No, you don’t need root to theme your phone

“I need root to do that, don’t I?” “No. You absolutely do not.”

Changing the way your phone looks or acts can seem like sorcery to some users. When someone sees my custom icons, they sometimes ask if I had to root my phone to do it. They’ll see the covers in Action Launcher and think that we had to do something special and/or forbidden to do it. They’ll see our Kustom widgets and think there’s no way they could do that on their phone. They think you have to void your warranty to make your phone look better.

Well, I don’t root my phones to make them look better. And you don’t need to either.

Yes, there are some things you can’t change without root (though that list seems to get smaller and smaller every year). Without root, you may not be able to replace your navigation buttons with colored or stylized icons. You may not be able to make your themes extend to the notification shade, or into the rest of your apps. You may not be able to change your pixel density or give yourself that glorious system-wide dark mode. These are a small sampling of what can be done with root access, but there’s still plenty to enjoy without that particular modification.

I don’t care. I can make my phone look pretty without all that.

I do not want to hassle with making sure my Xposed modules don’t conflict with my special kernel and the RRO layers I’m using to dark-theme my apps. I have long said that root just isn’t necessary for most of us, and it’s become even more true since I said it two years ago. Root can take themes to another level, but it’s not a level I need. It’s not a level that can easily be shared with the majority of our readers.

Even without root, we’ve got plenty of theming tools at our disposal. There’s a hell of a lot that we can do to make our phones look newer, cooler, or just different.

Wallpapers

If you’re using the wallpaper that came with your phone out of the box, stop reading right now and go grab a new one from our Wallpaper Wednesday collections.Grab one, download it, and set it on your phone. Long-press on your wallpaper and the option to change it usually pops up.

And now that we’ve gotten some new ink on your home screen, let’s go find something that fits you even better. Got a work of art you just adore? Set it as a wallpaper! Looking forward to an awesome new movie? We’ve got wallpapers for them, and awesome themes to go with them. Just want your phone to show as much team spirit as your phone? There’s millions of wallpapers out there for your favorite teams, from Football to Futbol to Baseball to F1 to the Olympic gymnastics team about to compete in Rio.

You can even use your wallpaper to remind you of what’s important in your life: your baby grandkids or your lovely wife. Whoever and whatever you hold dear, it can always be there in your thoughts and in your sight by setting personal photos as wallpapers.

See more wallpaper ideas

Icons

This isn’t Apple: our app icons are not all rounded rectangles. But that doesn’t mean they have to be a mis-mash of conflicting design styles and guidelines. We have thousands of awesome icon packs out there to help us make some order out of the chaos and make our apps look better with our wallpapers and widgets. Whether you go in for uber-simplistic monotone icons or bright candy-colored packs, there’s an icon pack out there for everyone.

If you’re feeling especially brave, you can even go beyond the icons in packs and use any image you can image — or find on Google. Most common image types can be used as an app icon, but if it’s a PNG with a transparent background, it works best (since there won’t be a white/black box around your image). I’ve been making custom icons for my themes since before I even knew what root was; it’s easy, fun, and can be ever-so-slightly challenging finding/creating an icon that’ll fit just so with that perfect wallpaper you just found.

Read more: how to change icons on your phone without changing launchers

Widgets

Widgets are ten kinds of amazing and you’re lucky your Android phone has them. You may have heard nasty rumors about widgets like they’ll suck your battery dry and tax your poor little phone’s memory. Years ago, we may have needed to worry about this more, but widgets (like the rest of Android) have come a long way since then. Widgets can play an important part on your home screen, offering up information and controls without having to open the main app. Instead of opening the Accuweather, you can just peek at the widget on your home screen and see that it’s 86 degrees and it’s gonna start raining in 33 minutes.

Widgets can be beautiful as well as functional. They can give you music controls and show off your album art in style. They can give you quick controls for your Hue lights without clashing with your dark wallpaper and icons. They’re awesome, and you should check them out.

