How To Install An Awesome New Home Launcher For Xperia Devices

You will need to have root access to be able to install this, as it involves pushing apk files to the system folder, and changing properties using Root Explorer or ES File Manager.

This has been tested to work on the Arc & Arc S, but may well work with other Sony Ericsson phones as well. No harm done in trying; the result is worth the effort.

Step 1
Download the add-on zip file from here and extract the contents. You should get 3 files  1) build.prop 2) Home.apk 3) SystemUI.apk

Step 2
Connect your device to PC via USB cable and transfer these 3 files to your device  SD card.

Step 3
Disconnect the device from PC. Now open ES File Explorer ( Or any File manager with Root explorer capability).

Step 4
Make sure that root access is enabled in the settings for ES File Explorer.

Step 5
Navigate to the SD card where you have copied the 3 files in Step 2.

Step 6
Copy all 3 files and paste them in /system folder.

Step 7
Once the files are copied, change permissions for each file to the same permissions as other files in the folder. You can do this by :

• Navigate to /system/app
• Long press on one of the pre-existing files in /system/app
• Click Properties–>Change Permissions (***Note down the permissions that you see)
• Go back to /System
• Now Long press each of the 3 files you copied here in Step 5, and change the permissions to what you ***noted down earlier

Step 8
Transfer Home.apk and systemUI.apk from /system to the /system/app folder

Step 9
Leave build.prop where it is i.e. in /system folder

Step 10
Exit ES File Explorer & Go back to your home screen. You should now have this awesome looking Home Launcher on your Arc/s.

Viewsonic’s ViewPhone 3 Dual-Sim Slot Android Smartphone

One more sample of Viewsonic’s latest offerings coming out of CES is the ViewPhone 3. The significant feature of this Android 2.3 smartphone will probably be its dual-SIM capability and low price point of $279 unlocked.

On all accounts, this mid-market phone showed pretty bad lag when swiping between screens or scrolling. It supposed to hit Latin American markets at said $279 later this quarter, and it will be the first Viewsonic phone there. We can only hope it won’t be the last.

I can’t say how good the sales of ViewPhones 1 and 2, I really don’t know so its a mystery how well Viewsonic’s mobile division is fairing against the Huawei’s and other lower tiered manufacturers. Maybe, there are some markets where these were doing just fine, and maybe this 3.5″ 800 MHz single-core ARM Cortex A8 based phone will be a hit there. But from a sample for this CES 2012, there’s nothing exceptional about the phone except for its dual-SIM capability. Two SIMs allow for both business and work use on the same device, and there’s HSDPA connectivity along with WiFi and Bluetooth, and that’s practically all that goes for it.