Sure you may have a nice UI for your home screens (eg. HTC sense), but if it is lagging, functionally crippled or take up plenty of resources, it is definitely not a good experience for the end users. Previously, we have covered some of the best home replacement apps that you can use, however that was before Froyo, LauncherPro and QuickDesk even existed, so some of the mentioned apps are already outdated. If you are still looking for a great home replacement app, LauncherPro + QuickDesk are the one to go for.
LauncherPro
There are several home replacement apps in the market and LauncherPro is one of the best out there. Not only is it fast and speedily, it also comes with plenty of improvement over the Froyo’s default launcher.
Customizable Dock
There are several useful features in LauncherPro and one of them is the customizable dock. The dock was first introduced in Froyo, but it came with 2 preset shortcuts that you can’t change. LauncherPro better that by giving you up to three rows of scrollable dock and customizable shortcuts.
Just like the app icons, you can trash and load what ever you’d like in its place by pressing and holding the shortcut. A screen will pop up asking what you’d like to do. You have 15 shortcuts to create, so go wild. The benefit to having the shortcut bar is so you can have less clutter on your home screens. Having these shortcuts will free up at least one screen if you’d like to use a larger widget.
Up to 7 home screens
LauncherPro allows you to set up to 7 home screens. Depending on your needs, you can change the number of home screens to suit your preferences. In addition, it comes with the Mac’s Expose effect. Just tap the Home button and you can see all your home screens fly out.
Other features
Other useful features include scrollable widgets, creation of LauncherPro Shortcuts and support HTC sense widgets (only for premium users).
QuickDesk
Appbrain link
QuickDesk is more of a complementary home replacement app. This means that it works as a complement to your existing home launcher.
The most useful thing about QuickDesk (and the only thing that it does) is that you can access shortcuts and widgets without exiting the currently running application. In a nutshell, when you double tap the Home button, you bring up a translucent layer of canvas on top of your existing app. This canvas contains your frequently access apps/favorite apps and you can easily tap on any app to activate it. QuickDesk supports both widgets and app shortcuts. Any apps/shortcuts/widgets that can be placed on the home screen will work in QuickDesk. If you find yourself frequently needing to look up contact info while typing an email, or needing to make a quick call, you will want Quickdesk.
The apps I chose to add to QuickDesk are:
Advanced Task Killer Phone Barcode Scanner Calculator Contacts Gtasks
You could be more creative than me though.
Conclusion
To sum things up, there are many different ways to personalize your device. The average consumer doesn’t go hunting for application launchers and productivity applications. However, using LauncherPro + QuickDesk will definitely enhance your device’s performance and increase your productivity. What do you say? image credit: secretlondon123
