Home Replacement Apps

fluharty13 · 02-07-2010, 10:12 AM

The Android Applications forum keeps misleading me because people talk about apps and features that aren't available in Android 1.5, so I thought I'd ask the other Moment owners about home replacement apps. I think I'd like something, but I'm really hesitant to pay for one that I may not like, and I also worry that I'd not really understand all I could do with one and therefore not truly appreciate it.

I've also seen very mixed reviews on nearly every home replacement app.

So I'm curious about the opinions of other Moment owners on these home replacement apps and also if there are any good places for thorough information on them.

AlkiDweller · 02-07-2010, 11:40 AM

I bought GDE and the "Cube" transition between screens is worth the paltry cost by itself. See it in action on YouTube.

njbianco · 02-07-2010, 12:50 PM

Currently ive been using a mixture of GDE and sweeterhome. Ive also used openhome and pandahome. All of theme are awesome home replacements but honestly right now id recommend Pandahome because of the fact its free. I also like Sweeterhome because of how customizable it is but it needs to get a little more stable before id recommend it.

natedawg · 02-07-2010, 01:49 PM

Pandahome for me. Free app. Choose how many homescreens you want. Slide out dockbars available for apps you want to be able to access from any of your homescreens.

fluharty13 · 02-07-2010, 02:44 PM

I've toyed with PandaHome in the past and it seemed slightly flaky at times, but I suppose it is a work in progress. I tried out SweeterHome P2 earlier, but it kept making my screen go black for a good 60 seconds at a time.

Eric-VTX · 02-07-2010, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

I've toyed with PandaHome in the past and it seemed slightly flaky at times, but I suppose it is a work in progress. I tried out SweeterHome P2 earlier, but it kept making my screen go black for a good 60 seconds at a time.

I'm also interested, but very hesitant as I may break my phone? lol
does anyone have a clip on youtube so i can see how good pandahome is and the advantages vs. stock ap. And also if could give reviews for samsung moment. thanks,

IOWA · 02-07-2010, 06:26 PM

I'm rocking dxtop. I love it. No hangups, not really any lag, and the one flick to any screen is nice.

decalex · 02-08-2010, 12:23 PM

I can say I've tried pretty much all of the home replacement apps, including GDE, dxtop, Pandahome, Openhome, Sweeterhome, and the one I keep going back to is aHome (in conjunction with BetterCut). The features I like the most are, the static row of 4 icons on the bottom of the screen that stay even when swiping left/right. Also, with aHome and bettercut, I love that I can longpress on any icon and change the Text, Icon pic, or even uninstall the program associated with the icon-- all from that one pop up.
The import/export features are cool too, so when I go to try out another home replcment app, I can always export my ahome settings/icons and import them back in if anything gets screwy.
I really don't even mess with the themes that much because I've customized all of my icons and fonts (with icon packs, font packs and the ahome settings).

speedy0307 · 02-08-2010, 12:43 PM

I loooove SH2 but to the point made earlier, it is still a lil unstable and slow. But the customization is unmatched by any other replacement software. It does have a steep learning curve too, but really is a remarkable piece of software.

fluharty13 · 02-08-2010, 02:05 PM

Anyone know how much they intend to charge for SweeterHome when released?

fluharty13 · 02-08-2010, 02:33 PM

Decalex, after reading your post, I looked up aHome. I've avoided paid apps up until now, and I assumed that aHome was a paid app. Then I discovered that for Android 1.5, there is aHome Lite, which is free. Pretty cool in the 10 minutes I've played with it, although I can't figure out how to add widgets other than the few it offers me, and I can't figure out how to add more screens. Definitely has promise, though.

Eric-VTX · 02-08-2010, 03:09 PM

I think I will wait for the 2.1 up date to see what are the options? Thanks on my part? right now I's trying to figure out why i'm not getting any email notification on the header...But that's on another thread...thanks!

MrGadget256 · 02-08-2010, 03:24 PM

I'm trying slidescreen, not exactly a home replacement, but I'm liking it.

decalex · 02-08-2010, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Decalex, after reading your post, I looked up aHome. I've avoided paid apps up until now, and I assumed that aHome was a paid app. Then I discovered that for Android 1.5, there is aHome Lite, which is free. Pretty cool in the 10 minutes I've played with it, although I can't figure out how to add widgets other than the few it offers me, and I can't figure out how to add more screens. Definitely has promise, though.

I think the easiest way to add home screens to to holddown an icon and drag it to the right-- it'll automatically give you a new screen. By standard, i dont think it offers too many widgets (which I like, because it's less bulky). I do, however, love their digital clock widget, which you can add multiple instances of and customize the colors for each (unlike beautiful widgets, for example, which change all instances).

