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Windows 8 Metro Theme Created For Rooted Android Tablets

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-the-good-none-of-the-evil dept.

MikeatWired writes "Now here's a cool one for you tablet users that like to tweak the appearance of your UI! XDA member BroBot175 has created a Metro UI theme for all tablets running Honeycomb or ICS! The theme is a fully functioning replica of Windows 8 that allows you to create your own tiles, and organize them however you want."

25 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft will probably not like this one bit.

    1. Re:in b4 lawsuit by game+kid · · Score: 5, Funny

      Indeed. They'll say "People actually want to copy Metro?"

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    2. Re:in b4 lawsuit by wvmarle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I know you're joking (at least trying to) but well that's the question I also have. But then on a more serious note.

      A problem that I see with iOS vs Android is, for as far as I have played with iOS, the basic UI is the same. No significant difference. Less difference than between OS-X and Windows even. It's basically iOS and Android all along, and with major brands like Samsung doing their best to look as much like iOS as they can get away with (including the design of the hardware) the real amount of choice we have is actually diminishing.

      For better or for worse, Microsoft tries something totally different, and that's interesting. What is good about Metro, what is bad? What can we learn about UIs from their attempt? Which bits can we copy and put into other UIs?

      I have never had a chance to play with Metro, never even seen it in action even. I actually don't see MS's offering to take off anytime soon, which I think is a pity in a way as a third serious competitor can only be good for the overall market. And besides MS I can't think of any software house to be able to put a viable competitor in this market.

    3. Re:in b4 lawsuit by miffo.swe · · Score: 2

      Except, that's not how it works. The only people who like the horrible UI mess that is Metro is the true believers. The Yesmen that would be happy with a brick with "Turn Over!" written on both sides, but only if it was a new game from Microsoft.

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    4. Re:in b4 lawsuit by realityimpaired · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a tablet or smartphone UI, actually it's pretty good. I still prefer Android, but I can understand why people would like Metro. A lot of the texting, e-mail, etc. widgets that people use on Android would not be necessary on Metro, because of the way it presents the tile for an app. (basically, no icons, everything is a widget).

      As a desktop UI, you have to ask what the hell they were smoking. Something designed for touchscreen input on a 4" device does *not* scale to a 24" screen with a keyboard/mouse. While it's usable, it would be very counter-productive to anybody who's comfortable with the mouse, because they would have to scroll through pages of tiles to find the one they want. I don't think it's going to be the unmitigated disaster that everybody says it's going to be, but I do think that "how to turn Metro off" will replace porn as the number 1 Google search for a while after it launches.

    5. Re:in b4 lawsuit by miffo.swe · · Score: 2

      Metro is a mess because its nothing but widgets called "Tiles" and hyped as something groundbreaking and special. It sucked back when Sony Ericsson did it on the SE X1 mobile phone, and it sucks just as much now that Microsoft "borrowed" it.

      I could drill down into specifics, but why would i do that? Its not like there aren't more than enough people inside Microsoft that hates the UI and has long lists of things they think should be changed.

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    6. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Funny

      Fool! Don't you know how much hatred of the users the user unfriendly division put into that design? Why poo flinging monkeys being personally sent to each individual home couldn't show THAT level of uncaring!

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    7. Re:in b4 lawsuit by lilfields · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Capital letters, exclamation points, and anti-Microsoft... this is very insightful!" - Some mod reading your post.

    8. Re:in b4 lawsuit by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      The Start menu was a bit easier to deal with for me, particularly since you could just start typing in what you wanted and Win7 would get you pertinent results.

      The "start typing to search" feature is still there in Metro (indeed, it is the only way to use it efficiently to wade through all the non-Metro apps). The main annoyance with it compared to Start menu is that Metro is fullscreen, which is rather distracting when all you want is to launch an app.

