phone. I did explain that some of the adw launcher themes are iPhone look alike themes. In case you have missed that post then you can read it at : How-to apply iPhone theme to Google Android mobile phone using ADW Launcher

I had mentioned in my last post about two kinds of wallpapers for Android, Image Background Wallpapers and Live Wallpapers. Image backgrounds are the traditional wallpapers which we know and "live wallpapers" are the new type of wallpapers which comes with animation effect and are interactive. In this post also I am covering traditional wallpapers and I may cover live wallpapers in some future posts. But you need not wait and you can download coolest live wallpapers available in Google's Android market and other Android app stores.

In last post I talked about how you can download free and coolest wallpapers using Best Wallpapers app for Google Android phone. If you have missed that post then you can read it at : Three coolest apps to download free Wallpapers for Google Android phone - Best Wallpapers app 

In this post I am going to cover the second wallpaper app from this series of three coolest apps which you can use to download free and coolest wallpapers for your Google Android phone.

BestAppsForAndroid_HD_Wallpapers
HD Wallpapers App : This is another simple and best wallpapers app which you should give a try at. It is simple to use and provides most of the basic functions which we need to search and find best and cool wallpapers for Android phone. Again the best part is, it is absolutely free. You can find this Wallpaper app in Google Android market or your favorite Android app store with ease. Once you install this app on your phone then you are ready to go and start looking for coolest wallpapers available out there. When you run the HD Wallpapers app then it displays it's main screen with various wallpaper categories as shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_HD_Wallpapers_Main
HD Wallpapers Main Screen
You can see that there are many interesting categories of wallpapers namely Abstract, Animals, Cars, Cartoons, City, Computer, Design, Diversity, Female Celebrities, Gaming, Love, Machines, Male Celebrities, Movie, Music, Nature, New and Sports. If you tap any of the category then you would find more sub categories within that main category of wallpaper. For example when you tap the Nature category, you would find more categories as given in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Nature_Wallpapers
HD Wallpapers - Nature Wallpapers
You can see that within main wallpaper category Nature there are sub categories like Desert, Drops, Fall, Flowers, Fruits, Landscapes, Lightning, Nature Water, Rainbow, Space, Trees, Underwater, Waterfall, Winter and more. Each category has collection of beautiful, coolest and breathtaking Android wallpapers that you would love to have. The collection of beautiful and coolest wallpapers from Lightning sub category are shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Lightning_Wallpapers
HD Wallpapers - Lightning Wallpapers
You can see how beautiful these wallpapers are and probably it is difficult to decide which one to download. You can tap the wallpaper you like from the thumbnail view shown above to enlarge it. Just to give you an idea how an enlarged wallpaper looks like on android phone screen, one of the coolest wallpapers from underwater category is displayed in enlarged size in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Underwater_Aquarium_Wallpapers
HD Wallpapers - Underwater wallpaper
This underwater wallpaper looks awesome, isn't it?  On this screen there are various icons and buttons which can be used to perform various activities. Lets start with icon at top left hand corner of the screen. You can tap this icon to send this wallpaper using various options like bluetooth, email etc. The heart shape icon at top right hand corner of the screen allows you to mark this wallpaper as your favorite. This could be very useful when you are not able to decide which wallpaper to use and you want to see more coolest wallpapers  before you decide on one. Save button at the bottom of the screen allows you to save the wallpaper on your Android phone SD card. "Set as wallpaper" button just sets the given wallpaper as your phone's wallpaper. Other two buttons at bottom of screen are to see the previous or next wallpaper from the available collection. On enlarged wallpaper screen, when you press menu button of your Android phone then you would see the app menu as shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_HD_Wallpapers_Menu2
HD Wallpapers - Menu
"Save" menu from these app menus perform the same action as that for Save button we seen earlier. Categories menu takes you back to list of wallpaper categories. Rate app and Report problem menus does exactly what they say. More menu provides few more useful menus which you may would like to try out. When you tap "Favorites" menu then it takes you to the favorite wallpapers screen where you can see all the wallpapers which you have marked favorite using heart shaped icon explained earlier. Example favorite screen is shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_HD_Wallpapers_Favorites
HD Wallpapers - Favorites
The wallpapers displayed in favorites would depend on what you have marked as favorite. If you don't mark any wallpaper as your favorite then this list would be empty. You can see few beautiful and coolest wallpapers in above favorite screenshot. So far you have seen many cool and awesome wallpapers which are available with HD wallpapers app. You must have also noticed that there are plenty of different categories and choices for you with HD wallpapers app.  If you are looking for any specific wallpaper then  most likely  you would find it using HD Wallpapers app.

