ICS Launcher (Syndicate Apps)
Well, as it turns out, there are plenty of better ways. My SGS2 has a hardware Home key and two capacitive buttons for Back and Menu so quite why ICS Launcher is giving me an on screen Home and Back is anyone's guess. To further add to their uselessness they're naturally not visible in any app whatsoever thus rendering the on screen Home and Back as pointless as cutlery in a famine.
The third softkey, which looks like some sort of window cascade icon, brings up a common application list, providing Browser, Market, SMS and Email launch options. All well and good however the font looks like it couldn't have more aliasing if I'd designed it with Lego, it looks stretched, unpolished and amateurish.
The App Drawer isn't really anything remarkable. There is certainly nothing resembling official ICS about it, unless you count having the aforementioned pointless softkeys taking up room that could otherwise have shown another row of apps. There appears to be no option to change how the App drawer behaves, so you're stuck scrolling vertically, anyone who likes to have horizontal scrolling or 3D scrolling is shit out of luck. Somewhat bafflingly, pressing the on screen Back key blanks the screen before returning to home, whereas pressing the proper Back key zooms the App Drawer icons out in reverse of the falling into place effect when you open the App Drawer. Also annoyingly, if you press the on screen Home key from the App drawer it doesn't take you back to Home, it takes you to the overhead view forcing you to pick which Home screen to return to. Lastly, putting a check in the option “Hide Drawer Labels” in the Drawer Settings actually shows the app labels in the drawer, removing the check shows them. Nice QA there guys. Again, their on screen soft keys don't show in the launcher's settings screen nor in their quick launcher list I mentioned earlier, further cementing their pointlessness.
Having a look around the other features throws up another puzzle. Why is Launcher Settings on the Add Item menu?
You would think it lets you put a short-cut to different launcher settings but no, it just takes you to the settings menu. Then again, it doesn't let me add anything at all to the Home Screen, no Widgets, no Folders, nothing. It lets me go through the motions but then stares at me blankly afterwards as if I've just asked it to repaint the house.
At this point I actually wanted to stop delving any deeper since I've just spent four whole paragraphs completely decimating this poor excuse for a launcher but I my desperation to find SOMETHING good to say about it was growing. Back to the Add Item menu then as I noticed “ICS Wallpapers” in there, so I took a look. I found nothing particularly unique, the usual playing about with Photoshop filters and random colours, horrific colour banding aplenty with a dash of stock photos presumably plundered from a Google Image Search for “pictures for selling picture frames”.
As for the positives, well, adding an app icon to the home screen or to the launcher works as you'd expect. It also managed not to crash and I didn't notice any ads. My house didn't fall down as a result of using it nor did my phone melt, explode, or attempt to kill my neighbours. It also comes with a handy Uninstall button on the Market page. So there's that.
VERDICT : At a cost of precisely £0.00 I'd say this is overpriced. Judging by the greyed out “ICS+ Launcher Settings” they're planning on making a paid version in the future. I'd suggest Team Syndicate have a lot of improvements to make before they have the cheek to start asking people for money.
Moving swiftly on... I very much hope it's all uphill from here, so next up is Go Launcher EX.
Go Launcher EX (Go Dev Team)
Upon starting the launcher, it seems it is very important that I know there are over 4000 themes available. When I finally get to the main home screen I find widgets stuck all over the place that aren't actually functional widgets, with an offensive red DOWNLOAD slapped on them. As I scroll through the home screens, being greeted by more widgets that don't really exist, a Wild Popup appears demanding that I choose a transition effect. I'm loathing this already. If Go Launcher had a soundtrack Disney would be suing Go for infringing on their ownership of the annoyingly sugary.
The App Drawer defaults to a standard horizontal pagination and has a nifty feature of letting you view all the apps or apps you've recently run. It also wraps around if you scroll past the end or beginning of the drawer which certainly has its uses. However if that grinds your gears the wrap around scrolling can be disabled, as can horizontal pagination be disabled altogether in favour of the more traditional vertical scroll.
