Folder Organizer
Your UI, the way you want it
Android App of the Week Bought an iPhone or Windows Phone 7 handset but don’t like the UI? Tough tomato. Bought an Android phone but don’t like the UI? Change it. And what better app to help you on your way than Folder Organizer, one of the most versatile, stable yet unobtrusive applications you will ever download.
Mix up icons and folders
In a nutshell, FO can be used to organise your apps, contacts, bookmarks and shortcuts into folders or widgets for easy homescreen access. But that’s like describing the Saturn 5 as a big rocket - technically correct but it only skims the surface.
That’s because with FO you can change the appearance of everything. And I mean everything. The icons and names of folders and the apps within them can all be altered to suit your whim and fancy.
Widgets big and small, and text-style folders - the choice is yours
Don’t like the Gmail app icon? Change it. Want to call it Jemima rather than Gmail? Do that too. Want a folder icon to show its contents? Not a problem.
Next page: DIY UI
COMMENTS
Rearranging
For one, I hate that you can't rearrange icons in Android folders. I get a new app that I use a lot, and it's stuck at the bottom of my folder list when i'd like it in the mid-right side, right next to my thumb for the most efficient start. I haven't tried this app, but it sounds like it should handle it.
The only work around to this with default Android folders is to remove all the other items and re-add them in the order you want. Clunky.
Some people (not me) also care about how consistent their phone looks, or want to make it unique. They'll redo all the icons for their apps in a consistent style that they're happy with.
Customiseable is good
but the big downside I can see with this is it's size. As it runs widgets, you can't put it on your SD card, and 5+ MB is a hefty chunk of internal memory. Otherwise looks good though...
Better than stock Android folders
FO allows you to customise the folder icon, making it a lot easier to find what you're looking for.
Also, unlike the stock Android folders, an open FO folder resizes itself to fit its contents, making it much easier to click the background to close the folder (useful for us cack-handers where the close button is a bit of a stretch).
Because...
.... we all have our own ideas and personal preferences for how a UI 'works'. Also, some of us are set in our ways and would like to have the same UI paradigm (sorry) running on all our computing devices.
I've got Froyo on an HTC Wildfire and you can't put a folder inside another folder; which was a big disappointment for me (maybe I should get a life?). So, I'll be having a play with this because it's cheap enough to throw away and forget if it turns out that I don't like it.
Curse you Nexus One
This looks like something I'd really like to have, given Android's incredibly poor implementation of folders, as described by "Argh".
Sadly, the volume of app storage on my Nexus One means that I'm stuck in the '00s worrying about 5MB of space.
Might pick it up regardless, see if it's worth sacrificing the space for.
