My Android Tablet’s Homescreen

This article is not just about what you can see in my Android tablet’s homescreen (see image). People buy gadgets to suit their specific needs and you can tell how one uses his smartphone or tablet by what you see on its homescreen. This is especially true to gadgets with Android operating system that allow users to tweak the device according to his wants and/or needs.

I have my inexpensive Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt Android Tablet for six (6) months now and I am quite satisfied with it. Also called FuBo by users in its Facebook Group, the device is usually modified by installing custom ROM if it would be used for playing resource-hungry games. In my case, I only had my FuBo rooted so I can install applications requiring root access. Anyway, I am using it only for e-mailing, reading blogs and online news and doing some social media activities.

For my purpose, I tweaked my homescreen so that I can see the information like battery status, wifi connection, date and time without having to open my tablet settings. I also have the standard gadget tools like clock, calendar, calculator, camera and app drawer access button in my tablet’s homescreen. I added in it some tools for performance boost like system cleaner, RAM booster and an application to hibernate applications running the background. Lastly, I installed the email and messaging apps, music and video players, e-book reader that I frequently use plus some apps of lesser importance to fill the space.

To enhance the look of my tablet’s homescreen and be able to install the apps and widgets I now have in it, I changed the standard Android launcher to Nova Launcher and used Android Pro Widgets to manage the APW Calendar 3×3, BatteryBot Full 3×1, DIGI Clock 2×1, Music 4×1, WiFi Widget 2×1, Hibernate Now 1×1, No Lock 1×1, 1Tap boost 1×1 and Close It 1×1.

You will also notice that I do not have the status and navigation bars in my homescreen. For them to get hidden, I am using Full!Screen app and for the screen corners to be rounded, I installed RoundR. I am using a dark background (wallpaper) to save on battery and with all the tweaks I did I am now getting minimum 12 hours on idle and 5 hours when continuously doing the activities I enumerated above. And by the way, I am using the FREE versions of all the applications installed in my Android tablet.