Read more: my favorite widgets

Launchers

When you’ve tested and reached the limits of your current launcher, there’s always new frontiers of possibility to explore with a new launcher. They’re easy to find, easy to try, and no, they won’t completely screw up your phone. If you don’t like the one you try, your old launcher is still there waiting for you. Launchers have a lot of good and downright useful features like backups, gesture shortcuts, folders that don’t look like complete crap and even prepackaged themes.

There’s a lot of launchers out there for you to test the waters with, and while many of us on the Android Central staff swear by Action Launcher, I have been and continue to be a Nova Launcher girl. Nova has the best backup mechanism, it’s got the most customizable folders (my dock is almost entirely made of folders), and it’s the best 25 cents I ever spent in Google Play, back during one of it’s birthday sales.

Here are our favorite launchers

Start small

Here’s the best part: you don’t have to do everything at once. Ease yourself in with some Awesome Icons before you go trying new launchers with sub-grid positioning and custom icon support. Maybe try a few widgets that’re already on your phone. Give a Muzei plugin a try to see what kind of wallpapers you like best on your phone before you start trying to build launcher themes around one. Import your current launcher’s layout into Nova Launcher and see how you like it before you go messing around with a lot of gesture controls and Kustom widgets.

Overhauling every town in ‘Skyrim’ took one dev four years

Skyrim came out in 2011 but earlier this month, a modder released Holds: The City Overhaul, an expansion that renovates every village and town in the game. Even among a mod community that refuses to let the game die, this addition was a Herculean task, taking the modder an average two hours a day over three years to finish. That’s a labor of love.

At 4GB, Holds is a big chunk of content — none of which adds to the game’s storyline. It’s just more stuff, like new architecture, outfits and named characters to enrich the walking-through-town experience. Holds’ creator even wrote completely new in-game books, adding to Skyrim lore.

There’s a modelmaker’s precision in Holds: there are new villages, but they are carefully placed far apart to preserve the original Skyrim’s sparse wilderness. This respect for “The Skyrim Experience” shows why its vibrant community of tinkerers has kept creating more than four years after the game was released, even without getting paid to do it.

Via: Polygon

Source: Nexus Mods

EU close to slapping Google with antitrust charges over Android

The European Union’s probe into a possible antitrust case against Google over Android might just lead to full-fledged legal action. Reuters sources claim that the European Commission is getting ready to charge Google for allegedly offering unfair deals to Android phone makers in order to keep its own services on top. While it’s not clear just when those charges might drop, the EU is already indicating its main point of contention. It’s not so much concerned about Google’s demands for app bundles (if you want one Google service, you have to include a bunch more) as it is the exclusive contracts that Google supposedly makes with phone brands to get those bundles in place. These hurt companies’ ability to choose which apps they want to load, according to regulators.

For its part, Google has denied pushing companies into exclusive contracts, and it’s hoping that talks will avoid a legal battle. With that said, the odds aren’t exactly in its favor. European countries haven’t been kind to Google, and regularly accuse it of breaking rules. Also, Russia just recently won a victory over a similar Android bundling dispute — while the EU isn’t about to use Russian decisions as legal precedent, that shows that it’s at least possible for Google to lose an antitrust case like this. The US’ Federal Trade Commission investigation doesn’t help, either. Google may have to reach a compromise if it wants to avoid forced changes in behavior and the stiff fines to match.

Source: Reuters

CalDigit Announces New Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C Storage Devices

Today at the 2016 NAB Show, CalDigit announced four new storage products utilizing the latest Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1 Type-C technologies.

The first is the CalDigit T8, a Thunderbolt 3 RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and JBOD storage solution with 8-bays offering capacities up to 48TB with 3.5” HDDs and 8TB with SSDs. The device’s dual Thunderbolt 3 ports deliver up to 40Gb/s bandwidth, while dual USB-C ports work with Type-C computers like the 12-inch Retina MacBook.

The new T8 features speeds of up to 1440MB/s with SSDs, two fans for cooling and a full-size DisplayPort connector on the back of the unit that enables users to connect a 4K monitor at 60Hz to the storage device. CalDigit has not released pricing for the T8 yet, but it will be available in late 2016.

