As always, new Android OS upgrades, whether significant or not, come with welcome additions and improvements, such as Google Now and awesome eye candy. For those of us that can’t or won’t upgrade to Android 4.1, there should be no room for concern as we can still get a taste of Jelly Bean all while using our glorious phones powered with Android 2.0 or newer. If you use Go Launcher EX, one of many outstanding launcher applications for Android on our very own Best Android Apps list, you are in luck.

Because of the popularity of this launcher, there many, many themes (some sexy, some iPhone-esque) available for this launcher, and luckily, theme developers have also released some themes that resemble Jelly Bean’s look. Are they worth a look? Let’s find out.

Before you go download these launcher theme apps, please realize you need to have Go Launcher EX installed, a free, wildly popular launcher for Android 2.0+. Once you have this installed, you can then install any of these laucher themes and select them from Home > Menu > Themes.

Jelly Bean Go Launcher EX by BlueFrog [Android 1.6+]

jelly bean theme

Pros:

  • Ratings: Fourteen users have given this theme a 4.5 star out of 5.
  • Size: This launcher barely takes 1 MB of your SD card space at 942 kB.
  • No ads

Cons:

  • The wallpaper quality is OK. You can see some pixelated parts in the yellow portion of the wallpaper, but then again, this is a truly lightweight launcher theme.
  • In my test device (HTC EVO 4G), the home icon in the app drawer was cut off, while in the Google Play product page, the screenshots from the developer show no such incomplete icon. There are also two additional icons from the screenshots that I’m missing (RSS and menu) from the same app drawer. I’m thinking this issue might be just with my phone.
  • For some reason, I also didn’t find any wallpapers when I tapped on the GO Wallpaper option (besides the one you see in my screenshot), while the product page also states that one of the features of this theme is its wallpapers. Perhaps you will have better luck on your phone and be able to see the wallpapers.

Jelly Bean Go Theme by NitroX-developers [No Longer Available]

jelly bean theme android

Pros:

  • This developers have made at least four other Go Themes so it’s probably safe to say that the developers know what they’re doing.
  • Icons are shinier than regular Android 4.0 icons.
  • Size: This one is also barely 1MB at 920 kB.
  • No ads

Cons:

  • Some more wallpapers would be nice. The one wallpaper you see on my screenshot has a visible watermark on the lower right corner.

Jelly Bean Theme GoLauncherEX by ADDesigns [No Longer Available]

jelly bean theme

Pros:

  • Like the previous app, this theme comes from a developer that has made a bunch of themes for different launcher apps, including ADW, LauncherPro and Go Launcher EX.
  • Comes with 10 beautiful Jelly Bean wallpapers.
  • Some redesigned icons like Gmail, Adobe Reader, etc.
  • No ads.

Cons:

  • Size: Considerably bigger in size compared to the previous two apps, at 5.4 MB, but this is probably due to the all the graphics (icons and wallpaper pack).
  • You can see some loss of quality in the first wallpaper.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the third app simply because I love the wallpaper galore, but honestly, all three do a pretty nice job of bringing you the looks of Jelly Bean for free. What about you? Are you planning on getting some new eye candy for your phone?

Let us know what themes you use on your Android device in the comments below.

Photo credit: Mauricio Lima