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So that is second of the coolest three wallpaper apps for your Google Android phone. You can use these wallpapers for all android phones, be it HTC, Samsung, Motorola or any other brand in market. Just a suggestion, don't download app .apk file from untrusted sources. Instead you can download HD Wallpapers app from android market or any of your trusted android app store. Once you install wallpapers app then you can start downloading coolest wallpapers for your android using the app. In coming posts I would be covering third of three best wallpaper apps. Keep checking back for more exciting, best and coolest Android apps.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Three coolest apps to download free Wallpapers for Google Android phone - Best Wallpapers app

In last post I talked about how you can quickly replace the default android home screen and theme with fancy iPhone look alike theme. But you must have noticed that free themes comes with limited wallpapers and you may not like the ones which are there in the theme. This can be taken care by downloading cool and free wallpapers for your android using wallpaper apps. These free wallpapers can be used with your HTC, Samsung, Motorola or any other Android phone.

There are two kinds of wallpapers for Android, Image Background Wallpapers and Live Wallpapers. Image backgrounds are the traditional wallpapers which we know and "live wallpapers" are the new type of wallpapers which comes with animation effect and are interactive. I am going to cover traditional wallpapers in this post and I may talk about live wallpapers in some future posts but you can find and download cool live wallpapers from Android market today.

I am covering three of the coolest apps for free Android wallpapers in this series of posts. In this post I am talking about the first coolest wallpapers app and remaining two apps in coming posts.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_And_Backgrounds
Best Wallpapers : This is the first coolest app for Android which I am covering in this series of three. Best Wallpapers app is simple and provides collection of beautiful and cool wallpapers. It provides all the necessary basic features which you may need when it comes to searching, downloading and setting wallpaper for your Android. For searching this cool app in Android market use keywords "best wallpapers" and you should be able to find it. When you tap the app from the list then you would see its information as given in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_AndroidMarket
Best Wallpapers in Android Market
As you can see the title of the application displayed in Android market info is "Best Wallpapers & Backgrounds". Install this app on your phone and you are ready to go. Once installed, tap its icon to launch it and you would see its first screen as shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_MainScreen
Best Wallpapers - Main Screen
On its main screen it displays the recently popular wallpapers. You can see more wallpapers of this category by tapping "Next" button. You can always come back to see previous wallpapers by tapping "Prev" button. This is just one of the categories of wallpapers and you can tap "Categories" button to see the list of Categories as shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_Categories
Best Wallpapers - Categories
As you can see there are many different categories of wallpapers like Cars, Nature, Babes, Winter, Space, Drops, Animals, Flowers, Mountains etc. These category menus allow you to find the wallpapers in those category. For example, the screenshot below displays the cool wallpapers of beautiful flowers.

Best Wallpapers - Flowers
You can see how beautiful these wallpapers are. You can see more flowers by tapping "Next" button at bottom right of the app. Tap the wallpaper you like and it would we enlarged as shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_Backgrounds_Lightdrop
Best Wallpapers - Enlarged
Here you have two buttons. "Set Wallpaper" button as it's name indicates allows you to set the selected image as your Android phone's wallpaper. But in case if you do not like to set the wallpaper right away even if you liked it because you still want to explore more then you can put it in your favorite list by tapping "Favorite" button. You can see your favorite wallpapers by tapping "Favorites" button from main screen of the app. This would display the list of favorite wallpapers as shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_Favorites
Best Wallpapers - Favorite List
From main screen you can tap a search icon to find wallpapers which are not listed in predefined categories menu of the app. For example, you can search for "iPhone" to find the wallpapers of iPhone. This can be very useful if you have already applied iPhone theme using "Adw Launcher" as I explained in my previous post and looking for more cool iPhone wallpapers. If you have not read that post then you can read it here - How-to apply iPhone theme to Google Android mobile phone using ADW Launcher. Following screenshots shows the the search result of iPhone wallpapers.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_iPhone
Best Wallpapers - iPhone Wallpapers
You can see some cool iPhone wallpaper in this search result and you can see more by tapping "Next" button. You can use these iPhone wallpapers along with iPhone ADW theme and can achieve more close iPhone lookalike theme for your Android phone.

