favorite launcher?

I have to say, I've used every launcher I can put my hands on. . .here are my thoughts. . .for what they are worth to you. . . . .

Holo Launcher is beautiful and when it works, it works well. This is a lightweight and nimble launcher that packs a lot under the hood. . .that said, when using Youtube AND Holo Launcher together, my phone freezes and requires a battery pull. When it's not seizing up my phone, it's drinking my battery like Kool-Aid. The dev tends to be unresponsive to requests to fix things and quite frankly, I think for all the bugs it still has, it's "Plus" variation is overpriced.

SPB Launcher is eye candy supreme and I was happy to pay for it, though in retrospect, I think it's obnoxiously priced. Simple things like a lack of support for scrollable widgets and the inability to theme it make it a deal breaker for me.

TSF Shell Launcher is a wonder. It's slick and fast and is simply glorious to watch in action. It also has a steep learning curve and an even steeper price. . . .easily the most expensive of any I have ever used. It has also not been kind to my phone's battery.

Xperia Home Launcher is quick and has a beautiful and functional interface. . .however, there's no support for notification badges, the infinite looping is jerky, no theme support and the dev hasn't been seen or heard from for quite a while.

Launchers like MIUI Home, iLauncher and Espier are great for those craving an iPhone-type experience. I find MIUI Home to be a little "blocky" in its presentation. . .not as polished as other launchers, a surprise coming from the same house that brought us that beautiful ROM. iLauncher and Espier and actually quite adept at doing what they do. They do a reasonable job of mimicking the iPhone experience and are certainly excellent transitory choices for those making their way over from the iOS platform. Personally, I have played with them off and on and find them to be fairly basic in feature sets and lacking in any customization options. Also, if I wanted an iPhone experience, I would have just purchased an iPhone.

360 Launcher is slick. . .and XDA user Melvin Ching has done a stellar job of keeping this Chinese-based launcher translated for those of us whose primary language is English. It's fast and the 360 team is quite responsive to dealing with issues that plague its releases. The transition effects are fantastic and the app drawer layout is extremely useful. Having said all that, there's just something clunky and cartoonish about the launcher, in my opinion.

DX Home Launcher is interesting. . .it has a lot of the things I look for in launchers. . .scrollable widgets, excellent transition effects, an interesting 3D overview effect. It's also kind of quirky in its implementation of some of its proprietary widgets. Like 360 Launcher, the weather widget included sports a large database of cities to choose from. . . .so long as you live in China. A large portion of us don't. I have also had some problems with this launcher locking up my phone.

Go Launcher EX is in a class by itself. It's EXTREMELY customizable. It's EXTREMELY feature packed. The developers are EXTEMELY good about asking for and absorbing feedback. . . . .It's also EXTREMELY laggy and overweight on all but the most power-packed phones. A launcher should be about maximum asthetics AND performance. Go Launcher EX has the asthetics down with themeing and transitions. . .not so much the performance.

Launcher 7 and Windows 8 Launcher are one trick ponies that do what they are supposed to do flawlessly, which is to imitate their respective namesakes. Launcher 7 is about as good as it gets for adopting the Metro UI feel and performance. Windows 8 Launcher is good but still has some work to do. There are no SMS/email/missed call notifications yet.

Launcher Pro Plus and ADW Launcher EX are arguably the most well-rounded of the bunch. These are the two launchers that I migrate back and forth between. They just do what they're supposed to do and do it well with little if any lag in performance. The transitions on both are well-implemented and both are very customizable. They both have a scrollable dock at the bottom. Launcher Pro Plus allows for looping on the dock. . . .ADW Launcher EX does not, but DOES allow for as many icons as you wanna' put on the dock. . .something I've seen nowhere else up to this point. Sadly, neither launcher has seen an update in well over a year, though there are rumors that the developer of Launcher Pro Plus is STILL rewriting his product from the ground up. . .time will tell.

I know there are other launchers out there. . .these are just the ones I've spent some time playing with. I hope this helps others looking around for launchers and have as much fun as I do playing with them.

adw Ex

Adw ex the paid version i like the new version with the scrolling dock and the fact i can make the dock icons so large.

DannyBiker said:

Adw EX Launcher : you can argue with it it's just the fastest; it's SUPER snappy. Go Launcher is full of options but it get slower and slower. Like most of the Go Team products : starts great then it goes in all directions and becomes a factory...

Try scrolling the app drawer in vertical mode in Go Launcher then in ADW...and feel the pain for Go.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

adw scrolling performance is far WORSE on my phone than go launcher.

I have recently switched from Go Launcher to TSF Shell and now I can't imagine my life without it.

Just some interesting news..

I know that most of you know about go launcher..take a look at their last beta ..

they have developed a new core and its just unbelievable..I got the feeling on gb that had on jb alpha..really impressive..

I'm not a huge fan of their launcher because its a little bit bloated..but with this new core..they got me hehe..

Take a look, let us know what do you think

Sent from my MB860 using xda app-developers app