A few weeks ago, I ditched my iPhone 4S for an HTC One, and now I think the difference between the world’s most popular smartphone operating systems - Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android - can be explained with a metaphor about home decorating.
The iPhone is a mansion designed by experts with superb taste. It’s beautifully laid out and all the rooms, wiring and plumbing work together seamlessly. But once you move in, you can make only the tiniest of alterations.
The designers of Android, and companies like HTC, which modify that operating system in different ways, don’t have the same skills. But you can trash just about every aesthetic choice they’ve made and renovate to your heart’s content. Big fan of “Breaking Bad”?
Trick out your Android phone with “Breaking Bad” imagery, with icons from the periodic table, as featured in the opening of the TV show. Love Scrabble? Your phone can look just like a Scrabble board. An Android phone is endlessly customisable, down to the last pixel.
The problem is that creating the most striking and novel Android looks is a baffling chore, one that requires mastery of software that seems lifted from that Russian space capsule in “Gravity.” Take a look at the many how-to tutorials on YouTube, where Android theme designers - or themers, as they are known - offer step-by-step instructions so you can replicate their handiwork. It’s so confusing that it’s hard to get to the part that’s confusing.
But a new app, Themer, developed by MyColorScreen, a startup in Irvine, Calif., hopes to bring Android customisation to the masses. The idea is to cut out the inscrutable programs and endless tinkering needed to configure a stylish home screen. Users download Themer, which is free, and immediately have a library of smartphone themes, any of which can be installed with a single click of a button.
Hit “apply,” and your phone could, for instance, have the In a Row theme, which is a column of white lettering against a black background, with fonts in the style of a hip restaurant menu. Or there’s Dashboard, a one-stop information hub and control centre. There is a “Grand Theft Auto” theme, a “Game of Thrones” theme, and even one that uncannily recreates the look of iOS 7, in case, for some reason, you want the iPhone look on your Android device.
To anyone who’s ever tried the long-way route to installing such labour-intensive designs, Themer feels like a magic trick. Actually, the app took about 10 months of research and software programming by three partners - two from the investment world and one electrical engineer - who studied the Android market in search of a niche.
“We looked at a website for Android developers and there was a lot of talk about customisation, and how the options that exist today are basically way too complicated,” said Ashvin Dhingra, one of the partners, who previously worked at Citadel, the hedge fund. “We thought there was a big market for customisation but it had to be simple.”
The partners bought MyColorScreen.com, a website dedicated to Android themes, from a Thailand-based entrepreneur. It was, and remains, an online gallery for an international subculture of designers who dream up and create new looks for smartphones. The site is home to more than 50,000 themes, with names such as GOONOW!, Leaves and 5mal.
(Hey, these people are artists, OK?) Some have a distinctly futuristic appearance, as if they were built for robots. Others are designed around a function, like reading Reddit.
The partners have deals with a handful of themers, to put some of their designs on the app; about 90 designs are available now, with more added to the app every week. The app takes all the complex coding that went into the fabrication of each of these gems and translates it one dummy-proof instruction: Press here.
Dhingra and his partners plan to make money by cutting deals with companies that want to be on your home screen. Every theme comes with a set of preinstalled folders and Themer might eventually put Amazon.com, for instance, in a shopping folder, or Evernote in a productivity folder.
“Or you could have a company that wants to promote a movie or a concert and build a whole theme around it,” Dhingra said. “We’re going to strike partnerships with brands where it makes sense for our users and the brands.”
Anticipating those profits, MyColorScreen pays themers about $50 per theme. That might seem like a pittance, but it’s $50 more than most have been paid in the past. Themer, though, has some limitations. The lock screen - the screen you see when your phone first powers on - can’t be configured by Themer, because the software does not have the capacity to change it.
But Dhingra says that coming versions of Themer will tackle the lock screen issue. Which means the app could ultimately offer a wide variety of themes and the capacity to alter those themes to any specifications. The Apple approach - like the cookie-cutter approach to home design - will then seem even duller.