SlideScreen Pro Android Application Review

Late September of 2009, Larva Labs first introduced the concept behind the “Intelligent Home Screen” application for the Android OS.  The idea was simple; Replace the standard Android home screen, with a streamlined home screen that presents the user with both personal and general data for quick access and review.  Larva Labs is not new to Android application development and you may recognize some of their previous applications such as Retro Defense and Battle for Mars.  I remember reading about the Intelligent Home Screen application and thinking I’d love to check it out.  Unfortunately, back then, it was just a concept with some pretty art and a nice video.  That is, until now.  I’ve had the chance to test out the IHS, which is now called SlideScreen (Pro and Lite), from the first Beta through RC1.  Want to know what I think? 

The quick answer is: I love it.  Read the long answer to find out why and for tips and tricks.

Larva Labs

Installation

Larva Labs developed the SlideScreen application with help from Ideas on Purpose.  The user interface is amazing and well done, it, along with Recordoid Dictaphone, is a good example for other Android developers to follow in order to create fluid user interfaces that are as good visually as they are functionally.  The download for RC1 comes it right at 1MB, so it’s not a big application, but it’s not tiny either.  However, it’s well worth that 1MB.  The first time you start it up, which for me took a, you are presented with a EULA and a series of setup screens.

SlideScreen Welcome

SlideScreen EULA

SlideScreen Weather Setup

Home Screen

Once setup it will bring you to the home screen itself.  Here you will be presented with a number of bars of data sorted by color coordinated types in a single column.  The top four bars are your personal data bars, which include Calls, Messages, Emails, and Calendar.  The middle bar, which I will refer to as the Sliding Info Bar (SIB), contains useful data such as the date, time, signal strength/network, battery level and your weather information, which includes temp and an icon for the current weather condition.

SlideScreen Main Screen

SlideScreen Sliding Information Bar

Under the SIB are three general information bars; Google Reader, Stocks and Twitter.  Of all this information available to you, only two things must be input manually, your Twitter account information and your location for the weather.  The other is taken from the phone, such as signal strength and battery, or utilizing your Google account information for your Emails, which is linked to your Gmail account, Google Reader, Stocks and Calendar.

SlideScreen Icons and Slide Feature

Sliding the Information Bar

Alone, that would be a great application, but there is more to it.  Let’s get back to the Sliding Info Bar.  By touching it with your finger and sliding the bar up or down, you can adjust how much info you see for each section and choose to see either more personal information or more general information.  If you slide the SIB up first you lose the Calender bar, next the Emails, then Messages and if you move it all the way up, you are presented with only general info items, which switch to a single view mode showing only Google Reader, Stocks and Twitter.  Likewise, sliding the SIB down first removes the Stocks bar, then Google Reader and finally, Twitter, leaving only personal data which as also switched to a single view mode, showing only Calls or Messages or Emails or Calender.

SlideScreen Sliding the Information Bar Up

Single View Mode

After sliding the SIB all the way up or down, you are presented with a single view mode, showing only one type of information at a time.  If you slide it all the way up, you are left with general information items, which defaults to Stocks first, but will later remember the last general information item you were watching.  At this time, the SIB loses the weather details and is replaced by an icon representing each type of information.  To switch between the different information types, simply tap the icon and it will cycle through the types.  General information goes from Google Reader, to Stocks to Twitter and Google Reader again.  Likewise, moving the SIB all the way down presents the user with personal information types and they can be cycled by clicking the type icon.

SlideScreen Single View - Twitter

Accessing Phone Functions

When in the standard view, showing multiple information types, the user can access different functions of the phone by tapping the type icon on the right side of each bar.  Tapping the Calls icon will bring up the main dialer application of your phone.  Likewise, tapping the Messages icon brings up your messages and the Emails icon brings up the Gmail application, etc.  The Google Reader icon opens your default browser and navigates to reader.google.com and the Stocks icon opens the browser to finance.google.com.  When I click on the Twitter icon, it opens my Twidroid application.

Accessing Information Directly

For the Google Reader information, if the user taps on the main part of the bar a preview of the article is presented and selecting a single Tweet from the Twitter information bar will show the tweet in full.  Both of these views are shown below.  Tapping a specific message will open that particular message within your messaging application and tapping a specific calendar event will open that event within your calendar application.  The Stocks, Emails and Calls information bar all function as if the user clicked the type icon as noted in the above paragraph.

