Gotta stick with stock

[iPirate]

I do not use any "so and so replacement", homescreen, texting, etc and I have not had any problems with speed or choppiness on my phone.

These apps that run as replacements, you are putting a lot of trust into the programmer to make it good code that will not lag your phone.

This also goes for other apps that run ALL the time, weather app, TASK KILLERS. By installing them you are putting the performance of your phone in their hands.

Next time you feel your phone getting laggy see if you have an app like this installed, it is the problem.

IMO the best custom launcher is Koush's, Task Killers will mess your day up, and it is good to have spare parts installed so you can keep launcher in memory.

I'm not saying don't use them, but realize there is a performance loss for running apps continuously, obvious right? I use a few, gtalk, and gmail but I can live with the slight performance loss I've had so far, I don't notice it but I know it is there.

A few other apps I can think of would be Facebook with notifications on, Twitter apps that notify you of updates.

 

[Alex K.]

IMO the best custom launcher is Koush's, Task Killers will mess your day up, and it is good to have spare parts installed so you can keep launcher in memory.

I'm not saying don't use them, but realize there is a performance loss for running apps continuously, obvious right? I use a few, gtalk, and gmail but I can live with the slight performance loss I've had so far, I don't notice it but I know it is there.

A few other apps I can think of would be Facebook with notifications on, Twitter apps that notify you of updates.

Well, there are a few things that you must take into consideration.
The phone, namely android 2.0+, kills tasks as RAM is needed, so a Task Killer is not necessary, considering there is one in settings>applications that you can use.

 

[jroc]

IMO the best custom launcher is Koush's, Task Killers will mess your day up, and it is good to have spare parts installed so you can keep launcher in memory.

I was gonna say the same thing about the latest CyanogenMOD's launcher. I assume they are one and the same? I even tried to use Cyanogen's launcher on another ROM. It got frustrating trying to get it to work.

 

[Alex K.]

IMO the best custom launcher is Koush's, Task Killers will mess your day up, and it is good to have spare parts installed so you can keep launcher in memory.

I was gonna say the same thing about the latest CyanogenMOD's launcher. I assume they are one and the same? I even tried to use Cyanogen's launcher on another ROM. It got frustrating trying to get it to work.

Yes, Cyanogen's and Koush's launcher are the same. You can buy the version of Koush's that works on (some?) other ROMs for $2.99 on the market. It is called ClockworkMod Launcher.

 

[spillner]

I've been playing around with all the different home apps and I have to say nothing works better than the stock home app. Don't get me wrong, I love the extra functions I get with things like home++ and Helix Launchers but they FC way too much and cause too much lag. Not sure if anyone else has come to the same conclusion or if my Droid is just defective.

A few points. I've been running Helix1 for several weeks after several months of GDE. I occasionally go back to the stock homescreen just to "reset" my expectations. (All of this on a stock 2.1 Droid.)

Performance of GDE and Helix (both with seven screens) is virtually equal. Neither is as consistently "snappy" as the stock homescreen (on my wife's Droid). That's undoubtedly because there is less data to be processed in the stock homescreen and it's better integrated into the o/s.

It's common to say that these homescreen replacements "cause too much lag," but that's a bit misleading. The "lagginess" that is apparent in moving from one screen to another on occasion likely results from other multitasking demands while the homescreen replacement is trying to get cpu cycles. On the other hand, other apps may suffer for the same reason if a homescreen replacement is occupying a significant chunk of memory.

FC's (and warning messages) on bootup are common. They result from the o/s not going about its housekeeping as it boots in a completely predictable way. (This is the same problem experienced by Swype users having the app fail on bootup and necessitating a restart after that boot sequence is completed.)

Likewise, an occasional FC will occur while running if the o/s is needs memory and cpu cycles to meet other demands. As soon as those demands are met, the homescreen replacement should re-initialize.

I don't have much experience with some of the other homescreen replacements, but from what I've read they all operate in a similar fashion. Each works more or less flawlessly if you have few other apps competing for cpu cycles and the data tracking demands are minimal. On the other hand, if you have few apps and place few demands on the homescreen replacement, what's the point of having a homescreen replacement?