Going through the preferences of Go Launcher, there certainly is quite a rich selection of customisations. You can configure fonts, custom fonts, desktop effects, app drawer effects, gestures and the typical advanced settings of staying persistent in memory on low memory devices, it also lets you backup or restore your configuration.
One thing that does bother me about Go is they have this insidious habit of trying to foist further downloads onto you. All the fake widgets drag you to the market as do some of the configuration options in the preferences. What concerns me more with this, is that not all of the downloads are particularly specific with what they do or what they're for. There's also been some speculation in the past about whether Go have any ulterior motives in regards to the permissions their apps request. I'm not entirely sure why, for example, Go Launcher requests the ability to directly call phone numbers or to read my address book. However in this case, given how long Go Launcher has been around I'll defer to Google allowing their apps to remain on the Market for as long as they have, especially as the request to direct dial is not unique to Go Launcher out of other launcher apps.
My biggest criticism of Go Launcher I think is how incomplete it feels until you've jumped through their hoops downloading other things they want you to download. My other problem would be how sluggish it feels during use, even on a phone as well endowed as the SGS2.
VERDICT: Not for me however it is very feature rich and has a lot of community support from wallpapers and themes to widgets and other support apps. I've certainly used worse launchers, however I've also used better.
SPB Shell 3D (SPB Software)
First of the paid launchers next in the form of SPB Shell 3D. I almost didn't bother because of the giant price tag it carries; almost £10 in the UK and almost $15 in the US. This is pretty steep for an Android app, however I decided to spend some time on seeing if it was worth it, being careful to stay inside the fifteen minute refund window. To that end, there are no screenshots or video of me using it as fifteen minutes isn't very long and no way was I going to be stiffed for a ten quid bill should the launcher turn out to be crap.
Well, it didn't turn out to be crap. It didn't turn out to be amazing either. I'd say the only real “3D” aspect of the launcher would be replacing the traditional thumbnail view with a spinning vertical 3D Rolodex type thing, similar to the desktop cube on 3D powered Linux desktops. It looks snazzy enough but offers no additional function over the old thumbnail view. I will give them credit for the widgets provided, the weather widget was particularly nice with five day forecast and gps location ability. There were also widgets for controlling screen brightness, turning wifi on or off, the ability to place individual contacts onto a home screen and a widget that would present upcoming birthdays. There were also useless widgets such as one that shows me the battery level, when all I need to do is look up at the notification bar to see that. Finally a quick mention of the image widget that gives you a shortcut to Android's built in Gallery or it'll let you flick through a pile of pictures from whatever album it decided to pick out and let you click on. For me it was the screenshots I've taken recently. The thumbnails were of incredibly poor quality and the widget itself just seemed rather redundant, as you can eliminate any need for it by simply placing an app short-cut to Gallery onto your home screen which also takes up less room.
There's very little room for customisation either. The launcher preferences menu is incredibly bland, so bland in fact I've forgotten what was in there already, there was certainly little of any use. I'd wager that the developers themselves would have to double check what options you can configure, so bereft of any real function as the preferences menu is.
VERDICT: So while not awful, the mind boggles at the thought that someone, somewhere, decided this launcher was worth so much money. There are cheaper launchers if you're looking for that bit extra over a free one and more to the point they offer a much more feature rich package. SPB Shell is most certainly a horrific rip off for anyone who places any value upon money at all.
MXHome Launcher (NeoMTel)
Next on my list is MxHome. At first launch I find myself wondering why TouchWiz decided to start instead.
Then I pressed the App Drawer. Bloody hell. Clearly a lot of work has gone into the app drawer of MxHome, allowing OCD levels of organising your installed apps. Ranging from ordering them by month of installation, alphabetically, or even by separating them into a plethora of categories. Another nice feature of the App Drawer was the list mode toggle, where you can choose between the usual grid of four columns, or flip into a list mode with nice large text labels, perfect for anyone with eyesight issues. Unfortunately there are some criticisms of the App Drawer as well and how disappointed I was to find them is testament to how impressed I am with the positives I've already mentioned. Scrolling with your thumb appears to be as sensitive and erratic as a psychopathic woman while the painters are in and having been deprived of chocolate. It seemed completely random as to whether my thumb swishes would make the apps fly by faster than I refunded SPB 3D or whether they only skipped a couple of lines. It also seemed to randomly start apps with some scroll attempts, presumably an app I had touched my thumb over at the start of the scroll attempt. Another minor disappointment with the App Drawer customisation is you cannot create categories of your own or rename the ones already there.
