Home Screen Replacements [Impressions]

Have tried out all the home screen replacements on the market so far. At this point in time nothing had seemed useful/robust enough for me to replace the standard home screen. Main problems being the fact that they are still in the early stages of development and changing often with updates. No point in arranging all my icons and folders nicely just to find out that a new update breaks it/makes it redundant!

So far the apps released are:

• aHome
• dxTop
• Sweeter Home
• Open Home

I would say that aHome is probably the most polished so far, not to say that it has the most potential though. The main reason I got excited about these apps was the addition of new widgets to the home screen. The question has to be asked though: why do we need a home replacement to have new widgets? Google should open up the API for widgets to be developed for the standard home screen.

Sweeter Home adds the most new functionality and shows the promise for the future. Features include deeper customisation than the rest and the ability to add things such as last messages received and contacts to the home screen (amongst other things). Too cluttered for me at the moment though.

aHome seems to have the most widgets available at the moment, a weather widget is extremely useful (seems to be broken at the moment though), a call log widget is also on the market and there is a battery status one available too. Like I say, this is probably the most polished but does not add a huge amount more than the original home, also it lost all my desktop layout when I upgraded!

Open Home has some nice themes available which change the clock and dock also, although the free version has some unsightly text overlaid alerting that it is 'Open Home - Lite'.

If you must change your home screen right now, aHome would be my recommendation. However I personally will be waiting until they become more developed or until we have native widgets on the original home screen.