5 ways to make Android 2.1 work like Froyo

Many phone manufacturers tweak the Android interface -- in fact, one reason Froyo is coming to different phones at different times is because those manufacturers need to tweak Froyo for their phones. For example, the number of home screens users can have with Android 2.1 varies from phone to phone. The original Droid came with three home screens; with Froyo that number increases to five. The Droid X, on the other hand, came with seven of them.

If your phone doesn't have as many home screens as you want, you don't need to wait for Froyo to get more of them. You can get up to seven now using a free app called LauncherPro, which is available in the Android Market.

LauncherPro does more than give you up to seven home screens. It also animates certain actions -- when you tap the Application Tray, for example, the app icons fly into place -- and then they fly out of place when you leave the Application Tray. You can hide apps in the Application Tray as well. And if you have a trackball, you can use it to scroll through your screens.

Depending on your phone, you may have problems running LauncherPro. At first, I couldn't get it to work with my Droid X. I was able to fix that by downloading an app called Home Switcher from the Android Market after I downloaded LauncherPro. Home Switcher lets you choose whether to use your normal home screen or a home screen replacement app like LauncherPro.

Preston Gralla is a contributing editor to Computerworld.com and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).