Best Wallpapers app provides few settings to fine tune its behavior. Press the menu button of your phone and tap the "Preferences" menu to see the settings as given below.

BestAppsForAndroid_Best_Wallpapers_Settings
Best Wallpapers - Settings
"Filter Adult" is specially useful setting and when checked, it filters the adult images and displays the other non -adult wallpapers. "Add to favorites" setting when checked, keeps adding the wallpapers to your favorite when you set those on your phone.



So this brings us to end of this post about first of the coolest three wallpaper apps for your Google Android phone be it HTC, Samsung, Motorola or any other Android phone in market. Don't download app .apk file from untrusted sources. Instead you can download Best Wallpapers app from android market or any of your trusted source and then download cool android wallpapers using the app. In coming posts I would be covering two more such cool apps and you would enjoy those as much as you enjoyed this one. Keep checking back for more coolest Android apps.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Android Home Screen Replacement - Using Free ADW Launcher and iPhone Themes

You can quickly replace the default android home screen and theme with fancy theme like iPhone look alike theme. You can do this Android home replacement with a free app called ADW.Launcher. But doing Android home replacement using ADW.Launcher is bit tricky for normal phone users and I am going to teach you how-to get up and running with ADW.Launcher in no time.

Download And Install ADW Launcher From Android Market : You can download the ADW Launcher .apk file from many sources on net but I would suggest you to download app apk from your trusted sources only. Similarly you may find many ADW Themes for free download on internet and I would again suggest that download themes from your trusted sources only.

One of the trusted sources is Google Android market. Launch the Android market app on your mobile phone and search for ADW Launcher. You could find free version of ADW Launcher as well as Pro and Ex versions which are paid. Tap ADW Launcher which is free and you would see it's description as shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Google_Android_Market
ADW Launcher on Android Market
Tap the "FREE" button to proceed for installation to your phone. Once you initiate the installation of ADW Launcher then go back to search of Android Market and search for "ADW theme free".

Download And Install ADW Launcher Themes : This would show you list of ADW themes available for your phone. Some of the free themes on Android market are displayed in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Free_Themes_AndroidMarket
Free ADW Themes
You can install the themes you like but if you are interested in iPhone kind of look & feel then install ADW IPhroid IPhone Free theme. You can also try out ADWTheme MiPhone Free theme. Once you have installed  ADW Launcher and one of the ADW themes then you are ready to try out Android home replacement.

Get Started With Android Home Screen Replacement : The tricky part of adw launcher and these installed adw themes is none of these appear as applications in app drawer. To start using installed ADW Launcher press the home button of your Android mobile phone. This would display a menu shown in  following screenshot.

BestAppsForAndroid_HomeScreen_Launcher_Menu
Home Screen Launcher Menu
If you notice there is a checkbox "Use by default for this action". If you check this ON then next time this menu would not be displayed and selected Launcher would be launched instead. I suggest to keep it OFF till you carry out all your trials and get comfortable with new ADW Launcher and themes. After applying any theme if it get force closed then the only easy option to recover is press the home button and tap "TwLauncher" option. This would bring you back to good old default home screen of your Android phone. To start using ADW Launcher, tap "ADW.Launcher" option.

ADW Launcher Settings For Android Home Screen Replacement : You can see the new look of the ADW Launcher's default theme in screenshot below. This does not replace your wallpaper which you have already set.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Default_Screen
ADW Launcher in Action
Notice the three icons at the bottom bar. The left icon with gray star icon is where you can drop any shortcut from your desktop to make it your favorite. Center icon with four boxes is for opening or closing app drawer. App drawer is where you find all your installed apps. Rightmost icon is your mobile browser shortcut. Now press the menu button of your phone to see the menus of ADW Launcher.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Menu
ADW Launcher Menu
Add menu is to add items to your desktop, wallpaper is to set the wallpaper you like, Search is to launch Google search bar, Edit is to edit the desktops and Settings is our good old settings menu.  If you tap the more menu then you can see two more menus as shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_More_Menus
ADW Launcher More Menus
Lock desktop menu locks your desktop icons and settings from accidentally being modified. You should do this ideally when all your desktop settings are done. You can unlock using the same menu if you want to do any changes. Tap the ADWSettings menu to launch the ADW Settings screen.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Settings
ADW Settings 
There are many choices here and you can explore those and try out in leisure. One of the interesting menus and in which we are interested now is "Themes Preferences".

