While most Android enthusiasts (including many members of our smartphone community here at XDA) frown upon the idea of custom UI overlays by device manufacturers, they include certain visual or feature enhancements at times that add to the overall user experience for many. Over the course of the past few versions, HTC Sense has been making a transition towards minimalism. This has been done by getting closer to the stock Android experience, while still offering its signature fresh and bright look and feel.

One such feature that many enjoy is the task manager interface. However, since this is an HTC Sense exclusive, owners of other devices have thus far been out of luck. Luckily for Samsung Galaxy S III owners running the stock XELLA firmware (or custom ROMs derived from it), you can now get the same style of task management and switching UI thanks to XDA Member Tamerlan2009.

This HTC Sense-style Task Manager mod supports both portrait and landscape views for the task switching interface, offering you large previews of your currently running and recent apps, complete with app names and icons under the previews. It also features a nice shiny reflection to add some visual oomph. From the task switching interface, you get quick access to Task Manager and Google Search, and can also kill all the currently running apps in one go (the usefulness of which is debatable, but that’s a different story).

As mentioned earlier, the mod is intended for Galaxy S III I9300 running the stock XELLA firmware, as well as custom ROMs based on it. You can give it a try by visiting the forum thread.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is one of the best selling smartphones to date. As expected, it gets a lot of attention here at XDA due to high interest by both users and developers alike. For those of us who want to fully customize our devices, there are countless custom ROMs like CyanogenMod, AOKP, and Paranoid Android, each with advanced settings built-in that allow us to tweak many aspects of the UI. Though if you want to stick with the default TouchWiz-laden OS shipped with the device and still want to be able to tweak certain UI elements, there’s no shortage of mods for that either. XDA Senior Member gharrington has recently released one such mod that allows you to tweak several aspects of the status bar clock of the stock Galaxy S III firmware to your liking.

The mod adds options in the default Date and Time settings that let you center your clock on the status bar, show or hide AM/PM and the day of the week, or even hide the clock entirely. There is also a (work-in-progress) option to choose the size of the AM/PM display, but it isn’t currently functional and the developer has promised to fix it in an update.

While it is built for the XXELLA firmware, this mod should also work on LKC, LL5 and possibly other firmware versions as well—along with any modified ROMs based on these firmwares. As always, you can find more information and the download link in the forum thread.

If there is a way to make an existing button to do something different, developers will figure out a way to do it. Sometimes the volume rockers can function as skip buttons for the music player. The issue isn’t getting it to work, but getting it to work right. For the US variants of the Galaxy S III, the volume rocker as a skip button mod has been done correctly.

XDA Recognized Developer loserskater has released the proper way to make the volume buttons work as skip buttons. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately) for lazy people, only the long way has been released. So if users want this mod, they’ll have to learn to decompile some APK files. If one is wondering, it is different from existing mods. Here is loserskater’s explanation:

-The difference between this and the previous mod is that sending the media button presses would send an ordered broadcast and the app with the highest priority would take the broadcast and see if it needed it and then pass it along if it didn’t. Well most audio apps haven’t been updated to use this method. And if you changed it to just broadcast instead of ordered all media players would get the broadcast so you’d have a bunch of apps trying to all play music. This uses private apis that only the system can use and it’s the same method the lockscreen controls use which is controlled by the audio service instead of broadcasts. I hope that all makes sense

In case that doesn’t make sense, here’s the simplified version: This uses the same method as the lock screen music controls for the volume rockers. Because of the private APIs used in accessing the audio service rather than using a broadcast, you run in to none of the traditional pitfalls. While using an ordered broadcast should work, not all apps take advantage of this.

For the full method, check out the original thread.

While Samsung may not always update every device with the urgency that we as users all crave, one thing they definitely got right was releasing the same device for multiple carriers with only minimal changes. This makes it very easy for developers and users from different carriers to work together to fix problems, develop ROMs, and have other sorts of fun. For instance, there is now a guide that walks users through the process of porting any ROM from a US variant of the Galaxy S III to any other US variant.

XDA Recognized Developer PureMotive released the tutorial, and it helps end users port both TouchWiz and AOSP-derived ROMs from one variant to the next. As the devices have strikingly similar hardware, porting ROMs requires only a few changes. As PureMotive outlines for TouchWiz ROMs:

In the ROM you want to port – delete /system/etc/apns-conf.xml
Replace the apns-conf.xml you just deleted with the one from the ROM for your carrier
Open up /system/build.prop in Notepad++
Locate every instance of d2att, d2tmo, or d2spr and replace it with d2vzw (Use CTRL+F if you have to)
Save the build.prop after all changes are made

That’s essentially all that it takes to make a ROM compatible with your device. These instructions were written specifically for porting to the Verizon variant of the Galaxy S III, but it can be used on other devices with very minor changes. Porting an AOSP-based ROM requires a little more work, but the idea is pretty much the same. Just make sure that the source ROM is from another US variant, and not from the International SGS3!

To see the full method, check out the original thread.

One of the first things many developers and users do when obtaining a new device or a new firmware update is figure out what’s wrong with it. Fortunately for bug hunters (and unfortunately for everyone else) there is always something wrong, even with the most popular and polished devices. However, there is almost always a fix made available. Now, there is a fix for at least one of the WiFi roaming bugs for the Samsung Galaxy S III.

XDA Forum Member felixchris released a hack that fixes at least one of the three potential WiFi roaming bugs. That means there are two that aren’t fixed, but a step forward is a step forward. Out of the three, only bug number three on the list is fixable. Here is felixchris’ explanation on which ones are which:

- If the phone now connects to AP2 and shows a high signal strength, you are observing the Galaxy S2 bug –> Bug 1 in the list

- If the phone still connects to AP1 and shows a low signal strength, you are observing the Nexus bug –> Bug 2 in the list

- If the signal strength seems to increase while getting closer to AP2, but then the wifi icon disappears briefly and comes back after a few seconds, and the web radio stream drops, you are observing the Galaxy S3 bug, and this workaround will help you. –> Bug 3 in the list

In these examples, AP1 and AP2 are WiFi access points. The bugs deal with the device not being able to manage two connections very well. Bug 3 on the list is the one that is fixable with a hack.

There are two methods to apply the fix. One is a version that doesn’t require a custom recovery, otherwise known as the old fashioned long way. The other involves flashing a zip in a custom recovery. Once installed, Bug 3 shouldn’t be an issue any longer.

For more details, check out the original thread.