By 
I’ve always been a sucker for a good UI, and despite the bad press surrounding the Grid 10 tablet, I must say, I kinda had a “thing” for their unconventional homescreen. As it stands, Android’s tablet UI isn’t very much to look at. Essentially, you have a larger smartphone home screen which, I understand, is fine for some. But in the spirit of Android and the wonderful options she provides, a new home screen replacement is looking to make Android beautiful again, with the Kickstarter funded Chameleon launcher.
Chameleon is a home screen replacement only for Android tablets and features big and beautiful full featured widgets that are “designed to fit your lifestyle.” Similar to HTC’s Scenes, Chameleon gives user the ability to set, and customize home screens according to the time of day, or location. A user can set a work homescreen triggered by GPS location or connected WiFi network. When returning home, a new homescreen will be displayed, giving you easy access to social networks and leisurely content. Sounds neat, right? You can see more in their Kickstarter video below.
Currently, Chameleon has 100 backers on Kickstarter with only $1,000 pledged of their $50,000 goal (wow) and 29 days left to go. Those that back with $5 can get early access to the launcher in August, that’s a full month before it lands in the Google Play Store. Anyone thinking Chameleon could be the tablet home screen for them?
Thanks, Ken!
Looks good! Now.. if only I owned a tablet…
Same boat brother…same boat. Though I’m seriously considering donating and seeing if I could spoof it on my GNex running the Paranoid Android ROM.
Just yesterday, I finally installed Nova Launcher on my Transformer Prime. Can’t wait to see how well this does.
How do you like nova?
I love it so far.
The stock launcher was a bit glitchy. There were times were all icons would turn invisible and it needed a reboot to fix it. It was also laggy.
With Nova, however, everything is much more smooth. I love the transition effect and customizability. I’ll definately be buying the paid version soon.
Uhh… $50k to develop a launcher? Seems excessive. Considering most launchers are released before being funded. And many are FREE.
They spent 40K on that promo. :)
Developer, tester, PR. 50K is not a lot of money. A developer for less than 6 months in northern ca will cost more than that.
You have a point. But Go Launcher is free. ADW and LP didn’t ask for $50k, they developed an app then sold it. We shouldn’t have to risk our money and raise an INSANE amount of money just to get a simple launcher. Hell, I could buy 13 of my cars with that money.
Come on now, Go was developed in Asia:)
And we all know Asia is home to the best free stuff! Go Dev, MIUI, etc.
You make it sound like their asking for an unreasonable amount from each individual person. Most of the paid launchers on the Play Store are about $5 bucks anyway.
That’s not much of a risk, so you go without your morning Starbucks one day, I’d say that’s a fair trade-off considering how promising this project looks.
You guys are mind boggling. Just because the software is free, doesn’t mean it is free for someone to develop it! How can $50K be excessive to develop a launcher? Have you developed a software product? That’s only 5 weeks of work by one good developer.
For sure, it ain’t free to develop. But you don’t see Go Dev Team collecting $50k then releasing a paid app. Even ADW Ex asked for no money. He took a risk like all businesses. He develops an app, then sells it. He makes back the money. Just like most people do. Or they take out a loan for their business. While Kickstarter is an AWESOME thing, collecting insane amounts of money for a launcher is ridiculous. In my opinion anyway. Take it as you may,
Or perhaps they don’t have $50K laying around to just complete the development. This is not the year 2000. You can’t just walk into a bank and get a loan for whatever you want; don’t you know the banks still are not loaning money? Kickstarter is not just for people to develop free products. The majority of products pitched there are for profit so what are you talking about?
For sure, for sure. But again, it’s the development of a pretty simple launcher. It isn’t the building of a device. Pebble watch asked for $100k. They needed to produce a ton of SoC’s, displays, AND write all the software to run the watch on. This is a simple Android launcher built on existing API’s made by Google, not a full OS for a device. I don’t see how a launcher can cost so much.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Sorry for the multiple posts…
I’m honestly not disagreeing. I just feel $50k is truly excessive for a launcher. Not an app, specifically a launcher. And to be honest, it’d have been more fair to develop it then sell it. Remember SPB launcher, that crazy $16 3D one? They didn’t ask for $50k, they recoup costs by selling. Just the whole situation is a bit extreme.
Dima, you have to create it before you sell it! If you don’t have the money to create it, what are you going to use to recoup it with? You can’t recoup what you don’t have! They are developing this app on a lark, they are likely financially overextended in other areas. There is nothing extreme about this. Have you ever been to Kickstarter?
You don’t particularly need money to develop a launcher, just time. And that’s easy to recoup with money. However, most Kickstarter projects need money to create prototypes, start mass production, and general things like that. Again bringing up Pebble. They had concepts made and working software done before they made a Kickstarter, they just used that money to mass produce. And when they got more money then abfore, they added features like water proofing. Again, this was POST design and development of software.
Dima, don’t you know a launcher is an app? An app (application) is just the new fancy name for a software program. How do you think a launcher works? Black magic? Someone has to code that thing!
