If there’s one thing that iOS hasn’t
changed at all since its very inception, starting with version 1.0 and now to
6.1, it’s the look and feel of the interface. Granted, there have been various
feature enhancements, and with iOS 6, there were some visual uplifts as well, such
as the color-sensitive status bar and others, the overall feel of the operating
system has remained the same. To be honest, this wasn’t a feel that was very
catchy, either, so it’s not like Apple deserves any praise here either.
Android, on the other hand, has been a very
different beast altogether. Not only have there been launchers for a long time
that can totally change the appearance of your device, but also, it had also
been possible to go for themes and aesthetic customizations through the use of
widgets, live wallpapers and whatnot since a long time back. Over the years,
Google’s smartphone and tablet operating system has matured even further, with
no small credit to the open source developer community. One thing that the user
base has always had a beef with, however, was the OEMs’ decision to impose
their custom skins over the vanilla Android experience, which essentially
differentiated, say, Samsung’s products (TouchWiz) from those of HTC (Sense).
Sense has always been, in my opinion, one of
the best custom Android skins out there, and it’s hard to argue with that once
you’ve used a Sense-based interface for any amount of time. It’s absolutely
beautiful, with elegant icons, highly functional widgets, and scenes that are
sufficient to reflect your mood and operating environment for a lot of
scenarios. The problem, however, is that Sense is not open source, and while
there have been countless attempts to port Sense elements to other ROMs, it’s
mostly been without much luck. Thankfully, if you own a Galaxy S III i9300, you
can share some of the experience in the form of HTC Sense’s Task Manager &
App Switcher that has been ported to the said device, provided you’re running
stock firmware XELLA, or a custom ROM based on the said firmware.
In case you’re unaware, Sense’s task
manager follows a card-based UI for application switching, showing full-screen
previews of the recent/running apps. It’s absolutely gorgeous to look at, and
quite functional, too, so you’re getting the best of both worlds. The good thing
about this mod for Galaxy S III is the fact that it supports both portrait and
landscape orientations, and hence, has you covered for all scenarios. The task
switcher also allows you to kill all apps in one go, and would also provide
quick access to Google Search.
The only limitation with this Sense Task
Manager port is that it works with GT-i9300 only, and that, too, on either the
XELLA stock firmware, or a custom derivative of the same. You can grab it at
the source link. [XDADevelopers]
You can follow me on Twitter, add me to your
circles on Google+ or Subscribe to
me on facebook or YouTube. You can also
check my website and blog to keep yourself
updated with what is happening in the ever changing world of technology
No comments:
Post a Comment