Elixir is a system utility for Android that displays information about your device. You can use it to view battery and storage info, view a list of installed apps, move apps to an SD card, see which processes are using your system resources, and do much, much more. Elixir also offers a number of configurable home screen widgets for launching apps or accessing system settings.

The developer just launched Elixir 2, a major update which has a new user interface, more Help icons to help you navigate all of the app’s features, and more options in most screens. You can also apply labels to apps so that you can sort installed applications by label, text filter, system or user-installed applications, or apps that are on your SD card or apps that can be moved to an SD card.

Elixir 2 is also separated into a primary app and an Elixir Widget app. This lets you move Elixir to your SD card to save space while still using widgets. Generally apps that offer home screen widgets don’t perform well when moved to an SD card.

You can find a complete list of new features at the developer’s website. Elixir 2 is available as a free download from the Android Market.

WeatherBug provides several weather apps for Android, with WeatherBug Elite sitting at the top of the heap. This version of the app is ad-free and includes some premium features including radar animations. Normally the app costs $1.99, but Amazon is offering WeatherBug Elite for free today only.

I took the app for a spin, and while I’m not exactly a weather junkie (I don’t see much need for the photos from nearby weather cams, or doppler radar for instance, but I know many folks love these features), I am impressed with the sheer number of details available including current conditions (temperature, wind chill, high, low, precipitation level and wind speed and direction) and extended forecasts.

WeatherBug Elite also offers four different home screen widgets to choose from, including a 3-day forecast widget, or two smaller widgets which show current conditions. There’s also a map widget which shows conditions throughout the region.

The app is available from the Android Market for $1.99, or you can grab it for free from Amazon today. Amazon offers one normally paid app for free each day — and I’ve noticed that if you download the app while it’s free and the uninstall it to save space on your phone, you can always re-download it from the Amazon Appstore for free later without being charged.

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Beautiful Widgets is a popular Android suite of widgets which let you dress up your phone’s home screen with customizable clock and weather widgets. Tapping on a widget also brings up a forecast view with attractive animations.

So far Beautiful Widgets has only really been optimized for smartphones, but the developer has released a public beta of a new version which supports the Motorola XOOM and other tablets with high resolution displays. There’s a new larger clock widget, and when you tap to bring up a forecast, the weather animation will take up the full screen.

Beautiful Widgets 3.5 beta isn’t available from the Android Market, but the developer posted a download link for an installer. The beta expires in five days.

via Droid Life

MIUI Developers have released a free weather app for Android. It’s still just a beta, but it’s already one of the best looking weather apps I’ve seen with attractive high resolution graphics for full screen views and home screen widgets. The app also has a few unusual features such as the ability to share your weather info with friends.

Unfortunately, the app is fairly large and resource intensive and for now you need to manually copy the .apk file to your system/apps directory. That means you can’t easily install the app unless you have a rooted phone.

You can find more information, photos, and download links at xda-developers and at the MIUI Weather page.

via Android Police

The developer of Fancy Widget earned a bit of fame a while back by launching a Home Screen widget for Google Android that looked almost exactly like the default time and weather widget from HTC Sense. Unfortunately (and predictably) he was asked to stop offering that app, which he did.

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Now he’s back with a new app, also called Fancy Widget. It offers the same basic functionality by offering a combined time and weather widget with support for Celcius and Fahrenheit, configurable refresh intervals, and attractive weather icons. But it’s been redesigned to not look quite so HTC Sense-like.

Aside from using a redesigned digital clock and new weather icons, the new app is also more stable and should work better on a wider range of devices. It also supports sunrise and sunset times and the ability to tap on the widget to launch an application.

Fancy Widget v2 is available as a free download from the Android Market. If you have the old version installed, you will not be prompted to update, since the new version is for all intents and purposes a new app.

The HTC G2 smartphone hasn’t hit the streets yet, but a leaked copy of the phone’s firmware has. And among other things, the Android phone appears to have a new version of the Google Voice application, which doesn’t just let you make and receive calls and text messages by opening the app — you can also access some features through a new Home Screen widget.

The new Google Voice Settings widget has four buttons. You can use it to open the Google Voice app, start composing a text message, toggle “do not disturb” mode, or toggle whether Google Voice should be used only for international calls.

There’s also a Google Voice Inbox widget which shows you a preview of your latest message. You can tap the text to open Google Voice and see the whole message, or hit the arrow buttons to flip through messages.

Like the new widgets, but don’t want to have to buy a new phone to get them? The folks at xda-developers have got you covered. Forum member MvP77 has extracted the installer file from the G2 ROM, and the new Google Voice app is available for download. You’ll need to register for the forums to download the file.

The new Google Voice app actually replaces the existing app on your phone, rather than simply adding widgets. But overall, the widgets appear to be the only new features.

Fancy Widget is a home screen widget for Google Android that pretty much duplicates the time and weather widget that ships with HTC Sense UI. So it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that HTC has complained to the developer.

In response, Fancy Widget 1.2.2 will be the last version of the widget that looks like the HTC Sense widget. It’s still available in the Android Market, but not for long. If you want it, you’d best go and grab it now.

The developer does plan to offer a new version soon with a new look.

Update: The new version of Fancy Widget is now available. It actually looks pretty nice, but it doesn’t look like HTC Sense.

via EuroDroid

Google has released a Google Buzz widget for Android. In a nutshell, this means you can update your Google Buzz status from your Android home screen. You can also take a photo with your camera or upload images from your gallery using the widget. And since you’re using a mobile Buzz client, you can tag your updates with the location where you were when you posted.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Google Buzz, because the last thing I need is yet another social network — even if it’s one that’s designed to help you keep track of updtes from my contacts using other sites such as Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, and Gmail. But if you are a Buzz user, you might want to check out the new widget.

It’s available for Android 1.6 and later. You should be able to find the widget by searching for “Google Buzz” in the Android Market.