Applying iPhone Theme To Android Phone : Tap this menu to proceed for trying out new iPhone theme for your Android phone.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Themes_Preferences
Themes Preferences
Now tap "Select your theme" option to launch the dialog which displays the available themes you have on your phone. This include those which you have recently installed and default one from ADW Launcher.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Select_Theme_Menu
ADW Launcher - Select your theme
The content of this dialog would differ depending on which themes you have installed on your Android phone. For iPhone like look & feel select the theme "ADWTheme_Blazing_IP" option. This is nothing but the "ADW IPhroid IPhone Free" theme which we installed earlier.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_iPhone_Theme_Preview
ADWTheme IPHROID Preview
You would need to scrolldown to see the preview of the theme and available buttons for actions to take. You can see the button like iPhone in the preview.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_Apply_Theme
ADWTheme IPHROID Preview Scrolled
"Get themes!" button take you to the Android market store. You can start using this new iPhone like theme by tapping "Apply theme!" button.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_iPhone_Theme_Applied
iPhone look a like Theme for Android 
Voila, you can see now your selected Android theme in action. You can see how shortcuts are looking like those on iPhone. Next you can go ahead and change the wallpaper with the one you like and start putting required widgets on your desktops.

Resizing Widgets With ADW Launcher Home Screen Replacement : There are many interesting features and settings in ADW Launcher. One of those which worth mentioning here is you can resize the widgets on Android home screen or desktop. Let me show you how.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_ContextMenu
Gadget Context Menu
When you long press any widget on your desktop like a clock shown in screenshot above, it displays the context menu with choices "Remove", "Edit", "Uninstall". Remove just takes away the widget from your desktop and Uninstall removes it from your mobile phone. If you tap Edit then it would allow you to resize the widget as shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_ADW_Launcher_WidgetResize
ADW Launcher - Edit Gadget
You can see that it display four double arrows using which you can resize the widget as you like. This is very handy when you want the large or small clock widget on your Android home screen. You can simply resize the clock to match your taste. If you are looking for cool, beautiful and best Android widgets then you can read about it at : Best Android Widgets - Clock, Weather, Calendar, Power Control, Music, Dictionary And SMS Widgets To Personalize And Beautify Your Google Android Home Screen

Here is one youtube video which you may find useful to understand ADW.Launcher well


There are many other settings and features available with ADW Launcher and you can explore those further. There are many free and paid ADW themes available for Android which you can use with ADW.Launcher and you should try those. One suggestion which I would like to repeat is, download free ADW.Launcher app apk and free ADW theme apks from your trusted sources only.

I hope you liked this post and if you would like to read more about such wonderful best apps for Android mobile phones then subscribe to rss feed and bookmark this site to check back again.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Three Best Alarm Clock Apps For Android : App 3 - AlarmDroid

In my last two posts I have covered two of the three best Alarm Clock apps for Android. If you have read about those in my previous posts then you must have downloaded those and tried out. With these Alarm Clock apps for your Android phone you must be waking up on time now. In case you are visiting this post directly and have missed my earlier two posts about Alarm Clocks then you may read those at Alarm Clock++ and Alarm Clock Extreme Free or you can read those from blog archive.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_Icon
AlarmDroid : This is third app from best three Alarm Clock apps series I am covering here. This one too is feature packed and I leave up to you to try and decide which one you think is best of these three. This app has many wonderful features like Alarm by date and time, provision to control the snooze and stop by flip, shake and power button. When you run the app you see it's first screen as shown below.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_AlarmList
AlarmDroid - Alarm List
This screen displays the list of alarms you have added so far. On this screen you can press the menu button of your phone to display all the available menus of this app. The menus of the app are displayed in the screenshot given below.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_Menus
AlarmDroid - App Menus
I am going to describe in detail about the menus "Add Alarm" and "General preferences" shortly.

"Speaking clock" is very nice feature where you can select how frequently you would like the app to voice the time. Once set you would see a icon in notification bar indicating that "Speaking clock" feature is enabled and it would speak a time at specified intervals.

"Sort" menu allows you to select from "Sort manually" or "Sort by status" options.