Thats why I went back to stock, it seems like the Droid is really optimized to run 3 home screens. It sucks because I love the functions that Home apps like helix offer. I only ran 5 screens but I had a lot of widgets on. I can get by on the lagginess but sometimes the phone would FC 4-5 times in less than an hour.

 

[Alex K.]

(truncated.)

Thats why I went back to stock, it seems like the Droid is really optimized to run 3 home screens. It sucks because I love the functions that Home apps like helix offer. I only ran 5 screens but I had a lot of widgets on. I can get by on the lagginess but sometimes the phone would FC 4-5 times in less than an hour.

Really? I NEVER force close at all. Period.

 

[spillner]

(truncated.)

Thats why I went back to stock, it seems like the Droid is really optimized to run 3 home screens. It sucks because I love the functions that Home apps like helix offer. I only ran 5 screens but I had a lot of widgets on. I can get by on the lagginess but sometimes the phone would FC 4-5 times in less than an hour.

Really? I NEVER force close at all. Period.

I really don't understand why people are telling me they don't FC, as if I'm lying about it happening to me. Their are a ton of people complaining about the same problems. Read some of the reviews in the market. If your not getting any FC thats great, but how does telling me you don't change anything?

 

[Alex K.]

(truncated.)

Thats why I went back to stock, it seems like the Droid is really optimized to run 3 home screens. It sucks because I love the functions that Home apps like helix offer. I only ran 5 screens but I had a lot of widgets on. I can get by on the lagginess but sometimes the phone would FC 4-5 times in less than an hour.

Really? I NEVER force close at all. Period.

I really don't understand why people are telling me they don't FC, as if I'm lying about it happening to me. Their are a ton of people complaining about the same problems. Read some of the reviews in the market. If your not getting any FC thats great, but how does telling me you don't change anything?

Well, I never natively force close like people say, getting force closes in the middle of nowhere or at boot.

I, however, will get them when:

I install bad applications,
I install nexusmod (that's for other reasons though, it wouldn't fc if I paid for it),
If I were to change both the background and color of my lwp at the same time (and pressing the back button fixes this, retaining the settings I had previously picked, also, I don't use lwps so I don't experience this.)

 

[jsh1120]

Thats why I went back to stock, it seems like the Droid is really optimized to run 3 home screens. It sucks because I love the functions that Home apps like helix offer. I only ran 5 screens but I had a lot of widgets on. I can get by on the lagginess but sometimes the phone would FC 4-5 times in less than an hour.

As you pointed out in a subsequent post, it does little good to tell you that other people don't share your experience. But here's a slightly different take.

Apart from an app that issues illegal instructions (and they're rare), if you're seeing a lot of FC's, it means the o/s is close to "thrashing," (i.e. unable to service the demands various applications are making on it.) You may mask the problem by going to the stock launcher which is both privileged and smaller than, say, Helix, but you're not solving the problem.

If you're rooted, you may want to consider that you're experiencing a problem between your custom rom and some of the apps you're running.

If you're stock, I'd recommend that you download the "System Panel" app and see what's going on under the covers in your phone. It's a "task killer," but that's not its most useful functionality. It should give you a real time estimate of your memory use and cpu demands. If you're running close to 100% on the latter constantly and less than 30 mg free in memory, you're running close to the edge. You should be able to see what is active, what is inactive, and what has been consuming your system so completely that you cannot run a replacement launcher without creating problems.

P.S. As the comments above suggest, it is not necessarily any single app that causes problems. It is the combination of application demands that does it. And that is why, as you said in your subsequent post, it does little good for others to tell you that they run a certain app without problems.

 

[Champers]

I run helix V1 on a rooted phone and never have any force closes.

. this

 

[SG181]

I've run the stock launcher, the 2.1 3D launcher, and Helix 1. Out of all of them, Helix 1 has been the best for me. It's just as stable as the stock launcher (I haven't had any FCs), and I like having my most used shortcuts on the bottom. I haven't tried Helix 2, but I've heard it FCs a lot on the Droid.

I'm running Smoked Glass 6.01, and I run at both 550 and 700 mhz (depending on whether I'm trying to preserve battery or not). It's been flawless at both speeds.