The second is the CalDigit U6, a 6-bay USB 3.1 Type-C RAID 0, 5, 6, 10 and JBOD storage solution that features USB 3.1 for up to 10Gb/s throughput. Like the T8, the U6 has a USB-C connector that is compatible with any PC, Mac, or Chrome computer with Type-C ports. The U6 will start at $1,399 MSRP for the 12TB version in late 2016.

Likewise, the CalDigit AV Pro 2 is a new single-drive storage solution featuring USB 3.1 Type-C for connectivity with the 12-inch Retina MacBook and other Type-C computers. The successor to the original AV Pro features capacities up to 6TB and 1TB with SSDs, and speeds of up to 200MB/s with 3.5” HDDs or 430MB/s with SSDs.

Meanwhile, the T4 RAID will be upgraded with Thunderbolt 3 later in 2016. Pricing for the AV Pro 2 and T4 RAID has not been announced.

Apple is widely expected to release its first Mac notebooks with Thunderbolt 3 later this year. Unlike Thunderbolt 2, the technology functions over a USB-C port, meaning that the next-generation Skylake-based MacBook Pro, and possibly the MacBook Air if not discontinued, should be equipped with both Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C.

Tags: USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, CalDigit, Thunderbolt
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Autonomous car self-drives 1200 miles through Chinese traffic, voice commands used

As self-driving car tests go a 1200 mile trek across the congested roads of China has to be one of the most challenging. Despite those possible difficulties the self-driving car completed the epic journey.

The autonomous car was being tested as part of a push to create a more self-reliant car system by 2020. This vehicle was made and tested by Ford’s partner in China, Chongqing Changan Automobile.

The journey took a total of six days, starting in Chongqing and ending in Beijing. The car was equipped with radar and camera systems to allow it to drive itself.

According to the automaker the car was able to carry out automatic lane cruising meaning it could speed up and slow down with other cars. It also managed lane-keeping and changing on varying roads. There was also assisted driving during congestion. The company also said the car was able to speed up and slow down based on road sign recognition as well as voice commands from in the car.

Most of these technologies have been shown off before. Indeed many of them are available in cars on the road today. But to carry out a 1200 mile journey through unplanned eventualities in a real world scenario is an encouraging step towards and more intelligent self-driving future.

That future is planned to arrive by 2020.

READ: Hoverboard and jetpack spawn extreme Flyboard Air

IMAX wants to host your indoor cycling sessions

If you live in in the heart of a city, it’s hard to enjoy biking outside… not unless you like weaving through traffic. IMAX might have the next best thing, though. It’s testing IMAXShift, an indoor cycling experience that promises to be more interesting than pedaling at the gym. The effort ultimately amounts to a cycling class in front of a giant screen, but IMAX argues that this could be a big motivator — instead of riding either indoors or in a dreary urban landscape, you can travel along the Hawaiian coast or through the Solar System. There are even promises of “music-reactive visuals.”

The company is setting up an initial cycling theater in Brooklyn, with reservations opening up on April 25th. It’s clear from the pricing that this is more of an occasional treat than part of a daily routine, mind you. It costs $31 per ride (you get a second ride for free as a new user), and a monthly membership with unlimited access and guest credits costs a whopping $325 per month — you’d better really, really like IMAX to choose this over a gym membership. It’s less awkward than strapping on a VR headset at home, though, and it’s not as daunting as trying to navigate city streets.

Source: IMAXShift, PR Newswire

AI-powered cameras make thermal imaging more accessible

As cool as thermal cameras may be, they’re not usually very bright — they may show you something hiding in the dark, but they won’t do much with it. FLIR wants to change that with its new Boson thermal camera module. The hardware combines a long wave infrared camera with a Movidius vision processing unit, giving the camera a dash of programmable artificial intelligence. Device makers can not only use those smarts for visual processing (like reducing noise), but some computer vision tasks as well — think object detection, depth calculations and other tasks that normally rely on external computing power.

