Xperia Home Launcher APK for Arc and Arc S. Might Work on Other Sony Ericsson Phones Too!

XDA member hafiz98 has posted this awesome looking add-on for the Xperia Arc & Arc S. It replaces the default home launcher with the one from the XPeria S, and looks spectacular.

You will need to have root access to be able to install this, as it involves pushing apk files to the system folder, and changing properties using Root Explorer or ES File Manager.

This has been tested to work on the Arc & Arc S, but may well work with other Sony Ericsson phones as well. No harm done in trying; the result is worth the effort.

You can download the Xperia Home Launcher add-on for the Arc & Arc S HERE.

Installation Steps

  1. Download the add-on zip file and extract the contents. You should get 3 files  1) build.prop 2) Home.apk 3) SystemUI.apk
  2. Connect your device to PC via USB cable and transfer these 3 files to your device  SD card
  3. Disconnect the device from PC. Now open ES File Explorer ( Or any File manager with Root explorer capability).
  4. Make sure that root access is enabled in the settings for ES File Explorer
  5. Navigate to the SD card where you have copied the 3 files in Step 2
  6. Copy all 3 files and paste them in /system folder
  7. Once the files are copied, change permissions for each file to the same permissions as other files in the folder. You can do this by :
    • Navigate to /system/app
    • Long press on one of the pre-existing files in /system/app
    • Click Properties–>Change Permissions (***Note down the permissions that you see)
    • Go back to /System
    • Now Long press each of the 3 files you copied here in Step 5, and change the permissions to what you ***noted down earlier
  8. Transfer Home.apk and systemUI.apk from /system to the /system/app folder
  9. Leave build.prop where it is i.e. in /system folder
  10. Exit ES File Explorer & Go back to your home screen. You should now have this awesome looking Home Launcher on your Arc/s.

For more details, and to read about what others have to say about this, you can visit the original thread HERE.

Do try this out, and let us know how it went for you, in comments below..