"Backup" menu allows you to take the backup of the AlarmDroid app database and also allows you to restore the information from backup file.

"AlarmDroid Pro" menu is for you if you want to switch to Pro version of this app.

"Add Alarm" menu adds new alarm entry in the list of alarms and launch the Alarm Settings screen where you can select various parameters for your newly added alarm.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_Settings
AlarmDroid - Alarm Settings
Here you can enable or disable alarm, set title for your alarm, set the time when it should fire, select time duration between snooze and decide if you want your alarm to repeat on days of week or it is one time event. You would find more settings when you scroll down this screen.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_MoreSettings
AlarmDroid - More Alarm Settings
Interesting thing about AlarmDroid app is, not only it allows you to select the days of week for repeating alarms but you can also select from between odd or even weeks when alarm should be in effect.

"Soft alarm" setting can be used to set the time span during which alarm increases. When you tap "Ring tone" settings it launch a new screen where you can select either ring tone, music, playlist or online stream as the sound of your alarm.

Here you can enable or disable speaking clock feature which I have briefly described earlier. Power nap is again a wonderful feature which allows you to select the duration of your power nap up to seconds. What I liked that Alarms defined as Power Nap are also displayed in list of Alarms and you can alter the settings if required or utilize the same again when required.

"Arithmetic problem" setting allows you to decide if you would like to solve arithmetic problem before you are allowed to click snooze or stop.

If these settings are not enough and if you are looking for more options then you can go for "Advanced settings' where you can select ringer duration, how long to continue in snooze mode, whether to allow snoozing and maximum snooze count.

"General preferences" menu of the AlarmDroid app provides lot many options than you can imagine ever.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_GeneralPreferences
AlarmDroid - General preference
General preferences screen is shown in above screenshot. Here you can select Display, Sound, Control, Weather and Advanced settings. Every option launches yet another screen with more choices. When you tap Display settings following screen is launched.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_DisplaySettings
AlarmDroid - Display settings
Theme option allows you to select the theme for items displayed on alarm list screen. Background option allows you to select from Transparent, System wallpaper, Image of your choice or just plain color. Status bar symbol  option allows you to decide whether you want to display alarm icon in notification bar of your phone. You can find more options on this screen when you scroll down.

AlarmDroid - More display settings
Here you can choose to hide Stop or Snooze button. Similar to display settings there are quite a few "Sound settings" which are shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_SoundSettings
AlarmDroid - Sound settings
With sound settings screen you can choose to lock volume button, allow volume adjustment by volume button or play random track from playlist as your alarm sound. You would find more such controls if you scroll down the screen.

AlarmDroid - More sound settings
With more sound settings you can decide whether you would like to use default music volume for your alarm or want to set specific volume level. Similar to display and sound settings there are plenty of Control settings and are shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_ControlSettings
AlarmDroid - Control settings
You can see in screenshot above there are many wonderful settings here to customize the app behavior the way you like. You can choose what can happen on phone flip, shake, on pressing power button or on proximity to device. These are great features which many Android lovers would enjoy. Sensor sensitivity is again a great feature to fine tune the sensitivity of AlarmDroid app with Flip, Shake and Proximity. You would find more control settings if you scroll down this screen.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_MoreControlSettings
AlarmDroid - More control settings
Similar to control settings, Advanced settings also has quite a few options to choose from and it is shown in screenshot below.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_AdvancedSettings
AlarmDroid - Advanced settings
With advanced settings you have the option to control the behavior of AlarmDroid app with respect to Airplane mode, Wifi, Language, Crash report and Audio Stream.

Apart from all these menus and option described so far there are few more which can be of your interest. When you long press the alarm entries in alarm list screen it invokes a context menu for more actions.

BestAppsForAndroid_AlarmDroid_ContextMenu
AlarmDroid - Context Menu
Here you can change the settings of the already created alarms, you can delete unwanted alarms and skip the alarm event. One interesting feature you can see here is ability to create alarms with date and time. This could be very useful when you want to set alarms for future dates or want to set alarm as reminder.
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This brings us to end of the third of best three Alarm Clock apps for Android. You can download AlarmDroid from Android Market for free and start waking up on time from tomorrow. I would be writing about more such exciting and wonderful best apps for Android phone. Keep checking back here for reading about more exciting and wonderful Android apps.