Personalizing Your Android Smartphone

Is your smartphone's look getting old? Or do you just want to customize your phone beyond just changing the wallpaper. Well, look no further. This is the right guide for you.

Launchers

Android launchers are the easiest way to change how your phone's UI (user interface) looks like. They provide a good base upon which to make changes to your UI. Most of them allow you to change how many icons there are on the home screen, what your dock (the bar of apps at the bottom of your home screen) looks like, how you scroll through your apps, and what wallpapers you like. If you install extra apps, you can even change your apps' icons.
The best one in my opinion is Nova Launcher. It's lightweight, easy to use, and it has no annoying ads at all. You can find a list of some more here.

Changing App Icons

If you have installed a launcher, then you can also start installing and activating icon packs. There are essentially apps which you can download and add to your launcher. They change how the icons look, as well as the font.
My favourite free one is Moonshine, which has a nice material design look to it. However, it isn't updated anymore. You'll find many more on Google Play. Here's an article to help you get started.

Ringtones

Sometimes that annoying piercing ringtone makes you just want to smash your phone against the wall. There isn't even a large variety of ringtones pre-installed on your phone. However, there is hope.
Using Zedge, the largest and most diverse ringtone compilation I've ever found, you can choose the one you like, and not be forced into settling for some default rubbish ringtone. You can browse their website online to save data, or you can download the app.
You can also Google for some other websites. There are many available. You can even simply download you favourite song and make that your ringtone.

Themes

Changing (or adding) a theme to your smartphone changes it a lot. So far I've only been talking about small tweaks (in comparison to this), but now we'll get to how you can change the whole look of your phone.
Themes usually change the icons, the font, the colours, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Here is a list of some theme-related apps and launchers and here's a nice big list of themes.

Widgets

Adding widgets to your homepage can be very useful and also stylish. You can find apps on Google Play which allow you to essentially create your own widgets. Crazy, huh?
UCCW comes highly rated and I'm sure there are others ones out there.

That's it for now folks! If you have any ideas or suggestions for new articles feel free to comment here.