Launcher Wars: LauncherPro vs. ADW vs. HelixLauncher

[Jason Lee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://lifehacker.com/5627867/battle-of-the-android-home-screen-launchers-adw-vs-launcherpro-vs-helixlauncher' target='_blank'>http://lifehacker.com/5627867/battl...s-helixlauncher</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Many Android devices ship with a default home screen launcher that, frankly, kind of sucks. The good news? You can install a new launcher offering better shortcuts, more home screens, and extra configuration options. Here's the lowdown on the most popular options.</em><em>"</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/adt/auto/1283392845.usr206.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Is Sense a little to busy for you? Is TouchWiz a bit to "colorful" for you? Fear not, my fellow Android junkies, all is not lost!&nbsp;One of the greatest things about Android is its ability to be customized in almost every way. This includes the very home screen itself.&nbsp;Fortunately, the fine folks over at Lifehacker recently put three of the most popular third party Android home screen launchers through their paces. Head over and check out the article then let us know what you decide.&nbsp;Which home screen launcher is right for you?</p>

[crimsonsky]

I've only had one Android phone - my HTC Aria, and it uses HTC's Sense UI which I find quite nice and intuitive. I like the 7 home screens, widgets and ability to add shortcuts on different Windows. Of course, not having used any other interface, it's hard to compare!

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

You won't believe it, but I had no idea the dock in LauncherPro was customisable AND scrollable until I read this. I'm liking it more and more now. :D The swipe action for the dock is a great idea, coupled with LauncherPro's ability to assign a program's hook as a shortcut, not just the program itself.

[Jason Lee]

I'm currently running the stock android 2.2 launcher on my Nexus One. For the most part it does everything I need and nothing I don't.

I've played quite a bit with LauncherPro, man does that thing have the options... If I were to switch to a different launcher it would be the one. ADW was a bit to much for me, never really been into skinning and that is it's biggest feature. HelixLauncher really didn't do enough over the stock launcher for me to justify installing it. Now if I were using Sense or TouchWiz and wanted something scaled down Helix might be okay but I still think I would choose LauncherPro. It's just so darn fast. It blows my mind.

I've played with TouchWiz quite a bit on my wife's phone and Sense on my friend's Aria. Both UIs have their strong points. Sense has a very professional and consistent look to it, but I really don't like the full screen widgets is has. If i wanted to fill up an entire screen why not just launch that program instead of use a widget?
Over all I think I prefer TouchWiz over Sense. While TouchWiz has its share of large or just plain weird Samsung widgets, it feels a little more like stock Android to me with some nice added functionality. I really love how you can manually arrange the app drawer. Though, it is a bit bright for my tastes. :) Sense has it beat on that front.

Now if I had a Sense or a TouchWiz phone would I use a different launcher? I don't really know. There is a lot to be said for using a phone the way the manufacture intended. They built it that way for a reason. However, my wife loves LauncherPro on her Captivate. She say her phone is so much faster now that she isn't running TouchWiz. So there is the performance aspect to consider as well.

Aah, Android. How I love to tweak thee..

[Tony Rylow]

I've only had one Android phone - my HTC Aria, and it uses HTC's Sense UI which I find quite nice and intuitive. I like the 7 home screens, widgets and ability to add shortcuts on different Windows. Of course, not having used any other interface, it's hard to compare!


I'm in the same boat!! I first had a Nexus One phone with no launcher, just added random apps to the home screen that I wanted to use. Since I switched to the HTC Incredible, I really love the Sense UI. I know some people out there want to turn Sense off, but I prefer it over the other launchers.

[Craig Horlacher]

I hear a lot of bad things about Blur on the Droid X. I'm not sure why. I think it's great and better than stock. It doesn't really change anything other than letting you skip quickly to home screens that are a few swipes away. I think that's handy. The Droid X does have a billion widget active by default but if you just delete them Blur is fine and I think a good addition.

I haven't tried any third party launchers. I do love the pinch function to see home screen thumbnails and I think every android device should have that! Other than that, the HTC devices just didn't suit my needs as much as the Droid X.