  2. Who cares? by gweihir · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Win 8 is a non-event, except insofar as MS is continuing to demonstrate bad engineering and bad design. Why people get riled up over this continuation of past behavior is beyond me.

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    1. Re:Who cares? by Kawahee · · Score: 2

      I've been using Windows 8 as my primary desktop operating system for the past few weeks. You can pretty much avoid Metro after logging in, just hit WINKEY + D to take yourself to the desktop. From there it's pretty much Windows 7 with better multi-monitor support.

      There's a handful of areas where it could be more polished, but you can't complain about them in the context (preview release).

      You can't avoid seeing Metro entirely, but it's not something you have to work with. In Windows 7, if I have to launch something that's not pinned to my taskbar my workflow is WINKEY + Type the program name + ENTER. Windows 8 preserves this workflow. You'll be typing the program name into a Metro search bar, but at the end of the day the same program starts up on the Windows 8 desktop.

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  3. Cool? by 1u3hr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Now here's a cool one

    Mimicking Windows is cool? Not from where I'm sitting.

  4. What problem does this solve? by tftp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.

    A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.

  5. Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rather than being active as they are in WP7/WP8, the tiles here are just shortcuts. That essentially makes this a metro-looking Android launcher, which isn't really exciting, nor front page-worthy.

    1. Re:Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      it's not missing the point, it's metro style. you're missing the point. look at the screenshots. clearly there is live content in several of the tiles.

      animations and active tiles are a late addition to metro anyways, they had to think of something. but they couldn't just make them fully customizable widgets oh no... because having more functionality wouldn't be innovative(the hacky approaches needed to make nice looking custom livetiles for wp is just.. well, teh suck still).

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  6. Ummm.... by Johnny+O · · Score: 2

    Why?

    1. Re:Ummm.... by miffo.swe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unity is actually quite nice on a mobile phone. Its on a Desktop it sucks. The same cant be said about Metro because that baby sucks anywhere.

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  7. Euwww! by miffo.swe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The last thing in the world i would want on any phone is Metro. To be frank, it sucks. The UI is clunky, unusable, inflexible and really just a try in making something diffrerent, not better.

    The nerd in me says, cool a testament of just how flexible Android is, but why the worst UI in the world?

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    1. Re:Euwww! by dave420 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's actually very usable. You might not like it, but please remember your likes and dislikes are not necessarily representative of those of others.

    2. Re:Euwww! by miffo.swe · · Score: 2

      Judging from the high return rate of WP7 phones and their abysmal sales, im not at all alone in thinking it sucks. Seems impossible to sell them even at a loss like Nokia is doing right now.

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  8. Who the hell is "Brobot175"? by shiftless · · Score: 2

    Maybe this is part of Microsoft's marketing strategy. You know, keeping the image fresh in people's mind, normalizing everyone to the concept of Metro.

  9. I got no clue by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Informative

    Metro to me seems idiotic but the one thing that is very noticeable is that whoever drew its design has no love for full color drawing, it is very monochromatic if such a thing exist in color. White icons/text on single color boxes. All very stark and (to my eye) unclear. Mind you, with a lot of icon based interfaces (android, iOS and some PC setups) unclear icons can be just as confusing. As near as I can figure this is politicians logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefor it must be done.

    Unclear sea of icons is confusing and something must be done, metro is something, therefor it will fix everything.

    It is a new shiny, therefor it is the second coming. Until the next one.

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  10. Cool? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You mean fool or tool

    Making Android look like Windoof is about as "cool" as sprinkling dry dogshit on your cappuccino.

    Next we show you how to make your Ferrari look like a Hyundai. Oh. wow.

  11. metro? hell no by kobi77 · · Score: 2

    Now why on earth would I want my perfectly fine android tablet look like a POS?

  12. Just rooted tablets? by DrXym · · Score: 2

    One of the nifty things about Android is you can replace the default activities if you like. So if you install an activity that handles an intent you can make it the default. So why do you need to root a device to use this?