Modified Launcher.apk

[Guest Wazz999]

Just a quick question to any devs that work with android roms / apk's

I decompiled the Launcher.apk earlier and inside the extracted folder is a file called

AndroidManifest.xml. The following lines of code made me wonder...

<activity android:theme="@style/Theme" android:name="Launcher" 

android:clearTaskOnLaunch="true" android:stateNotNeeded="true" 

android:launchMode="singleTask" [color="#FF0000"]android:screenOrientation="landscape"[/color] 

android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustPan">

[/codebox]

Surely, if someone changes ScreenOrientation to [color=#FF0000]"sensor"[/color] instead of "landscape", that would solve the

whole issue of being stuck in landscape. A quick look on the Android Developers website gives a few options to the

android:screenOrientation option - landscape, portrait, sensor, nosensor, user, behind.

There are 2 other lines that refer to the orientation that would need to be changed aswell.

I am by no means a dev. I am just curious.

I also dont have a streak to test this on, so I have no way to confirm if this would work or

not. I will try something similar to this on my G1 to see if it works.

I know everyone uses ADW Launcher to fix this issue. But When I do get a streak (soon hopefully :D ) , I will be trying my

modified launcher.apk - even if its just to see if it works.

Edited August 21, 2010 by Wazz999

[Guest Stephen Hyde]

ill play tester if you up your modded launcher ill give it a go :D

[Guest miker71]

interesting.

from what i can gather though, it runs deeper than launcher.apk

for example, ADW has an option to lock itself to portrait - if you do this it locks into landscape in reality! thinking that locking ADW to landscape would then give me portrait I tried that - but it remains landscape.

also, Google Gesture Search runs in landscape on the Dell when on every other phone it's locked into portrait.

i think there may be a fundamental setting somewhere that needs to be changed, beyond the launcher.

this is the only thing that really annoys me about the Streak, other than being unable to turn off haptic feedback on the capacitive buttons. i'm not knowledgable enough to know where these kind of system settings would be.

there's a thread over at XDA, they're working on compiling AOSP which i would presume would give us a primarily portrait device (which is how i personally use it most of the time).

also the DPI setting must have been changed - i was expecting everything just to look bigger, but obviously the system is being told to scale things down for the bigger screen, else on ADW the icons would look bigger and the 4 x 4 wouldn't be so spaced out. i'm not saying i necessarily want a "grandad" phone for people with poor vision, but it would be nice to have the option / control :-)

overall though, i'm very pleased with the Streak - i hope Dell keep the category alive and next year's model comes with a AMOLED screen ....

[Guest bostonguy]

also the DPI setting must have been changed - i was expecting everything just to look bigger, but obviously the system is being told to scale things down for the bigger screen, else on ADW the icons would look bigger and the 4 x 4 wouldn't be so spaced out. i'm not saying i necessarily want a "grandad" phone for people with poor vision, but it would be nice to have the option / control :-)

overall though, i'm very pleased with the Streak - i hope Dell keep the category alive and next year's model comes with a AMOLED screen ....

Yeah they've done some things to scale the screen elements (fonts, icons, etc). Look at comparison photos of other 800x480 screens showing say the Market in portrait mode - Streak has 9 apps listed, Droid X will show 6, etc.

This grandad (3 and counting lol) found an app for rooted devices called "Large Font" and it makes it much easier to read messages, mail, docs, etc.

[Guest uvz]

for example, ADW has an option to lock itself to portrait - if you do this it locks into landscape in reality! thinking that locking ADW to landscape would then give me portrait I tried that - but it remains landscape.

adw settings - System- Sensor and flag to portrait.

then flag that one above and you got a fix portrait mode :D

missing a portrait lockscreen... :D

[Guest Gopu]

missing a portrait lockscreen... :D

You can use a lockscreen app.

I have found this as an alternative

[Guest miker71]

adw settings - System- Sensor and flag to portrait.

then flag that one above and you got a fix portrait mode ;)

missing a portrait lockscreen... :huh:

should mention i'm on the 2.1 beta and running ADW 1.1.1, the setting i can find is:

ADWSettings-> System Preferences-> Home Orientation

like i say, it locks to landscape when i change that to portrait. (and also locks to landscape if i select landscape)

of course it could be a combo of running 2.1 beta and ADW 1.1.1

it's in no way a deal breaker, just a personal irritation.

[Guest miker71]

Yeah they've done some things to scale the screen elements (fonts, icons, etc). Look at comparison photos of other 800x480 screens showing say the Market in portrait mode - Streak has 9 apps listed, Droid X will show 6, etc.

This grandad (3 and counting lol) found an app for rooted devices called "Large Font" and it makes it much easier to read messages, mail, docs, etc.

I've had a look around and couldn't find Large Font. Is it still available from anywhere?

[Guest bostonguy]

I've had a look around and couldn't find Large Font. Is it still available from anywhere?

Apologies for not looking before typing - it's called "Font Size" and is still in the market.

It's not a perfect solution, it only has a few size options (default, small, big, huge) and I selected "big" so one step up from default.

The font is a few point sizes bigger than normal, and that makes a few thing look odd - especially some widgets (like Beautiful Widgets unfortunately) so i had to find a replacement for that favorite clock/weather widget which I did - "Weather Forecast and Clock Widget" which is free and looks pretty good in landscape and portrait.

Some other fonts can look a little "squished" (like in my PDF reader) but I still find it easier to read/see things so I'm sticking with it.

Good luck, sorry about the bad name memory, let me know how you like it.

[Guest miker71]

Apologies for not looking before typing - it's called "Font Size" and is still in the market.

It's not a perfect solution, it only has a few size options (default, small, big, huge) and I selected "big" so one step up from default.

The font is a few point sizes bigger than normal, and that makes a few thing look odd - especially some widgets (like Beautiful Widgets unfortunately) so i had to find a replacement for that favorite clock/weather widget which I did - "Weather Forecast and Clock Widget" which is free and looks pretty good in landscape and portrait.

Some other fonts can look a little "squished" (like in my PDF reader) but I still find it easier to read/see things so I'm sticking with it.

Good luck, sorry about the bad name memory, let me know how you like it.

Nice find, I like it. Definitely relieves a bit of eye-strain on that setting. Worth the 0.99 Euros to me also :-)

[Guest miker71]

Nice find, I like it. Definitely relieves a bit of eye-strain on that setting. Worth the 0.99 Euros to me also :-)

Also, I just tried appending the following line onto the end of /system/build.prop (with fonts set to normal size)

ro.sf.lcd_density=240

I think that would be the best way for larger fonts, but the modified Dell status bar gets too big for the screen! so again, the vendor modification is what prevents me getting things "just so" - roll on AOSP for the Dell Streak!!

See this xda thread for more explanation of that setting

http://ip208-100-42-21.static.xda-develope...ad.php?t=760805