Thefoodman52 · 02-08-2010, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrGadget256

I'm trying slidescreen, not exactly a home replacement, but I'm liking it.

Well, I tried using it as an actual HOME replacement. Not just an app, and I must say, though meant for social networking stuff mainly, it works alright. It's a different look at the home screen, but if you're a heavy texter (mainly female) it's perfect for that. But yea, it's not for me like it was for you. I'm not going to continue using it, simply because it's not what I need.

AndroidSPCS · 02-08-2010, 06:04 PM

Why not try out PandaHome? I'm using it, free, very nice so far.

fluharty13 · 02-08-2010, 06:08 PM

PandaHome had some quirks that turned me off a little bit.

So with aHome, is there no way to add other widgets? Like my Sprint NFL widget and stuff?

IOWA · 02-09-2010, 12:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by decalex

I can say I've tried pretty much all of the home replacement apps, including GDE, dxtop, Pandahome, Openhome, Sweeterhome, and the one I keep going back to is aHome (in conjunction with BetterCut). The features I like the most are, the static row of 4 icons on the bottom of the screen that stay even when swiping left/right. Also, with aHome and bettercut, I love that I can longpress on any icon and change the Text, Icon pic, or even uninstall the program associated with the icon-- all from that one pop up.
The import/export features are cool too, so when I go to try out another home replcment app, I can always export my ahome settings/icons and import them back in if anything gets screwy.
I really don't even mess with the themes that much because I've customized all of my icons and fonts (with icon packs, font packs and the ahome settings).

You can do all that with dxTop. Plus you get 5 icons instead of 4, and the dual draw is nice.

NOMster · 02-09-2010, 01:00 AM

i tried ahome, pandahome, openhome, and dxtop.

i settled on gde. because it's better than all of those for me. the bottom "app drawer" button becomes a 3 button configuration that you can customize with skins and whichever buttons you choose that also remain static regardless of which screen youre on. the themes arent as numerous but they are very well done. the continuous scroll is nice when combined with any of the transition methods. and fling scrolling is sharp. you can have up to 7 screens, bettercut works with it, as do many of the widgets that say they are "open home or ahome only". but the real icing is the on screen application dock widgets, which you can put on any screen in any location and have lord knows how many apps in each one. i dont know, because i havent filled one up yet. but i have 10 on one right now. those things are awesome.

also, pandahome has never not been extremely laggy and choppy on transitions among other things everytime i try to use it. plus its huge compared to gde. gde=281 kb. pandahome=1.52 mb it's just really slow for me. openhome was better, but limited. just like ahome. dxtop is good if you only want 4 screens. i don't.

juanstah · 02-09-2010, 06:58 AM

All the home replacements I've tried including sweeterhome end up crashing my phone or producing lag. The only one that seems to work for me is Advanced Task Switcher. At just around a megabyte , the memory foot print is small. Though it doesn't have all the UI features that the other HR's have, I can have up to 10 home screens and create additional submenus and folders allowing me to organize my apps in a "Blackberry" like way. It's also free.

fluharty13 · 02-09-2010, 08:14 AM

Thanks for all this feedback, everyone. It's pretty clear that there's not one best home replacement, and that it comes down to personal preference.

I agree about PandaHome being laggy and choppy. And really, I don't trust any app that contains improper grammar (When you change the number of screens, it gives you some message like, "It have to restart now").

So it sounds to me like these are the contenders. Juanstah, I think you actually mean Advanced Launcher?

PandaHome - free - Allows up to 11 screens. Themes. Dockbars.
aHome Lite - free
dxTop - $2.99
gde - €2.25
SweeterHome - free beta
OpenHome Full - $3.99
OpenHome Lite - free
Advanced Launcher - free - Allows up to 10 screens, allows organization of app drawer.

Maybe we can compile some information here to get a nice, comprehensive comparison. Feel free to copy/paste the above and add more info to it.

mikelcan · 02-09-2010, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Thanks for all this feedback, everyone. It's pretty clear that there's not one best home replacement, and that it comes down to personal preference.

I agree about PandaHome being laggy and choppy. And really, I don't trust any app that contains improper grammar (When you change the number of screens, it gives you some message like, "It have to restart now").

+1 on the personal preference comment. That is part of the beauty of this platform is the ability to chose and customize to your on liking.

On the bad grammer comment remember that English might not be the first language for many programmers. That does not mean the code is bad. It usually mean that they used a translator program to convert from their native language to English.

