MIUI on your phone with out flashing a thing (well kind off)

Theme your phone with MIUI with out rooting, flashing or any of that scary stuff with 2 simple apps.


We recieved an email from someone yesterday asking if there was any way to get MIUI on their phone with out rooting or flashing anything.  The answer is NO but.....  you can get it to look pretty darn close to MIUI with a launcher and a widget.  There are other apps you can pile on to make it look alot more like MIUI but these 2 are a good starting ground.
Here are some screen shots from my Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G (mouthful there) using the MIUI.ADW.Launcher app and the MIUIDark Digital Weather widget from the Android Market.  No rooting or hacking nessesary and if you find you don't like the whole IOS feel you can uninstall them and go back to your stock look.  These apps work with pretty much any Android phone or tablet.

As you can see the home screen and app drawer have an iPhone look to them.  This is not everyone's cup of tea but the emailer is one of many that want to have the MIUI look and feel on their phone with out doing a little hackery.

Just a quick lesson on launchers on your phone and from the market.  If you have an HTC phone it comes with a "Sense" UI and launcher, Samsung generally has "Touch Wiz", Motorolla has "Moto Blur" and so on.  When you install a custom launcher from the market like this MIUI ADW Launcher it just pretty much covers the launcher that comes stock on your phone and gives it a whole new feel and look.  Motorolla users generally don't like Moto blur so they will put another launcher over it with Launcher Pro or like the launcher I'm writing about here.  It's all preference!  Also in a lot of cases a launcher can actually make your phone smoother.  The head writer over at our sister site Root Your Droid's main phone is a Motorolla Droid X2 and he feels that Launcher Pro makes his whole experience with that particular phone snappier and more customizable.  My main phone is the Samsung Galaxy S 2 and I personally can't stand Touch Wiz so I use a launcher by the name of ADW EX (I'll be doing a write up on both).

There's also a lot of different customizations you can do with this launcher, screen preferences, drawer settings, general behavior, UI settings and a whole bunch more.

The weather clock that is in the screen shot of my home page is a widget  from the market called MIUI Dark Digital Weather Clock (and it's free).  This widget IMo just gives it that final touch to give it a more of a MIUI ROM experience.

There you have it folks!  You can enjoy MIUI on your phone with out voiding your warranty by rooting or flashing anything.

One last thing before you go and grab this launcher.  When you first start the launcher it doesn't have an app drawer button (ala iPhone).  Just long press your home screen and press "Launcher Actions" then press "Open/Close App Drawer".  You can drag and drop it in your launcher bar and change it to any icon you want (long press the app drawer icon and edit it).

Thanks for the email!  I hope I answered your question :)

Links for these apps
MIUI ADW Launcher
MIUI Dark Digital Weather Clock widget

Google Pulls 'Official' Siri App from Android Market

Google has reportedly yanked an app masquerading as Siri, Apple's voice command personal assistant software, from the Android marketplace.
The move comes amid a deluge of Siri wannabes that have invaded the Android World since Apple introduced the Iphone 4S and its innovative features.
An app called Siri for Android, made by an outfit called Official Software, appeared in the Android market on Friday and was pulled from the bazaar by Google just hours after its arrival there.
Also, all other apps by Official Software disappeared from the market, as it appears that Google has pulled the software maker's account, which allows it to sell programs at the outlet.
The software company did a number of dubious things that appear to have prompted Google to act against the firm.
For example, it used Apple's Siri icon for the Official Software Android app. The word "official" was used in a way to make the app look like it was a true clone of the Apple app. When the Siri icon was tapped, all Official Software's app did was load Google's own voice command software, Voice Actions.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
A search for "Siri" on the Android Market by Android Fan Network revealed 131 hits, but less than a handful of the programs had more than 10,000 downloads. They were Vlingo Virtual Assistant (32,328 downloads), Iris (20,309), Skyvi (19,444) and Speaktoit Assistant (11,600).
While the Android world has been laboring hard to emulate Siri's functionality since Apple pulled the wraps off it, it hasn't quite made it there yet.
I've concluded that you can find decent virtual help on an Android phone, but the assistants available likely won't be as smooth and capable as Siri.