Another feature of MxHome is what I imagine they're referring to with the name MxHome where they provide a sort of fancy looking basic launcher screen.
This appears to be what all the available themes are for and as you can see it provides a short-cut to your address book, emails, Android settings, your browser and of course, calls and SMS messages. However, none of the short-cuts can be customised and everything launches the default app so for example you cannot have the SMS short-cut launch Handcent, the Internet icon only launches the default Android browser regardless of whatever browser you personally use. The same limitation can be aimed at the dock, where you're unable to add your own short-cuts or edit what the current short-cuts decide to launch when pressed.
Overall, it's not a bad launcher. Configuration options are a bit sparse and it certainly gives a feel of just tacking any old launcher around their somewhat nifty MxHome Theme page and App Drawer. However if you're the type that has a hell of a lot of apps installed you'll certainly enjoy being able to organise them better in the MxHome app drawer.
VERDICT: Promising, however lacking in dock and launcher features where other launchers have it beaten all ends up. Provides an excellent way of organising apps on the App Drawer though and is one to watch for the future, assuming the developers continue to improve it.
Four down, seven to go. Let's have a butchers at Launcher 7, then.
Launcher 7 (Timo Kujala)
That's right, someone was so envious of some of the worst utilisation of screen real estate I've ever seen that they decided to write a whole Android launcher dedicated to the cause.
It's ad supported, which is fine I suppose but it was designed by a colourblind incompetent, which isn't fine at all. The default screen greets you with a retina piercing neon green. While this can be changed, practically anything else would have been less jarring. You only get one vertically scrolling home screen and the application drawer again defaults to a very wasteful list. If this is in any way representative of WP7 I'm amazed Microsoft are still bothering with the mobile phone market.
That's about it really. It's ugly, practically featureless and seriously underwhelming. If you want a WP7 look this badly you might as well stump up for a phone that runs it.
VERDICT: No. Just.... no.
Zeam Launcher (Michael Bentz)
This brings us neatly onto Zeam, a launcher intended to be quick and lightweight and it certainly feels that way. It launches quickly, flipping between home screens is snappy and bringing up the App Drawer is as instant as you'd expect where you have a choice between horizontal paging or vertical scrolling. The dock is a simple drag your apps to it affair and allows you to move icons around so you can arrange them to an order you'd prefer. It lacks however an ability to have a uniformed icon theme for apps on the dock like other launchers.
Despite being a “light” launcher, there's the usual configuration options you'd need. Defaulting to three home screens it allows you to have up to seven and you can configure three different gestures to various actions as well as reassign what the Home button does when pressed.
Because it's intended to be light on resources and high on speed I'm not really going to bash on Zeam for not having tons of features, the only disappointment I did find was the lack of ability to back up your configuration which is fast becoming a standard feature on all launchers worth having as well as being on some that aren't.
VERDICT: If you're running an old phone that isn't exactly blessed with horsepower or memory then Zeam is for you, it's tidy enough and quick enough to keep older phones responsive while waiting for an upgrade. I'd also recommend it for people who honestly don't care what bells and whistles a launcher has, who just use it to launch apps and have a clock on their home screen. For people who like to muck about with themes or enjoy having launchers with widgets, keep moving.
Regina 3D Launcher (Nemustech.Kr.Android)
Well that's all of them. The clear winner of the paid launchers is ADW Launcher Ex and to be quite honest, for me it is also the clear winner overall. If you just cannot possibly bear parting with any money, or you live in one of those countries that still advertise caves in the property section and aren't allowed to buy from the Market, then I'd suggest you pick between Zeam, ADW or Launcher Prodepending upon your personal preference. I will, however give honourable mention to MxHome; it has some nice unique features, an excellent App Drawer and is one to keep an eye on for further improvements.