You’ll have to wait for companies to integrate Boson before you see it in products you can buy. However, its mix of AI and compact size could bring smart thermal imaging to gadgets where it’s not normally practical, such as home security systems, drones and military gear. You may well see a surge in devices that can recognize the world around them in any lighting condition — even in total darkness.

Source: FLIR, MarketWired (Yahoo)

‘BioShock’ creator takes on ‘The Twilight Zone’ interactive drama

Ken Levine, best known as the mastermind behind Take-Two’s BioShock series, is working on an interactive live-action film based on The Twilight Zone, Wired reports. Levine will write and direct the project, and audience members will be able to control the actions of certain characters using technology from Interlude. That’s the company currently rebooting WarGames as a short drama produced by Her Story creator Sam Barlow.

Levine is still working on his next, secret game with publisher Take-Two, while the Twilight Zone film is more of a side project for now. It’s still in early stages — Levine and Interlude have a rough outline and they’re about to dive into writing and the logistics of an interactive script, Wired says.

“Playing my games, you can probably tell Twilight Zone is something I grew up with,” Levine tells Wired. “They speak to a larger truth. They’re morality plays, fables, and often they’re about a character who is going through an experience that’s central to their life but also speaks to a larger part of the human condition.”

Irrational Games, Levine’s studio and the home of the BioShock franchise, closed up shop in 2014. Around that same time, Levine was tapped to write the script for a remake of Logan’s Run, but those duties were eventually passed to Deadpool producer Simon Kinberg.

Levine has a decidedly twisted sense of storytelling and he’s not afraid of dense narrative arcs or wild theories. With The Twilight Zone, we’re expecting something introspective, retro and Lovecraftian, possibly with a refreshing saltwater aftertaste.

Source: Wired

Google won’t face Supreme Court fight over book scanning

After many years, Google’s efforts to scan out-of-print books for online searching is officially in the clear. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal over Google’s victory in a legal dispute wit the Authors Guild, effectively determining once and for all that the book scanning (which focused on excerpts) represents fair use rights. The Guild had contended that Google’s move violated copyright and potentially hurt profits, and would have had the internet giant pay damages.

Not surprisingly, the Guild isn’t happy with the Supreme Court’s choice — it calls this a “colossal loss” and insists that the appeals court was “blinded” by Google’s attempt to portray itself as rescuing lost books for the public good. The statements are a bit melodramatic (many of these titles are unlikely to return to print before they reach the public domain), but they do point out that the concerns over digitizing books aren’t quite over. Although Google appears to have walked a fine line, the worry is that other outfits might not be quite so scrupulous.

Source: BBC, Authors Guild

Podcasts are now available in Google Play Music

Perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets of the last six months has come to pass: Podcasts have officially been added to Google Play Music for Android and on the web. This comes right as predicted last week, when an internal NPR memo tipped the launch date. Fortunately, Google’s doing something rather clever with its podcast launch. Just like the activity-based radio stations that Google added after buying Songza, you’ll be able to browse a variety of podcast “channels” for when you’re not sure exactly what you feel like listening to.

A few examples Google gave us include “Learn Something New,” which includes podcasts like Stuff You Should Know and How To Do Everything, and “Laugh Out Loud,” that features shows like Marc Maron’s WTF and Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist. Beyond the station-based interface, you’ll of course be able to subscribe to various podcasts to have them download automatically or send you notifications when they release new episodes. There’s also a “top charts” section broken down by subject matter.

We haven’t had a chance to try the new app yet, so it’s hard to say how it’ll compare to third-party options for podcasts on Android like Pocket Casts. But if you’re already using Google Play Music (or someone who prefers sticking with one app for all your audio needs), this is a feature worth investigating. The station-based discovery feature is a somewhat unique take on podcasts and sounds like it’ll be worth checking out when you want to find new shows. Unfortunately for iOS users, you’ll have to wait — Google says it’s focusing on Android for now.

Source: Google