Ever since my Android review, I’ve been looking for a different launcher for my Galaxy SII. I wanted something closer to the stock Android launcher to replace TouchWiz, without actually having to install CyanogenMod (I’m waiting for the ICS-based version 9 before taking that plunge). I finally found one I’m happy with: the extremely basic and light FTL (Faster Than Light) Launcher.
ADW, GO, and so on never floated my boat – too many features and bells and whistles, and they had this odd tendency to be slower and laggier than TouchWiz itself, which kind of defeated the whole point of switching launchers. FTL Launcher takes a different approach – if a feature has the potential to bring the speed down, it won’t be added.
The launcher is based on the source code of the stock Gingerbread launcher, but altered and optimised for speed. It has relatively few configuration options – beyond setting the transition speed, homescreen rotation support, opting for a bounce-snap effect or endless looping, there’s nothing much else here (well, backgrounds, of course). For the rest, it does all the things you expect – hold icons, folders, and widgets. You can opt for 3, 5, 7 or 9 homescreens.
The launcher isn’t for everyone, though, if only because it currently only supports HDPI devices, so a resolution of 800×480. Lower and higher resolutions are currently not supported, but because this is only a first release, the developer will gauge interest in this launcher to see if it warrants adding support for different resolutions. Note that the Android Market should filter out non-compatible devices.
The only thing I personally need to figure out now is if it’s okay and safe to freeze TouchWiz in Titanium Backup.
In any case, there’s both a free lite version as well as the full-featured version which costs €1.99 – a small price to pay for such a fast launcher. Like I said, this surely won’t float everyone’s boat by virtue of being so sparse, but it’s right up my personal alley, and I figured there’d me more among you who value speed and simplicity.
Yes, I know this sounds an awful lot like a glorified ad (it really isn’t), so to give it some air of legitimacy: what launcher do you use, and why?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=20671183
Been running it for a month our two now. if you’re desperate, it’s 85% there.
Edit: before jumping to CM9 I was using zeam, it’s really small so you should check that out.
Edited 2012-02-11 11:40 UTC
So, what’s not working? How do you make sure you backup your current setup so you can switch back? Every guide I’ve seen assumes the one performing the upgrade already knows his shit, and, well, I don’t. So many terms fly by it’s all a bit off-putting.
I 75% agree with that. Most android tutorials are missing critical steps that the author assumes you already know how to do. So, you have to google for the missing step and figure out how to do it before proceeding.
I also hate that 90% of the prepackaged tools for messing with android ( a linux based phone operating system) are written for Windows. Pfft!
Exactly – leading to a mess of often conflicting information. Since I don’t want to mess up my €650 device, I’d rather not.
There’s a huge market to make this process as easy and transparent as possible. A complete package where you can select the ROM you want, and which takes care of all backups and the like.
Erm…you mean like Rom Manager and clockworkmod?
They don’t do backup, as far as I know.
They allow you to image your entire OS and store it on the SD card, all from the boot manager.
Pretty cool, I have the full version installed. So I guess I could just download the test CM9 image for the SII and get cracking?
Yes, you can do full image backups with either of those recovery tools.
Just the same it is a good idea to check the fora/forums and see if there are recommendations for or against either one and any known issues.
My phone is known to have problems with ROM Manager but works great with Clockworkmod. YMMV with a different handset.
Good to see that you already have Titanium Backup.
afaik you probably have to download a compiled image from xda. CM isn’t currently compiling nightlies of CM9. Most of the time you just have to get a zip with image and choose to install a zip from the sd card. Note that many ship gapps separately, so you have to get the gapps zip too (and flash it after the main image).
If Rom Manager says you have the latest ClockworkMod installed, just go ahead and either a) reboot and hold down Vol+, or b) from inside Rom Manager tell it to reboot into ClockworkMod.
From in there, you can tell it to backup everything. Once you’ve done that, you should be good to go with experimenting with new ROMs.
