The TSF Shell launcher app, which will launch next week on February 29th.
An amazing 3D homescreen interface experience is about to hit Android phones, and it’s thanks to a team of Chinese engineers who call themselves The Special Forces (TSF). The crew’s upcoming first app is, essentially, a third-party launcher app that gives Android users a new way to interact with their phones.
From the demo video (embedded below), the UI is certainly something to look forward to. The main feature of TSF Shell Pro – which is the launcher app’s name, which will launch in the Android Market on February 29th – is the great customizability of your screens. It adds all kinds of new gestures apart from the usual tap, long-touch, or zoom: it has double touch for making multiple selections, a lasso-like action for moving stuff, fast and fluid screen-switching, advanced menus, the ability to rotate app icons, and even to randomly organize the icons and stuff them into box-like folders on your screen.
TSF Shell features animated special effects. Click to enlarge.
Lots of extra 3D widgets are built into its launcher app – for notes, weather, music – and all featuring a uniquely interactive and animated style. Other interesting creations include a a pop-up menu, lots of lovely props for theming your homescreens, special effects such as icons splashing in a sea (pictured right; plus there’s a video showing that graphic effect on Youku), and even icons on fire which you can use just for fun. After the app’s launch, users can download new widgets, themes and other gizmos from the upcoming TSF in-app store.
The Shenzhen-based TSF crew describes themselves as “passionate about creating new computer graphics display effects as well as innovative and practical human-computer interaction modes.” TSF says it uses a custom-built “C3D engine” in its Shell Pro launcher to enable all this extra action on your regular Android phone, and that the aim of it all is to make the mobile user-experience more fluid, so that you can fling things around just as you would with papers or physical objects.
It’s not yet clear what are the performance requirements for a phone to be able to use this app. There are a lot of other launcher apps on the Market, but most of them are just about theming (such as Launcher Pro, or other Chinese-made ones such as Go Launcher EX, or QQ Launcher) and don’t have such a remarkably different user-interface.
So, if you want a new homescreen experience for your Android phone, check back on the TSF homepage or the Android Market on ‘leap day,’ February 29th.
Here’s the team’s own demo video (or mobile readers can go watch on YouTube, or Youku):
[Source: the TSF homepage]