Home Screen Replacement - Go Launcher EX

[REMilk]

This is one of a series of postings on Home Screen Replacements. This review is based on the version that was available in the App Market during the period October 22, 2011 through October 31, 2011. The posting contains my personal view of the Home Screen Replacements. These were all reviewed on my Droid 3. If you like this Home Screen Replacement, please post and describe what you like about it. If you do not like this Home Screen Replacement, then please describe what you do not like about it and/or what you think needs to be changed to improve it. Just saying something like “I like it” or “It sucks” provides not much in the way of information to those with an interest of finding out more about this Home Screen Replacement.

Go Launcher EX

Go Launcher EX is a ‘fully featured’ home screen replacement for your phone. It supports customizable home makeover, themes, smooth operation experience as well as various practical utilities. Some of the Go Launcher EX features include:
- Themes (Free downloads)
- Featured widgets, such as GO Calendar, GO Task Manager and GO Clock
- Fancy home screen transitions
- Show/Hide status, app drawer, icon names
- Fancy app drawer transitions
- User selectable grid sizes
- Rotating dock, with up to 15 apps/shortcuts
- Smooth flipping experience
- User-defined folders to easily categorize apps
- App drawer functionality including, icon sorting, hide app icon and uninstall apps

I added 12 screens, but did not fully populate. I could scroll through (rotate in either direction completely through all of them) or go directly to a specific screen through the preview function.

I had no problems setting up Go Launcher EX and customizing it for my tastes. By setting the grid to show more icons and using the folder functionality, all my apps are available on the first screen through the folders. On the Droid 3, I have encountered no force closes. Occasionally, it will have a slow redraw, but a reboot (Power down/Power Up) solves this problem. A clearing of the cache may also work.

As a disclaimer: This is my current Home Screen Replacement.

 

[NoBloatware]

I did use GO Launcher EX until I got fed up with the intrusive privileges that it requires. I'm also not happy that they've taken ADW's freely available code and made some additions without releasing their source code or even acknowledging ADW.

If that stuff doesn't bother you, you will probably like GO. The features mentioned above and the quickness are really good. One of my favorite cool features is the ability to assign a gesture to each of the dock icons.

If the privileges, etc. do bother you, I suggest trying ADW, Nemus, and Zeam.

 

[AHiLdesigns]

I just left a similar reply on a different thread, so if you've heard this before, my apologies.

It seems suspect to me that the "Go Store" (a feature that comes with the launcher to display their themes etc) is a web-based feature in this app, and therefore will require permissions to access the internet for reasons including displaying the page as well as server communication, some services that read your phone data to see whcih themes your currently using so it may populate those on the web pages, and some other background premissions to communicate with the servers when you're in need of a notification that a new theme is available.

Is it all necessary? Nope. But it sure does give a great presentation. And when it comes to selling your app, after functionality the best presentation usually wins.

So far, after 3 months, I like the Go launcher. Its easy to use, great customization options, themes are growing daily, and there's a plethora of accessory apps to choose from. I also like the aforementioned "Go Store"... it makes finding new themes more convenient than wcouring the market, and I know they're only going to hilight the coolest ones.

It lags some on loading folders if you've a lot on one page, and depending on the lwp I'm using I do see some screen transition drag. But a reset tends to help. At worst, they could use some more grown-up themes.

Ill be keeping this one until I get the nerve to try that 15.00 shell app.

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

 

[KarmaVrai]

I like the app as well, however when I press the home button on my Htc Thunderbolt it reverts back to my default theme. (The first one you get when you first get the phone) Why does it do this?

 

[smalltowngirl13]

I like the app as well, however when I press the home button on my Htc Thunderbolt it reverts back to my default theme. (The first one you get when you first get the phone) Why does it do this?

Have you set Go Launcher as your "default home"?

 

[Cdjones187]

Ill be keeping this one until I get the nerve to try that 15.00 shell app.

Have you ever used SPB Shell 3D? It's got some nice features, cool widgets (most of them useless to me), and is VERY smooth. Talking Open GL GPU accelerated home screen graphics so its like butter.(only selling point for me) BUT... The way applications go to the home screen broke it for me, I want to be able to place my icons and widgets on any part of the screen. The way it is set up makes the icons start on the top left of the screen and puts them beside each other in rows (like auto arrange on a pc desktop). I'm not sure if there is a setting to turn that off or not but that's a really big turn off for me. Some features are cool but pointless, like the 3D view (I just so happened to have blue and cyan glasses and the separation is to far apart, but its just experimental). BTW this was a full feature trial version I had, cant remember where I got it but it's been about 4 or so months now so maybe they have improved a lot of things, otherwise IMHO its not worth $15.

 

[sundawg102]

I used launcher ex but it made my phone a bit laggy so much so that I wiped all data from the internal and sd memory just to make sure. Now I'm running stock moto blur and I'm sorta content, at least until I see some really kick ass rom developed.