If you want, you can review the screenshots and video on the market page, too. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.rommanager&hl…
While not a particularly fortunate thing in itself, you can still see it (if you care about Android this way) as a very good sign …ultimately just another symptom of wide Android acceptance, uptake, & how it takes over (in different sphere of course) Windows demographic, seemingly becoming the mobile OS.
if you don’t know much about it i’d say waiting is the best bet.
the two things i’ve noticed not working are video playback and video recording. everything else is pretty stable.
i’ll send you a list of programs i use to back everything up.but in general i just back up sms and a list of what i’ve installed.
I’ve been using it for the last couple of moths as well, the main stand out missing functionality is video capture, still photo’s are fine but the application crashes as soon as you try to capture video. Don’t think I’ve noticed anything else.
I use Zeam launcher, for the same reasons. It is extremely fast and lightweight, and it lets me disable all the bling. I only have one homescreen with no widgets or moving wallpaper effects for optimal battery life. It lets me configure swipe up, down, and double tap actions. Zeam works great on everything from the original HTC G1 running Gingerbread, to my Motorola Droid 2 Global.
I use Zeam launcher too. It’s simple and fast, and does what just what I need.
I have a Samsung EPIC (US) and am running cm9 alpha2 – it’s a decent enough daily driver although with some minor glitches and lack of configurability. The included trebuchet launcher is cool.
I still prefer the Zeam launcher though. Nice and basic – no cruft.
I use go launcher on my tmobile springboard (tablet), and the stock touchwiz on my gs2. I tried go on my gs2 and my phone kept randomly shutting off. Once I uninstalled go the problem went away.
The thing I found that helps most with speed especially on my tablet which ships with vanilla android and uses the stock launcher, is not using too many widgets. Also, reducing the number of homescreens you use and using more folders seems to help. Although my tablet also has a 1.2ghz dual core cpu like my phone, my tablet is damn slow in comparison, so whatever helps.
The one thing I really like about touchwiz that go doesn’t have is how easy it is to add application icons to the homescreen. In touchwiz you just go to applications and long click on the icon and it will take you back to the homescreens. Then you just drop it where you want. In go, you have to use a menu with a list of all applications and the applications you want on a homescreen have to have a check next to them. Its very cumbersome.
Massive fan of go launcher too, use it on my htc legend packing cyanogen 7.2. Also install go launcher on people’s phones whenever I get the chance. Odd about your problem on the gs2, I’ve seen a few running go fine. Might have been a one-off to the version installed at the time? Might be worth trying again.
About the homescreen icons, I’m not sure if you realised this, but in go, if you long press an icon in the app drawer, and they go all shaky, you can then drag an icon over the ‘Move to Screen’ area at the bottom of the screen. This’ll then bring up an overview of all your homescreens, where you can drop the shortcut onto any one of them. Pretty much just an extra step over the standard way of adding shortcuts.
I’ve tried many launchers on this phone, but speed never really felt different enough between launchers to affect preferences. Eg lightweight launchers like zeam still took as long to redraw widgets after coming home as launchers like go.
Animation smoothness, however, is perceivable. And in this sense, base ADW is the worst, although ADW EX is much smoother. But go has so many features, and silky smooth animations, so it’s easily my favourite launcher.
I’m using the launcher coming with the firmware (ezGingerbread, currently, as I’m not aware of other combinations of 2.3+ and HTC Magic). I actually use only the most basic functionality. Given the disconnected feel of the platform, I prefer keeping my tasks delegated to the apps as much as possible, so that I don’t have to rely on launcher’s integration with other apps and similar issues.
BTW, I’m pretty sure that when I’ll buy a new phone I’ll replace the stock firmware with Cyanogen ASAP.
I’m upgrade eligible myself currently at a pretty bad time. I have Cyanogenmod 7.2 on my Captivate now, and its pretty awesome. Of the current crop of phones att provides, right now. only the galaxy ii is supported by cyanogenmod.
New phones ( other than the Nexus) have to be developed for, and its not easy to predict which ones will get blessed by cyanogenmod and which will not ever get support. Sometimes small variations in regional version is enough to prevent the easy porting of cyanogenmod. Take a look at the Samsung vibrant ( t-mobilie usa’s galaxy S), Its a galaxy s phone like my supported captivate. Yet, there is enough of a difference with the baseband chip that it screws up the emergency dialing ( no 911 service).