Removing Information Items

If you have a list of items on the screen and you wish to simply mark it as read or remove it from the list, a long tap and slide to the left or right, as if you wish to flick the item off the screen will remove it from the list.  This is generally most helpful in the Google Reader and Twitter information bars.  If haptic feedback is turned on in the settings, a quick little vibration will indicate you’d removed that item from the list.

Application Mode Versus Home Screen Replacement

One of the most interesting features of this particular application is the ability for it to be run in two different modes; Application Mode and Home Screen Replacement Mode.  The differences between the two modes is only found when the user clicks their “home” or “back” buttons on the phone.  For most users, the first mode they will experience with SlideScreen will be the application mode.  Let’s start there.

In application mode, clicking “home” will bring you back to your standard home screen, keeping SlideScreen open in the background like any standard Android application.  Clicking the “back” button will bring you back to the home screen and close the application.  Pressing the “menu” button will bring up two options, “Home Settings” and “Phone Settings.”  “Home Settings” are the options and settings for SlideScreen and “Phone Settings” are you standard Android phone settings, such as “Personalize”, “Wireless Controls”, “Call Settings”, Etc.

SlideScreen Settings Options after Menu Press

In the home screen replacement mode, SlideScreen becomes your standard home screen.  Clicking the “back” button will do nothing, because in this mode, SlideScreen is your main home screen and there is no going back from that.  Likewise, clicking the “home” button will also do nothing, as long as you have set a default application for “home”, which could be SlideScreen.  If no default is set, it will bring up an option for the user to choose which home they want, “Home”, “SlideScreen” and for users with other home replacement apps, such as Sense UI, other options will be present as well.  Finally, clicking on “menu” brings up an application tray with all your applications.  At the top of this tray are 8 quick launch app place holders for holding 8 of your favorite apps at the top by default.

SlideScreen Application Tray

To place an application in the quick launch, tap on an empty place holder and watch as your applications’ icons and text wiggle a little.  Select your application and it will be copied to your quick launch area.  The user can change an app by long tapping the icon and it will go into wiggle mode.  Simple select a new application for that spot.  Or course, you don’t have to place any apps in the quick launch area and you can run any application by simply clicking on it like in the standard Android app tray.  By selecting the “menu” button again the user is presented with the presented with the same two options as stated in the paragraph above.

SlideScreen Adding an Application to the Quick Launch

Settings

The SlideScreen Settings page is a standard Android OS settings page and should be easy enough to navigate and learn.  I will cover a few of the important items to know.

SlideScreen Settings Page

First, is the toggle for keeping the status bar visible, which some users will want if they rely heavily on notification icons.  The next setting of importance is the “Services” setting.  Entering this setting, the user is presented with toggles to enable or disable certain information types.  By default, they are all turned on, but if the user doesn’t want Stocks or Twitter for instance, a quick toggle to turn those off solves the problem and they are no longer present on the SlideScreen main screen.

SlideScreen Services Settings

Within settings the user can also setup the weather and twitter accounts/settings if those parts were skipped over during the installation process or if the user wants to change those settings later.  In general though, each setting page involves letting SlideScreen known the update frequency and a forced refresh of that information type.

Conclusions

This review was a little lengthy, but I had many weeks to test out this application and through the Beta testing process I got to learn all functions and abilities of this application.  I personally like to run SlideScreen in application mode, and find it’s a nice way to leave the phone while not in use, as it really does provide most all the information I want on a single screen.  However, I don’t like Home Screen mode as I loose access to all my widgets.

I have found the design is amazing and I think the user interface is very well written.  During use, there is little to no lag.  The only gripe, if I have to have one, would be that from a cold start, the application can take 10-15 seconds to startup, during which time the user is not presented with a load screen.  Instead it’s a blank, black screen while you wait.  Re-entering SlideScreen is a very fast process however.

The team over at Larva Labs are very quick to respond to bugs and feature requests and I found them very easy to communicate with during the Beta test process.  I am sure as time progresses we can expect many more features to be added.  On their current “Intelligent Home Screen” website, they state they have plans for Facebook and Google Latitude integration as well.

Larva Labs has two version of the application available in the Android market, a Pro version for $6.99 and a Lite version, where the Lite version is advertisement supported.

Larva Labs

SlideScreen Home

SlideScreen Support Page

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