Mike

SITH · 02-09-2010, 09:42 AM

I've been using openhome. I get force closes but it is pretty easy to use. My phone has the CL14 updates that I installed myself, along with the ZE09.1...And It's partially rooted. It def runs better than stock out of the box.

fluharty13 · 02-09-2010, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikelcan

On the bad grammer comment remember that English might not be the first language for many programmers. That does not mean the code is bad. It usually mean that they used a translator program to convert from their native language to English.

I fully understand that, but I would think that when producing software for mass consumption, you would want to dot every i and cross every t, and you might engage one of the 400 million or so people on this planet for whom English is their primary language to get things just right. To me, the amount of attention to detail in an app is an indicator of the amount of quality in the app. I sometimes have to translate things into French for some of my Canadian business associates, and I certainly don't trust it to anyone other than someone completely fluent in French.

That said, if the app was phenomenal beyond that, it would be different, but I ran into a lot of issues with the dockbars when I tried it out, and it all just left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

juanstah · 02-09-2010, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Juanstah, I think you actually mean Advanced Launcher?

"Advanced Launcher - free - Allows up to 10 screens, allows organization of app drawer."

Indeed. It's small in size but light on its feet. :-)

Mw182006 · 02-09-2010, 12:28 PM

Well I just played around with aHome for a bit, it was pretty nice til I went to charge it through USB. It picked up the connection but said I wasn't using an official battery and therefore didn't charge. Back to the drawing board.

Semi OT: Is there an easy way to move these (open/panda) themes to the SD card? I installed a bunch but now they all show up in my drawer.

Mw182006 · 02-09-2010, 02:06 PM

Wow...this "Not approved battery" error is still lingering after restarting and unplugging the battery. It seemed to have disappeared once I took the battery out, but after about 10 minutes the message popped up and stopped charging. Am I looking at a factory reset or does anyone have any ideas?

fluharty13 · 02-09-2010, 02:24 PM

Yipes, that's scary. I'm running aHome Lite still, and my phone is charging as we speak with no problems, albeit through the wall charger. I'll plug in my usb and see what happens.

IOWA · 02-09-2010, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Thanks for all this feedback, everyone. It's pretty clear that there's not one best home replacement, and that it comes down to personal preference.

I agree about PandaHome being laggy and choppy. And really, I don't trust any app that contains improper grammar (When you change the number of screens, it gives you some message like, "It have to restart now").

So it sounds to me like these are the contenders. Juanstah, I think you actually mean Advanced Launcher?

PandaHome - free - Allows up to 11 screens. Themes. Dockbars.
aHome Lite - free
dxTop - $2.99
gde - €2.25
SweeterHome - free beta
OpenHome Full - $3.99
OpenHome Lite - free
Advanced Launcher - free - Allows up to 10 screens, allows organization of app drawer.

Maybe we can compile some information here to get a nice, comprehensive comparison. Feel free to copy/paste the above and add more info to it.

Pandahome is made by a chinese company, netdragon websoft. They don't speak english so well. Netdragon websoft makes ftpmmorpgs,( which is how I know this) and thy are pretty decent for free games, ( well when I played their games several years back, they could use an updated graphics engine). Needless to say I was quite shocked when I saw netdragon was the owner/creator of pandahome. That being said, pandahome is nice, but definately buggy and laggy.

Mw182006 · 02-09-2010, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Yipes, that's scary. I'm running aHome Lite still, and my phone is charging as we speak with no problems, albeit through the wall charger. I'll plug in my usb and see what happens.

Can't say 100% it's related to aHome, but the only other changes I made were updates to some already installed apps (astrid, gsdroid). I tried searching but didn't really find any other similar cases. I emailed mappn and they hadn't heard of it either, but said they'd look in to it.

I removed the battery a 2nd time and it seems to be holding up on the charger -- fingers crossed.

fluharty13 · 02-09-2010, 04:51 PM

I charged on usb for 45 minutes to an hour with no issue while aHome was running. I'll try it again in the morning.

Did you have the phone mounted at the time, or not?

Mw182006 · 02-09-2010, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

I charged on usb for 45 minutes to an hour with no issue while aHome was running. I'll try it again in the morning.

Did you have the phone mounted at the time, or not?

Nope (don't think so at least, usually just plug and play), and sure enough the message started popping up again after about 20-30 minutes. I'm going to uninstall astrid and gsdroid to see if it may have to do with those updates.

