The Best Android Apps Launchers

Best of 2014 As we saw The Best Android Apps Of 2013 in the previous article, now its time for the best Launchers. Android is well known for its customizing capabilities and Launchers are one of the best ways of customizing your android phones. They give your homescreen a very good look and one thing special about those Launchers is that you can do anything you want with your homescreen. There are tons of Launchers available at the play store, but looking for our needs is what we do everytime and thats exactly where the point comes. There are some launchers which are free of cost while some of them are paid and provide premium features. But there are still some launchers which give premium features free of cost. So to make your work easier, we have chosen the best android launchers of 2013 which, according to us are really the worthy ones for holding those positions

We often brainstorm for getting the right Launcher for our requirements but frequently keep on changing them as we get bored. Although every launcher is unique in its aspects, there are some Launchers which have conquered the top positions proving their competency. We have collected such apps and just want to share those amazing apps with everyone.Keep in mind that those Launchers are updated and many new launchers come up in the list of android launchers every year so we are going to update this post regularly. We may now focus towards the topic and just have a look at those amazing Launchers 

Next Launcher is a newly released launcher developed by the GO Launcher Dev team with stunning 3d effects and heavy customization. Believe me, this is the best launcher I’ve found so far.

This launcher is costly so don’t forget to buy it whenever there is a sale..There are a variety of Themes available and all of them are just AMAZING enough for making you mad.

Some of the key features include:

• Awesome 3D effect with silky smooth user experience

• Full 3D Home Screen Transition Effects (Crystal, Cloth, Folding and much more to be added)

• Wonderful 3D screen preview with glittering animation of screen switching

• ICON EDITOR:  For changing icon size, style, theme, angle, rotation, etc.

• THEME MIX MODE: Add, subtract, choose the different parts of different themes you love.

• Powerful application management with smart gestures for launching apps on the go.

• Up to 8 different gestures available in home screen and app drawer.

• FLOATING MODE: Blow up all your homescreen apps and widgets in the air with this awesome feature.

• Enhanced shining border effects for home screen transition

• Up to 7 rows on dockto place as much apps you can.

• The GO Launcher Dev team keeps on launching various themes, live wallpapers, icon packs, widgets and much more for customizing your uniqu copy of Next Launcher.

There are a variety of Themes available and all of them are just AMAZING enough for making you mad. It has all the features you would look in a Launcher from icon editing, effects, appearance settings, Notifications, themes, widgets, etc.This is going to be one of the most ‘beautiful’ launcher in the upcoming days.

Major Drawbacks:

The major drawback of this launcher is its price. Although its a good launcher, the price is set too high (about 19.06 dollars or 953 rupees). You may try the trial version of this launcher first.

Nova Launcher is simple yet ultra-smooth(yes, you heard right) android launcher developed by TeslaCoil Software. The main feature of this launcher is “best performance with lots of customization”

Its is highly customizable with features such as icon editing, resizing, changing themes, and many more.I have tested it and have been using it for months.

Some of the key features include

• Huge collection of themes along with icon-only theme support.

• An option to change the accent colour of the launcher with colour picker for better personalization Apply ADW/Go/Apex launcher icon themes to all app icons

• Scrollable Dock with options to customize it.

• Customizable Homescreen grid size.

• App Drawer customization with features such as:

• Transparency

• Scrolling style, with an choose between horizontal paginated or vertical.

• Attractive effects while scrolling through the homescreen or apps. Effects such Cube and Cardstack. Prime users get more effects.

• Infinite Scroll option for looping through your desktop continuously.

• Icon editing options: Folder Icons and replace any app icon with any icon you want.

• Backup/Restore settings for future use after wiping your phone or data wipe due to some accident.

• Widgets in dock for easy navigation of widgets.

• Widget Overlapping and resizing upto any extent.

• Add multiple apps to the desktop or a folder at once by selecting those apps. Select hidden activities from your favorite apps

• Import Layout: Import your homescreen layout from the default launcher or another replacement launcher.

The Prime version of Nova Launcher comes with more features (You can check them at the link given below). The launcher has a gesture function too. This makes multitasking or accessing shortcuts (as you prefer) more easy. So go ahead and have a taste of this launcher.

Major Drawbacks:

Runs only on phones running Android 4.0 and above.

Yet another launcher for giving a tough competition to those listed above is the Apex Launcher from ‘Android Does’. Apex Launcher is very similar to Nova Launcher and offers almost same features such as homescreen effects, Infinite scrolling, hiding unwanted apps, scrolling and transition effects, customizable app drawer, icon packs, themes and much more. Although it has a few certain different features as compared to Nova, but they are negligible.