Time for Regina. I'll give you children a few seconds to stop guffawing at the hilarious fact that Regina sounds like vagina. Finished? Good.
First impressions of Regina were “wow, this is pretty” and then it crashed. Since I've got twelve different launchers installed I gave it the benefit of the doubt, until I installed a new theme and it crashed again. Definitely noticing a theme here and not the one I was hoping for.
Now that I'm back up and running, the first feature I checked out was worthy of note as after installing Regina Default Theme from the Market, you can select a different wallpaper for each work space, which is pretty neat albeit memory consuming should you decide to have a different wallpaper per work space across many work spaces.
There's certainly a lot more 3D about Regina than there was in SPB Shell 3D. Transition effects are usually smooth although there is occasionally some jerkiness. The App Drawer has a nice effect that you can toggle when scrolling however unfortunately you're stuck with horizontal paging only.
Regina also comes with plenty of widgets and it's clear a great deal of thought has gone into most of them. The clock is a nice flip clock with a 3D effect during time change as well as having a weather function on the clock. Despite this it still only takes up three rows at the top of the screen. Each widget has a configuration icon in the top right and again a nice 3D transition turns the widget over, presenting you with the options for that widget.
Despite looking very pretty, this Regina definitely has a few cases of thrush. You cannot set a custom wallpaper anywhere. It lets you try, you choose and crop a picture from your gallery however it is never applied. It's also less stable than a schizophrenic mass murderer, spraying wanton death and destruction upon Android and when it's not crashing to boot splash every so often it locks Android up to the point of needing a battery pull.
VERDICT: Very very pretty, some excellent 3D transition effects and probably one of the nicest looking launchers I've seen for high powered devices. Unfortunately, lack of stability, ability to set custom wallpapers and a limited set of configuration options really lets it down.
PandaHome (HackTron007)
Now for PandaHome, or to give it its full Market title, 91 Pandahome Pro. This shows some promise but I already hate it so very much. Why? Because on the App Drawer it has decided it best to not show the application titles and I cannot for the life of me find a way to turn them back on. This is fine for people who recognise apps purely off their icons however I don't, I read titles and search in alphabetical order so to suddenly be left without my usual method of application location I'm now peering at my phone with the sort of wide eyed panic a spotty virgin would display if presented with a stark naked supermodel demanding a Lancashire Bicycle Pump.
Also during my annoyance of looking for an application I found a search button which supposedly lets you search for apps. I assume this is the case, however to the developers of 91 Pandahome Pro “search” means “sit and gobble up 100% of both my CPUs and render the phone unresponsive until you eventually Force Close”. Marvellous. Also pushing my irritation buttons is how long the App Drawer takes to appear the first time it's used and by first time I mean the first time you run the launcher and after every single boot.
Like Go Launcher there are widgets that you're taken to the Market to download and there are different transitions you can choose for the work spaces. They're so proud of the transitions you get a widget placed onto a work space by default the sole purpose of which is to toggle between transition effects. If you're anything like me that will be removed within thirty seconds of setting up your home screen.
The dockbar is scrollable and theme-able and the widgets can also be skinned. The settings screen is not your usual texty Android affair instead opting for a graphical menu layout. There's lots of options however the menu is laid out so poorly I got fed up looking at them all. They appear quite proud of the theme engine because I've counted eight hundred icons with the word “theme” in their title. OK not really but I did count at least four which is three too many and a clear sign of someone poncing about with making a launcher when they haven't the first idea of how to design a user interface.
Panda also offers an “App Hide” function which I assume lets you hide your applications but again it only shows you the icons, not the application titles further showing the ineptitude of the author when it comes to creating interfaces for people to use.
VERDICT: Looked promising to begin with but the more I used it the less enthused I was, between scatter brained design decisions and badly coded/resource hogging functions I at times found myself more frustrated by this launcher than with the terrible ICS Launcher.
For the final three reviews I'm going to do a quick roundup of the most commonly used launchers, the ones most of you are familiar with, those being ADW, ADW Ex and Launcher Pro/Launcher Pro Plus. If it doesn't look like I can count, that's because I'm counting both Launcher Pros as one, since the addition of Plus just provides widgets.
