Easily Customize Your Sony Xperia Z’s Launcher and Lock Screen with Xposed

Up until now, customizing an Xperia launcher and lock screen has been quite the hassle, usually consisting of decompiling an APK, making your edits, and recompiling it. So if you wanted an extra row or column of icons on your home screen, you had to flash this, if you wanted fading home screen indicators, you had to flash this, and if you wanted to get rid of the app dock, you had to flash this, and so on. For every little change you wanted, there was an individual mod that you had to flash, and this can definitely become burdensome if you wished for a lot of changes.

This is probably why XDA Forum Member greg2001 developed an Xposed module to apply such aesthetic changes to the launcher and lock screen of the Sony Xperia Z. With it, one no longer has to create, find, and flash a plethora of incremental modifications to make their launcher and lock screen their own. Rather, XDA Recognized Developer rovo89‘s Xposed framework does all the work for you.

The full list of tweaks to the launcher and lock screen are as follows:

• Launcher tweaks
  
  
  
  • Condensed font
  
  
  • Transparent status/navigation bars
  
  
  • Desktop grid size
  
  
  • Multi-line labels on desktop
  
  
  • Auto-hide page indicator on desktop
  
  
  • Folder columns
  
  
  • Multi-line labels in folders
  
  
  • Disable launcher background dimming when opening a folder
  
  
  • Dock columns
  
  
  • Hide dock stage
  
  
  • Hide dock reflections
  
  
  • Large dock reflections
  
  
  • Transparent drawer
  
  
  • Drawer grid size
  
  
  • Hide drawer backplate
  
  
  
  


• Lock Screen tweaks
  
  
  
  • Transparent status bar
  
  
  • Enable the standard AOSP lockscreen with live wallpaper support, customizable via GravityBox
  
  
  • Hide shortcut icons
  
  
  • Hide unlock hint arrows
  
  
  • Custom/hidden unlock hint text
  
  
  • Custom/hidden carrier label
  
  
  • Small blinds
  
  
  
  

And because this is an Xposed mod, reverting back to previous settings is as simple as few taps and swipes, much more convenient than previously. It must be noted that the module will only work with an Xperia Z running the official Android 4.3 firmware.

If you would like to check this out, head over to the original thread for more information.

Cell Phones : [ Nexus S from Google ]

Gingerbread Pre-installed

1 GHz Processor, 16GB of Internal Memory

Brilliant 4” Contour Display

Latest Google Mobile Apps



Android 2.3, Gingerbread

Gingerbread builds on some of the most popular Android features like multi-tasking and Wi-Fi hotspot and adds a refreshed user interface, an improved keyboard, near field communication (NFC) support, and more.

Cell Phones : [ Galaxy S® III Protective Cover +, White ] Galaxy S® III Protective Cover +, White

The Galaxy S III Protective Cover Plus case is a precision designed cell phone case that protects the device without sacrificing style. Galaxy cases also feature one of the sleekest android phone case designs, allowing for both function and fashion.

Cell Phones : [ Samsung Galaxy Reverb™ (Virgin Mobile) ]

Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich For a Premium Performance

Cell Phones : [ Samsung Galaxy Rush™ (Boost Mobile) ]

Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, for easy access to everything Google

Cell Phones : [ Samsung Galaxy Axiom™ (U.S. Cellular) ]

Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and TouchWiz® Make for a Sweet Experience

Don’t Need a Keyguard? Disable it with Xposed

In Android, you can find various protections that prevent you from unwittingly unlocking your phone. We can use a PIN code, pattern unlock, and even unlock the device by looking at it. But in some situations, they are not needed as frankly speaking, not everyone cares about the security. But what to do when your company requires you to have a pattern or PIN and you don’t want to use it? There are some ways to bypass the security, and I would like to present one of them.

We have presented many Xposed Framework modules, as they are easy to use and accessible to almost every device. XDA Forum Member dtreth wrote a module to find the KeyguardViewMediator Class and hook the doKeyguardLocked method and prevent the device from locking. This means that the screen will go off, but after pressing the power button it won’t be necessary to enter the PIN code, pattern gesture, or whatever was set up before. You need to keep in mind that having your device unlocked is not always the best idea, but using this tool wisely may be useful.

You can find this module in the Xposed Framework database and the original thread. Naturally, your device must be rooted and have Xposed Framework installed.