Since the whole Android OS is open-sourced, its keystone lies precisely on personalizing. That’s it: the power to the people (or the users). There are lots of apps that lets you change your Android performance, appearance or interface. Without shadow of a doubt the most used apps for changing the default appearance of your Android are the launchers. A launcher is an app that basically changes the appearance of the dock, app drawer, widgets and icons of your Android as well as its performance. It wide open the customizing range of your device. Welcome to the Launchers Week in AndroidZoom.

Today we’re going to zoom in the most popular launchers on the market: LauncherPro, ADW.Launcher and Go Launcher EX. Let’s start!

LauncherPro

LauncherPro is probably the most downloaded (and so used) launcher on the market. It contains a minimalist scrolilng dock with five icons, a configurable app drawer vertical-scrolling (Nexus 3D included), 1-7 home screens high configurable (transitions, grid size, labels, backgrounds…).
However, the strongest point of LauncherPro is its Widgets (although you have to upgrade to LauncherPro Plus, $2.99). Highly configurable widgets to have everything at your fingertips. LauncherPRO is focused on fast access, professional widgets and improved performance. If you give more importance to performance instead of colorful themes, this is your launcher.

ADW.Launcher

This is a launcher from a different approach. While LauncherPro is focused on fast performance, ADW.Launcher is about appearance. Precisely for that it was the first releasing launcher themes and it’s actually the one with the biggest collection of them (500+). As well as LauncherPro changes dock, icons an app drawer. It has even more settings than LauncherPro but most of them are related to appearance (and some of them are useless). It works slower than others (especially than  LauncherPro). Anyway, we recommend you to take a glance at some of the themes. You will fall in love with some of theme and you’ll probably won’t care about the rest.

Go Launcher EX

It’s a kind of mix of LauncherPro and ADW.Launcher, although it has also unique features. From our point of view, this is the most complete Launcher on the market. However, it doesn’t mean the “best” (that depends on what you’re looking for). Go Launcher EX is fast, there’s no screen limit, it contains a swipable and customizable dock, the app drawer is highly-configurable (icon effect, transition effects, background, “running apps” tab with task killer included, grid size…), and a wide range of features to improve your Android performance. What’s more, it also supports themes, not as many as ADW.Launcher, but there are lots of them. There are free and paid widgets and lots of add-ons and plug-ins (i.e. the unread sms/mms/gmail/calls counter).
Go Launcher EX is probably the most balanced launcher. Maybe it’s that way because it mixes the best features of other launchers. Anyway, this is our option.

There are though some other alternative launcher, not as popular as these, but which are getting good feedback for users: Launcher 7, Zeam Launcher, DXHome and many others.

What’s yours?

Happy Android Launchers discovery!

We’re going to finish this galactic week by introducing you two must-have apps for those astronomy lovers.

First off, the well-known and beloved Google Sky Maps. It’s summer in the Northern hemisphere and the weather invites going out by night and take a look at the stars. Most of us have enjoyed looking at the stars on places where pollution doesn’t hide them. But if you’re in a big city you’ll probably find annoying this kind of smoke’s curtain which doesn’t let you appreciate the beauty of the nightly sky view. No worries. Relax. Lie down on the grass alone or in good company, unlock your Android, launch Google Sky Maps and enjoy the view. Discover constellations, place them on the sky and learn more about them. Google Sky Maps is like having a Google Maps from the opposite point of view. Leave the worldly problems down there in the subway: it’s time to let your dreams fly through the stars.

However, the World isn’t just made up by dreamers. For those who want to have a deeper scientific knowledge about what’s going on up there we have to say: NASA’s expertise has entered scene. You will be up-to-date about ongoing NASA’s projects by the Twitter/Facebook News feed integrated in the app. What’s more, you will be able to watch impressive videos from NASA TV as well as to get thousand of planets and stars pictures. Be aware of the missions’ schedule and become and expert on the issue.

Happy Universe’s apps discovering!

In the last times, there are coming up lots of “multiple social networks clients” which main purpose is to cover a rising need: to manage together our different social networks accounts in a single app. But when you start to focus on the issue you realize that there are just two basic choices: Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. Both “muti-social network managers” are available in a desktop version and in a mobile app for different platforms. In this post, we’re going to shed some light on this quarrel focusing on both Android apps.

Multiple accounts

Both Android apps supports Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare. Tweetdeck also supports Google Buzz and Hootsuite integrates WordPress. Regarding that, both cover the most used social networks (we mainly use it for Facebook and Twitter) except LinkedIn. The question that raises is: when will they integrate LinkedIN? And specially, when will they integrate Google+??

Interface

This is always a matter of taste, but we think that Tweetdeck is which wins this round. Although both are set in customizable streams in which you can defined what to show (News Feeds, Retweets, Mentions…), Tweetdeck has a more friendly-user interface. The reasons: black background with light text, thinner columns that allows you to see more at a glance and finally, the colored scrollbar for those tweets/post you haven’t read yet. What’s more, Tweetdeck integrates Facebook’s News Feed and Twitter’s Home in the same column. Hootsuite doesn’t.

Main Features

Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck lets you to post Facebook and Twitter at the same time, add new accounts, add/delete/set streams from the app, post, retweet, “like”, post location, and much more.Regarding searching friends or hashtags is way much easier in Hootsuite (Tweetdeck need to create a new stream for that purpose). However, no one of them has auto-complete, What’s more, Hootsuite lets you access the stats from the app, Tweetdeck doesn’t (even it includes stats in the desktop version). That’s an added value, but in a app version we don’t find it really useful. What’s more, Tweetdeck includes deck.ly, the feature that allows you to post tweets 140+ characters. We think it kills the essence of Twitter and it should be considered as a flaw. Hootsuite doesn’t go on this issues.

Resources

Hootsuite seems to be less data-hungry than Tweetdeck, probably due to its sober interface.

Widget

Surprisingly, Hootsuite for Android doesn’t have a screen widget. That’s a lack that should be solved as soon as possible. Tweetdeck overtake Hootsuite in this sense since it contains different size widgets (for posting and shortcut to columns). Actually, the posting widget lets you to take a picture and it integrates (and shorten) it automatically to publish it on Twitter or Facebook (can post on both at the same time).

Conclusion

From our point of view, Tweetdeck wins this take because of its simplicity, its user-friendly interface and its screen widgets. It’s our choice for Android. However, we think that Hootsuite overtakes Tweetdeck by far in the desktop version. First, because Tweetdeck is a software that needs to be installed and Hootsuite is a web app. What’s more regarding stats and professional tools to track is more sophisticated. Likewise, Hootsuite is way faster than Tweetdeck in the desktop version.

So, our choice is Tweetdeck in our Android, Hootsuite in our computer.  What’s yours?

Happy social network apps discovery!