So, you have to get an older ( in phone terms) phone or guess which will eventually work.
My current approach is to instead figure out how to port cyanogenmod to a new phone ( in my mythical spare time), then maybe I’ll be able to make a more informed choice.
Ive been using Nova, and its pretty slick on the GNex. Nice transitions but runs nice and snappy.
I use the CM9 version of the default launcher. It adds the two features I really want in the stock one: it can rotate, and I can get rid of additional homescreens.
Been using Launcher Pro for a long time. Simple, fast, attractive, configurable.
I am not using any launchers yet as I don’t own an Android phone, but I am getting a Galaxy Note next week, so I too probably will have to take a look at them. I’ll likely try all of the ones recommended here in the comments, except for the one in by Holwerda; Note has 1280×800 screen, so it won’t work.
How can you do this to Nokia?!
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-FI-monthly-200812-201202
(and curious thing – the rate of Symbian decline very clearly slowed, for half a year, after the Elop announcement, hm…)
Tried a bunch of different launchers when I first got my Xperia Pro, eventually settling on Go Launcher Ex, mainly due to the nice array of dark themes. Was especially impressed that they came with theme-specific icons for the standard Android apps. Along with the rest og the Go suite of apps, it provided for a much nicer, integrated feel.
However, it wasn’t all that ‘smooth’, especially when returning to the home screen from an app. Icons would be drawn in one or two at a time, and looked/felt chunky.
Tried FTL today, but that ‘3D waterfall’ effect in the app drawer is the stupidest and least useful effect I’ve ever seen. And it was worse than GLEx on this phone.
Tried Zeam today as well. So far, really liking it. It’s fast, like a launcher should be. No screen redraw lag when exiting an app: the whole home screen appears at once. Flipping between screens is smooth.
My only gripe with Zeam is that it’s not themable, and you can’t (natively) change the icons for apps on the home screens/dock. However, a handy app called ‘Desktop Visualizer’ allows you to create ‘app shortcuts’ that can have any image (app icons, theme icons from other launchers, any pics in your gallery, basically any image file you can access) and launch any app, and then inject that into Zeam.
So now I can use the icons from the GLEx themes, with Zeam.
On my Galaxy S it’s pretty snappy … in fact it’s the fastest of all launchers and I’ve tried them all
I believe that the waterfall effect is the default effect from the stock launcher. And yes, it looks pretty bad – I’d rather have no effect at all.
Of all the other launchers … GO Launcher Ex is the best IMO as features and performance. Zeam is pretty good as performance goes, but not as good as FTL.
As with all things Android, it all depends … on the phone hardware (CPU, GPU, RAM), the phone software (Android version, running services, etc), the screen resolution, the screen size, etc, etc, etc.
On this phone (Xperia Pro), with only a single-core 1 GHz CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, 512 MB of RAM (although only 384 MB is available to CPU, rest if reserved for GPU), and Android 2.3.4, FTL is slow. Even GLEx is faster/smoother. Although Zeam is better than both.
I haven’t tried any others (other than stock) except ADW. At first I didn’t care for it but now that I know it, I love it. Oh BTW I’m using it on CM7 on a Droid X2. Still waiting for CM9 to be released for this model. And, yes, I have been following dragonzkiller’s tweets on his progress.
I have a Motorola Defy. Not the speediest device, but one of the few that are water resistant. Motoblur was a nightmare. It was so slow. I tried GO launcher, but it was even slower. I finally tried Launcher Pro, and it is pretty good, but After reading other comments I am going to try out Zeam too.
So far: Launcher Pro is pretty quick and light weight with cool options like resizing widgets to non-standard configurations (my calendar 2X3 and my weather is 1X3.)
Stock ICS launcher all the way.
I tried a bunch of different launchers on my previous nexus devices, always ended up going back to stock.
FTL sounds interesting, if I was still on GB and not using Galaxy Nexus i’d probably try it.
OK
Edited 2012-02-15 14:45 UTC
OK, based on the comments, I tried Zeam. After a couple of days, I removed Launcher Pro Plus (yes, the paid one). Zeam is not quite a slick, but really close, and never lags like Launcher Pro did (which was still way better than the Motoblur one that cam e stock.)