But if they are going to charge$15 or the finished product and you like the demo why not pay $5 for it now, invest, get it in advance for a discount….what’s the difference
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about. You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
Dima you don’t see it because you have never developed an app. All you
see in this video is a demo concept. It would not have a GUI for a user
to customize their own launcher nor all of the features he talked about.
You can’t just slap on a GUI editor without recoding the original
program. The easier they make the GUI for the user, the more complicated
the coding behind it gets. There is nothing about that launcher that
looks simple. This could easily take 500 hours by one coder and in the
US, that would be $50 K. Comparing hardware to software development
costs is apples to oranges. Software does not develop itself and development is not cheap. It takes time for people to develop software and time is money.
…and instead of being annoying cynics who ask ignorant questions, some of you guys could have stopped being lazy and hopped over to the web link and looked at the Chameleon FAQ at Kickstarter:
“The prototype looks finished – why will it take so long to make it available?
There is a big difference between a prototype and shippable software.
Even a prototype like the one in the Kickstarter video is far from a
complete product. While the prototype shows actual home screen creation
and editing and real working widgets, there is still a lot of hard work
to be done to ensure the user experience is uncompromised in any way and
also to ensure that what we are shipping is fully tested to provide the
performance we are promising. Remember, we are showing Chameleon on our
own tablet, which is a known and unchanging environment. We still have
to test on a wide variety of tablets so that everyone gets the same
experience.
What exactly is the $50,000 going towards at this point?
Fifty grand sure is a lot of money. In fact, we have already invested
far more than that into Chameleon. Creating an product like Chameleon
is not done overnight – it needs need a team of developers, designers,
and a test bed of hardware. What you are seeing is the product of months
of effort entirely self funded by us, all while juggling other projects
to help keep the lights on. Oh and ramen noodles of course! All
proceeds from Kickstarter will go directly to completing production of
Chameleon. ”
What is the money going into? They already made the launcher. Do they think it costs 50k to put the apk on Google Play? (Hey, I rhymed!)
Dude, how can you not understand? It is not finished. The ad shows a mock-up of what it can do. Developers cost money. $100 hr in California easy. I have coders who work 100 hrs a week. That would give 5 weeks worth of coding by ONE person with no room for marketing or paying themselves.
and coders only cost $2 an hr in India.
As someone who has ACTUALLY hired coders in India I will tell you that you get what you pay for over there. They will cost at least $12/hr – $20/hr, you will have to spell everything out to them, pray they actually work more than 20 hrs a week, and prepare for inefficient coding.
Sorry, I missed the word prototype when he explained that he showed it off around the world.
You didn’t miss it. What you missed was the ability to not be spoon-fed every last detail of information to assess their obvious situation.
Humorously enough, I believe I actually did miss that word. You see, I was busy reading other android news while I watched the video, and the word “prototype” simply did not register in my mind. All I heard was that they showed the app around the world. So, I believe that I am capable of not being “spoon-fed” every last detail of information. However, the simple fact that I had to write this post explaining myself might suggest that it is, in fact, you who needs to have all of the details hand-fed to you by spoon? I mean, I’m just saying.
No, you didn’t have to write this post to explain yourself, you are pretty simple enough to understand. As well, since you didn’t understand me the first time (typical), you didn’t have to HEAR him say it was a prototype. The situation made that obvious… to most people.
I would continue to argue, but I do not see how an argument would benefit either of us. I made an honest mistake, and I do apologize if that offends you. Life’s too short to waste it on inconsequential quarrels. Have a good life, my friend.
They did not already make a launcher, what you’re seeing is just a mockup. It could even be just an animation.
This is basically similar to what I do with virtual desktops on windows 7. I have a desktop for surfing, one for software development, one for gaming etc.
This looks good. Hope this works well.
Looks like Netvibes :P
Google buy it NAO!! :D
Good looking interface. I don’t care for how you expand the widgets though. I’d prefer simple anchors points.
backed!
Looks good. I’d gladly buy it if it’s delivered and lives up to the hype. However, I’m not going to “invest” in a project ahead of time that may not appear due to “lack of funding.”
I can understand their wanting to make money off of it, but I hope they can understand my skepticism in paying for vaporware in advance.
Will Galaxy Note be counted as Tablet? It has 1280×800 screen and going to have ICS soon…
I got this from the FAQ on their Kickstarter page:
“Will smaller screen sizes be supported?
Because we are focused on optimizing performance – the first release
will be performance optimized for 10″ (1280 x 800) however we will be
working hard to ensure Chameleon works on smaller tablets as well. The
framework and widgets are already designed to dynamically fit different
screen sizes, but we want to ensure the performance doesn’t suffer.”
Also, it will work on HC 3.2 and higher.
I just pledged $5….I think I like it, much better than SPB Launcher that I spent $15 on. So I’ll give my $5 in advance for the app. Basically a pre-order. I don’t know why there is so much controversy about the process.
and if its not funded I don’t get charged. And it will cost more than $5 and probably won’t have a free version….soooo….
Chamleon posted an .apk to try at
http://chameleon.teknision.com/thelab/