Some of the major features include:

• Customizable homescreen grid size and up to 9 homescreens

• Scrollable dock with up to 7 icons per page and up to 5 pages

• Gestures

• Infinite scrolling option on Homescreen and app drawer

• Fancy transition effects (stack, cube, cylinder, etc).

• Total control over the homescreen elements similar to Nova Launcher.

• Customizable icons and labels for shortcuts and folders

• Customizable folder with options to change folder background.

• App Drawer Features: Transparency, Scrolling style with an choose between horizontal paginated or vertical continuous, Cool effects while scrolling through the homescreen or apps, Drawer apps sorting.

• Hidden apps option to hide apps from the drawer.

• Desktop lockup to prevent accidental changes.

• Various themes, icon packs and widgets for easy customization.

• Backup/restore settings for future use

• Lots of other customization options.

From the above observations we can conclude how similar Nova and Apex are. The drawbacks of both the launchers are same. It was difficult for us to distinguish between these two launchers. But as a rule of thumb, there is only a single winner in every race and Nova Launcher has acquired the second position. Whatever maybe the case, both the launchers are unique, buttery smooth, and highly customizable from their point of view. Its upto the user which launcher he/she chooses.

Major Drawbacks:

No support for android versions less than 4.0 ICS.

Jealous of your friends windows mobile look ?

But no more worries anymore because Qi Hang Team has developed Launcher 8 which exactly matches your homescreen with the windows 8 homescreen. You can customize the color of the tiles as you want, change the space between the tiles, add widgets between them, even add folders and much more. In fact you can customize it to your own flavors.

Some of its major features:

• Highly customizable layout

• Resizeable tiles with various shapes.

• Various colour options for tiles.

• Backup/Restore functionality to backup and restore on the go.

• Option to change background as per your likings

• Three types of app drawers (one of them has alphabetical sorting)

• Option to add any widget in he tiles

• WP8 lockscreen and statusbar

• New theme market with various pre-designed themes available

• Dynamic tiles such as contacts and gallery.

Although the launcher does not provide extreme customization like Next, Nova or Apex launcher, but it has some other amazing features which are ‘eye candy’. The launcher acquires this position because of its functionality and the amazing windows 8 looks. The free version covers all the features but if you want to donate to the developer, you can purchase the paid version too. So give it a try today and have the pleasure of windows 8 interface on your android phone.

Major Drawbacks:

Although a good launcher, it has some drawbacks. The widgets placed on the homescreen look weird sometimes, the free version has irritating ads, there are no gestures or something like that, very less app drawer customization, etc. 

One of the most popular android launcher and the all time favourite for some people, comes the GO Launcher EX. You won’t be a new user of this launcher perhaps as everyone has tried this one. The team updates the features often so there’s no way to miss them.

GO Launcher EX provides you with all the premium features free of cost. Recently the GO Launcher Dev Team has released a prime version of GO Launcher. But it seems that the free version  is more than enough. It has positive reviews and has a good rating from almost all users. The main feature perhaps is its theme directory. There are lots and lots of themes available and are developed continuously by various developers. Again in this case, there is a good developer support for GO Launcher EX.

Some of the main features include:

• A huge theme directory and new themes are added vey often.

• Various Homescreen and App Drawer transitions (Cylinder, Stack, Sphere, Bulldoze, Flip, etc).

• Various free widgets (Weather, Clock, Calender, Switch, etc.).

• Gestures.

• Icon customization.

• Homescreen Grid.

• Hide apps from app drawer.

• Good Developer support.

GO Launcher is the most popular launcher on the play store but there are growing competitors which have caused the GO Launcher to step down a bit. However, still many people prefer it as the primary launcher.

Some of the major drawbacks:

A lot of bloatware irritates the user mainly while setting up the launcher for the first time.

Besides the Launchers menioned above, there are many launchers on the Play Store which you must try and report here.This is a list of other launchers you can try:

1. SPB Shell 3D

1. Buzz Launcher

1. LauncherPro

1. ADW.Launcher

1. ssLauncher

1. Espier Launcher

1. Lightning Launcher

1. Smart Launcher

1. Jet Launcher

1. Holo Launcher

1. Imgy

1. Regina 3D Launcher

1. SwipeStarter

1. 360 Launcher

1. CircleLauncher light

1. Tile Launcher

1. Holo Launcher HD

1. ReLaunch

1. Dodol Launcher

We must not forget that each Launcher has its specific features and new features are always added so that the user doesn’t get bored. The number of apps and launchers for lower end devices is very less as we can see from the above observations. Powerful Launchers such as Nova and Apex are available only for android devices running Android 4.0 and higher. Although there is a Launcher named Holo Launcher which runs on older android devices while bringing the new Ice-Cream-Sandwich goodness to those old phones.

1. Next Launcher

2. Nova Launcher

3. Apex Launcher

4. Launcher 8

5. GO Launcher EX

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