Help Home Replacement Apps

[Mw182006]

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]

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?

 

[flu13]

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]

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 -

 

[Mw182006]

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.

 

[flu13]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[flu13]

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).

 

[flu13]

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]

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

 

[numus]

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

 

[SITH]

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

Edit...I was talking to nimbus.

 

[flu13]

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

 

[numus]

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

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[flu13]

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]

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]

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

 

[flu13]

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]

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

 

[itmike]

I tried sweeterhome and panda. Both caused lag for me, and I just gave up on getting a home replacement. I just wish that the handle on the app drawer was customizable.