ADW Launcher (ANDERWEB)
ADW first then, and not much has changed really since I last used it and anyone who uses CyanogenMod should be familiar with it. A competent launcher for sure, not too heavy on resources and has the ability to use some basic themes. You can have up to seven work spaces in total as far as I can tell and the dock is customisable. One difference I did note since I last used it is that you can now long press on dock items and edit the short-cut and the icon which is a welcome feature as this was one thing that kept me using LauncherPro for as long as I did.
In typical ADW fashion you still have more configuration options than you could possibly ever want and it is still maintained despite a paid version being available.
VERDICT: If you want a free launcher that's stable, quick, not too resource heavy and does exactly what it says on the tin, you could do a lot worse than picking ADW. It has excellent theme support and while it may lack some of the gimmicks of other free launchers already covered here, the sheer popularity and age of ADW makes it one to highly recommend from a community support standpoint and from a perspective of stability.
ADW Launcher EX (ANDERWEB)
A review of ADW has the natural progression of bringing us neatly onto my personal launcher of choice, ADWLauncher Ex.
Visually very similar to its free brethren ADW.Launcher, you'd expect it to struggle to add features to justify a paid version even if that price is a very reasonable £2.00. Well like you I did expect it to struggle and was happily proven wrong. Furthermore, AndersWeb manages to add a ton of features to ADW Ex without making anything look like a blatant omission from the free version to get people to pay.
For handing over some pocket change as well as the other ADW features, you get five different app drawer styles and behaviours, different desktop transitions, fully customisable application icons, the ability to set configuration presets which allows you to switch between desktop configurations quickly and easily as well as a more advanced theme engine that lets you apply entire themes like the free version but it also allows you to mix and match themes and icon packs to make it a lot easier to get your own exact look and feel.
I find it very very difficult to find flaws with ADW Launcher Ex and trust me I've tried. I suppose the sheer volume of configuration options can seem daunting to some however the default configuration should suit most people and the themes engine is easily accessible without ever being presented with a laundry list of options. If I were to level any critique at ADW Launcher Ex I suppose it would be the lack of its own widgets and that it could make more use of 3D but to be perfectly honest they are minor gripes at best.
VERDICT: Currently my favourite launcher hands down and definitely worth the incredibly reasonable asking price.
Launcher Pro (Federico Carnales)
Finally last but by no means least, Launcher Pro and Launcher Pro Plus. Essentially a rewrite of the original Launcher with added features, Launcher Pro has become the other go to launcher for most users, where it provides a much more digestible set of configuration options than ADW while still providing enough to be a more than competent launcher. In my own rankings I'd place Launcher Pro second after ADW Launcher Ex and just ahead of standard ADW, making it in my opinion still the best free launcher available.
The paid version adds widgets unique to Launcher Pro and it's clear they are provided with the intention of providing a solid alternative for people currently using HTC Sense as most of the widgets make up for the loss of Sense widgets, something many Sense users whined about whenever they moved more than three pixels away from their comfort zone. All the widgets do their job, a Friendstream like widget, separate Twitter and Facebook widgets, a contacts widget, SMS and calendar.
My current disappointment with Launcher Pro is that it has been some time now since it received any updates. Some of the widgets can be buggy and Launcher Pro is known for the odd crash from time to time but, like many things in the Android universe, most of what the Launcher Pro developer does he does for free and is thus not obligated to spend all of his waking time on one project just to keep Android users happy.
VERDICT : A solid launcher and easily one of the best free ones available. If ADW's configuration options are a bit daunting for you but you still want an easily customisable dock then this is your launcher.
Well that's all of them. The clear winner of the paid launchers is ADW Launcher Ex and to be quite honest, for me it is also the clear winner overall. If you just cannot possibly bear parting with any money, or you live in one of those countries that still advertise caves in the property section and aren't allowed to buy from the Market, then I'd suggest you pick between Zeam, ADW or Launcher Prodepending upon your personal preference. I will, however give honourable mention to MxHome; it has some nice unique features, an excellent App Drawer and is one to keep an eye on for further improvements.
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