AndroidStephen · 02-09-2010, 04:59 PM

Question about dxTop... I've been using Panda for a while.. it does lag some, but has great features otherwise, so I've put up with it.. I tried a bunch of the others and started really liking dxTop (using the demo version so far). Can someone that is running the full version check something for me... on the other home screens, when I'm using my music player, I can use the volume buttons even when the screen is off... but in dxTop, it seems to disable this feature.. so I have to wake the phone up completely just to change the volume, which is really annoying. Is this true for the paid version?

setasai · 02-09-2010, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mw182006

Wow...this "Not approved battery" error is still lingering after restarting and unplugging the battery. It seemed to have disappeared once I took the battery out, but after about 10 minutes the message popped up and stopped charging. Am I looking at a factory reset or does anyone have any ideas?

I have this same issue. I dont remember this happening before updating the Moment to CL14. I now have ZE10.1 and CL14 installed and it has been acting up on me as well. Did you find a fix? I rarely see posts around for it.

fluharty13 · 02-10-2010, 08:04 AM

I'm charging on usb again this morning with no problem. I have Astrid installed, too (not that aHome lets me put it on the screen, though - grrr).

fluharty13 · 02-10-2010, 08:06 AM

Oh, and what has become my biggest peeve with aHome so far: I open the app drawer and launch an app. Then when I exit that app, the app drawer is still open. Can that be changed?

Mw182006 · 02-10-2010, 09:55 AM

Weird quirk I guess. Uninstalling astrid seemed to help, my phone stayed on the USB charger throughout the night.

numus · 02-10-2010, 10:53 AM

I am using framework-res.apk and think it is the best IMHO
also i am about to try replacement launcher.apk

SITH · 02-10-2010, 12:28 PM

Any way to add more than three screens and maybe a docking drawer?

Edit...I was talking to nimbus.

fluharty13 · 02-10-2010, 01:00 PM

Numus, what is framework-res.apk and where does one get it?

numus · 02-10-2010, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SITH

Any way to add more than three screens and maybe a docking drawer?

Edit...I was talking to nimbus.

Working on trying to get advancedlauncher working... if i got the source to how the home replacements work we probably could port it into the basic frame...
I dont know enough right now to actually make one myself from scratch

Quote:

Originally Posted by fluharty13

Numus, what is framework-res.apk and where does one get it?

It is the new method we are using on the development site (along with deox files which zefie has experience unstable responses but i havent yet) to replace the stock theme.. As in, you arent running any applications at all, it is how the stock is displayed.. so no programs = no cpu/mem use and battery use...

Theme files
that is where the main development is being done and there are some themes and launcher replacements already up...

setasai · 02-10-2010, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mw182006

Weird quirk I guess. Uninstalling astrid seemed to help, my phone stayed on the USB charger throughout the night.

You know thats possible because I just recently started using the Astrid widget and Astrid as well... I'll keep using it for a while and see if I can find a pattern.

lscotty · 02-13-2010, 10:10 PM

Do any of the home replacement apps allow you to have a diffrent wallpaper on other screens or are they the same as the normal home screen and just have one wallpaper that scrolls or is the same between all the screens. Id like to have three screens each with a different picture

lscotty · 02-13-2010, 10:17 PM

nevermind i guess i was lazy. I just did a search and found my question answered in another post

fluharty13 · 02-14-2010, 07:44 AM

I'm curious what the answer was, Scotty.

For the record, I uninstalled aHome after one time when I changed my theme and I thought I had bricked my phone. It would just hang for 60 seconds or so. I also didn't like that I couldn't add whatever widgets I wanted.

For now, I'm back to stock, but I may reload Advanced Launcher.

pastafarian · 02-14-2010, 01:33 PM

My experience with Pandahome. First time I installed it, no icons in the system drawer. Second time, installed OK but wouldn't stick as the default home screen. Every once in a while I'd get the select default app requester which is a bit frustrating. Third time, the default app problem returned after a while and though I didn't associate it with Pandahome at the time, the whole phone seemed to slow down and get laggy. Fourth time? You're kidding? Right? I'm trying out Advanced Launcher right now and so far so good. It lacks many of Pandahome's features but is much easier to set up.

Mw182006 · 02-16-2010, 05:56 PM

...aaaand 6 days later my "not approved battery" errors magically re-appear. Any suggestions before I go the factory reset route?

Covert_Death · 02-16-2010, 06:58 PM

is there a replacement that doesn't change anything other than the number of home screens allowed?

fluharty13 · 02-17-2010, 07:15 AM

Advanced Launcher changes very little other than the number of home screens.

Mw, I still haven't seen that battery error, and I charge on USB all the time. I did uninstall aHome, though. You may have a defective phone and/or battery.

Mw182006 · 02-17-2010, 11:06 AM

Possibly, but I had no issues in the month leading up to my experiments with panda and ahome.