The Five-Tile Android Home Screen

Lifehacker reader Cutting_Razr liked the idea of a Windows Phone-inspired home screen, but he found it too cluttered. Instead, he decided to create a one-screen setup that displays just a few of the apps he uses the most.

The phone runs stock Ice Cream Sandwich and uses these apps for customisation:

• For the nearly quadratic grid I used Nova Launcher Prime. You don’t need the paid version if you can go without gestures and folders. Nova also enables a 6 icon dock and overlapping widgets.
• The Windows Phone-eque tiles come from Real Widget.
• The blue circles you can see behind the dock icons are battery indicators from Circle Battery Widget. I put them into the dock and sent them to the back, so you can use the icons normally.
• The clock widget is SiMi Clock Widget. Yes, the date is in German. I resized it to make the separating line go across the whole screen. Also I sent it to the back for the same reason as above. Hence, the overlapping.
• The icons are from this icon set by ~DzzR. I chose them because the fit very well with the stock icons and allowed me to do the battery thing.