Help for a total newb??? Who has some spare time?

Oct 17, 2012
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I just picked up the note 2 and I'm lost. I've had iPhones for the past 6 or 7 years so I have no experience customizing screens or doing anything else on this beast. I'm attempting to change the style of the icons on the home screen and change the look of what comes stock.

Do I need a launcher?
Do I need to unlock the phone or root it or something?
As you can tell from this post I'm clueless.

Any help appreciated?
 

DvineMzM

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Oct 29, 2012
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I just picked up the note 2 and I'm lost. I've had iPhones for the past 6 or 7 years so I have no experience customizing screens or doing anything else on this beast. I'm attempting to change the style of the icons on the home screen and change the look of what comes stock.

Do I need a launcher?
Do I need to unlock the phone or root it or something?
As you can tell from this post I'm clueless.

Any help appreciated?


The videos on the Samsun website might be a good place to start (just for a general rundown). They give a really good over view of features:

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 advantage: The Galaxy Muse | Pop Herald Technology News
 

AZSALUKI

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Mar 1, 2011
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here's the deal....you don't "need" to root it to simply customize it a bit. you can use a launcher to sort of do this. you can add widgets instead of apps to change the look on a homescreen as well. however, android phones all have a "skin" laid over the actual OS (except for nexus devices). samsung's is called touchwiz (htc has sense, etc, etc). if you were to root it, then you could basically run a stock version of android (people refer to it as vanilla) or you could use flash a custom rom. developers create custom roms with their own look and feel and their own mods and tweaks. if you are computer savvy and had experience jailbreaking your iphones, then it's probably not a big deal to learn how to do this and be capable of it. if not (and really even if you are confident) ten i would recommend playing around with it for a while before you decide you need or want to root it. you can do a lot just by playing with apps and widgets to customize it. there are icon pack apps in the play store that replace the actual icon with others. there's an app called elixir 2 that i use to create a widget that is actually a 7 wide icon bar so i can place 28 apps on a screen. you'll have a decent learning curve and i would suggest spending a lot of time on google and youtube. most of want you want to do is out there. i don't think that the issue with your post is that nobody wants to help. i think it's just that i could literally type ALL DAY here and give you some tips and tricks, but it's already out there on the web. i will tell you this (because i found it very confusing). when you use a launcher, you can't use the samsung stock widgets. the launcher more or less replaces the touchwiz UI, so you will need to use the widgets included with the launcher or download other widgets. for example, if you install and launch ADW launcher, you won't be able to use the samsung weather widget. i tell you this because the first time i used a launcher it threw me for a loop.
rooting is a blast and the customization with root access is endless, but if you are completely unfamiliar with android, then i would at least get to know it before i rooted.
 

Lukashenko

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Nov 19, 2012
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I used to jailbreak ipads and Iphones all the time. After looking for instructions on how to root my nexus 7, i noticed that jailbreaking is way easier than rooting.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums
 
Oct 17, 2012
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here's the deal....you don't "need" to root it to simply customize it a bit. you can use a launcher to sort of do this. you can add widgets instead of apps to change the look on a homescreen as well. however, android phones all have a "skin" laid over the actual OS (except for nexus devices). samsung's is called touchwiz (htc has sense, etc, etc). if you were to root it, then you could basically run a stock version of android (people refer to it as vanilla) or you could use flash a custom rom. developers create custom roms with their own look and feel and their own mods and tweaks. if you are computer savvy and had experience jailbreaking your iphones, then it's probably not a big deal to learn how to do this and be capable of it. if not (and really even if you are confident) ten i would recommend playing around with it for a while before you decide you need or want to root it. you can do a lot just by playing with apps and widgets to customize it. there are icon pack apps in the play store that replace the actual icon with others. there's an app called elixir 2 that i use to create a widget that is actually a 7 wide icon bar so i can place 28 apps on a screen. you'll have a decent learning curve and i would suggest spending a lot of time on google and youtube. most of want you want to do is out there. i don't think that the issue with your post is that nobody wants to help. i think it's just that i could literally type ALL DAY here and give you some tips and tricks, but it's already out there on the web. i will tell you this (because i found it very confusing). when you use a launcher, you can't use the samsung stock widgets. the launcher more or less replaces the touchwiz UI, so you will need to use the widgets included with the launcher or download other widgets. for example, if you install and launch ADW launcher, you won't be able to use the samsung weather widget. i tell you this because the first time i used a launcher it threw me for a loop.
rooting is a blast and the customization with root access is endless, but if you are completely unfamiliar with android, then i would at least get to know it before i rooted.


Awesome! Thank you for the response!
 

lpt2569

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Feb 1, 2011
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You don't need to root to change the look and feel. Try using Nova Launcher or Apex Launcher, they give you the ability to change your icons with themes from the Play Store, plus a whole lot of other stuff.

Find some videos on youtube on how to use the different launchers to get an idea of how they work. They basically "replace" the Samsung Touchwiz User Interface to a certain degree, without losing the S-Pen features or anything else that comes with the phone, other than maybe a few widgets.

There are some really cool weather/clock widgets like Beautiful Widgets, HD Widgets, OneMoreClock (OMC) widget, etc. Give those a try as well.

Also, I'm a big fan of Android Pro Widgets (APW) for twitter, facebook, calendar, etc.

Good luck, and have fun!
 

ToddL

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May 7, 2011
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You don't need to root to change the look and feel. Try using Nova Launcher or Apex Launcher, they give you the ability to change your icons with themes from the Play Store, plus a whole lot of other stuff.
I've never used a launcher, but thinking of giving it a whirl for fun. Does it slow the phone down much? Any other benefits/limitations besides being able to customize the home screen a bit more? Thanks in advance.
 

Markster1

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Aug 17, 2011
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It doesn't slow the phone down.

Advantages are getting tools back that Verizon in its infinite wisdom deemed we shouldn't have like the wifi toggle among others.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
 

DroidXcon

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Oct 21, 2010
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I've never used a launcher, but thinking of giving it a whirl for fun. Does it slow the phone down much? Any other benefits/limitations besides being able to customize the home screen a bit more? Thanks in advance.

No it doesn't slow the phone down but by using a seperate launcher you will lose alot of S pen functionality as they are woven into the touchwiz skin.

Also note when using a 3rd party launcher you should remove all active widgets from the stock launcher as they will still be actively syncing. Example facebook. Although this may have been change in later versions of Android but I have not heard it so better safe than sorry

From my Galaxy Note 2 via Tapatalk
 

pinatiger

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Sep 18, 2012
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Luki covered most of it. But for now you can use GO LAUNCHER or Nova launcher.. get use to it. Free on the store

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
 

lpt2569

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Feb 1, 2011
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you will lose alot of S pen functionality as they are woven into the touchwiz skin.

I have not noticed the loss of any S-Pen functionality that I can think of...although I have not used it to its full potential. Notes, hover, etc all still seem to be working fine for me with Apex launcher.

Does it slow the phone down much?

As others have said, it doesn't necessarily slow the phone down. However, you are actually adding another interface to your device...Touchwiz does not go away, it is not deleted from your phone, it simply gets relegated to another system application that is potentially using resources on your device that can make it seem like the new launcher has made things slow. But don't let any of this stop you from trying any of the launchers and play with them to see if they are to your liking. That's all part of the fun!
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