How to make a $99 phone to look like a $949 phone

All around excellent

Some homescreen apps aren’t really designed to emulate anything, and they still manage to be brilliant.

Available in both free and paid versions, LauncherPro manages to be a very customisable homescreen with support for your own shortcuts, scrolling menu screens, and even horizontally scrolling shortcuts in the dock.

The paid version – which sits at under $4 – even comes with its own widgets, as well as the ability to resize other widgets.

One screen to rule them all

Once you’ve installed an extra launcher, every time you hit the home button, you’ll be greeted with a screen asking you which one you want to use.

To make a permanent choice, first tick the box marked “Set at default” and then press the launcher you want to use. Android will now keep using that homrscreen whenever you hit the home button.

If you installed a few different homescreen replacements from this guide, now might be an excellent time to go through and uninstall the ones you’re not using.

Changing back

If you decide that you’re over this homescreen and you want the original one that came with your phone, you don’t need to resort to a full reset to get it back. There’s an easy fix.

Simply press the “settings” shortcut, and in that, go to applications, manage applications, and then select the launcher you’re using. Once inside the application settings, you can drag the screen down to the “Launch by default” section and press “Clear defaults”.

Once you’ve done this, the default launcher will disappear, and you’ll be able to choose another launcher to use as a default once again.