Android on Samsung

[Mason_S]

Just idle banter, mind you, but I just had an epiphany, I think.

You see, I just got my wife a Samsung Behold and though the G1 is by far and away the more powerful phone, there is one feature of the Behold, and other Samsung touch-screen phones, that I am extremely jealous of: the TouchWiz widget tray. I am in love with this part of Samsung's interface. For those who have never had the pleasure of using it, some highlights are the ability to drag widgets out of the widget tray to provide quicker access to them. But the really cool part about that is that some widgets have actual functionality when dragged out onto the home screen. For instance, if you drag out the music player widget, you can use it to control the music player right from the home screen without going into the app. The calendar widget expands into a full calendar and with a tap you can enter the app to create an event. The picture frame widget allows you to scroll through all of your pictures at will. I love it!

Anyway, the interesting thing I wanted to explore is this: on the Omnia, Samsung has skinned out WinMo to use the TouchWiz interface. Couldn't they have the same in store for Android? Wouldn't that be cool! I know it would make my life complete

[Guiso0623]

that sounds sweet...

[deserttopping]

this thread needs video.

[XDViPeR]

We do have something like them except ours is the 3 screen home. See later on we're going to have widgets that do exactly that, control apps from the desktop, but for now all we have to do is wait.

hm, no youtube embedding allowed on this forum?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF9rcmX83yQ

[Mason_S]

Yup, I'm fully aware of what will be the capabilities of widgets in the future (completely limitless due to the open nature of the Android OS). I was merely pointing out that Samsung has a unique and intuitive way of presenting the widgets that I found very useful on my wife's Behold. Then, going a bit further, I was attempting to make the link between Samsung, TouchWiz (the means of presenting and manipulating the widgets), and Android. Vis a vis, the TouchWiz interface pervades the whole line of Samsung phones, including those with proprietary OS's, as well as the Omnia which sports Windows Mobile. Certainly there should exist the possibility that this awesome interface device should exist on a Samsung built Android smart phone.

That's all I'm tryin' to say. If ya think about it.

[Dharkaron]

I think you should check out some of the home screen replacement apps on the market. ahome, sweeter home, dxtop, and open home. You might like some of the things they are doing already.

As for the widgets, they will come. There is currently no security for them so they are wide open to be abused. Google is currently working on this and when its fixed im sure there will be plenty of cool things done.

[deserttopping]

thanks, xdviper. that's neat.

hmm, we used to have youtube embedding here...?

[Mason_S]

Hey guys, thanks for the reassurance about widgets on Android. That's all well and good. However, once again, I'm not referring to the overall eventuality of getting widgets on Android. I know that they're coming as well as the reasons why they're not here. I use Open Home and am actively participating in the testing/reporting process for sweeter home. I've used every home-replacement app on the market. I'm fully aware of their capabilities. This is not what this thread is about. Though certainly I think it is way, way cool that we can even do such a thing as replace the home app

What I wanted to explore here was simply the possibility that Samsung could implement TouchWiz on their upcoming Android device. What does everyone think the odds are? What would you think of having such a tool in the Android arsenal? I personally am holding out hope that if Samsung were to implement that feature exclusively for their device, some enterprising dev would be able to code up a facsimile for other Android handsets (such as the G1). That would be keen