I bough Galaxy Nexus 3 days ago, and this is my first android phone. I loved everything about galaxy nexus and android ICS, except:

1. Widgets are not consistent. I'm not looking for extraordinary widgets, I just want to have my basic widgets (time, date, weather) to be consistent. Corners rounded same, all borders aligned, using same colors, using same or matching fonts, etc. But, there is no official digital clock! Why they decided to put analog clock by default, and no digital clock; I can't understand at all... Is there anything I'm missing?

They don't have to be official widgets, I tried beautiful widgets, hd widgets, lots of custom clock/date/whatever widget, they are always inconsistent in some way, even after hours (in my case, days) of customization.

So, is there a consistent widget set I'm missing?
I looked at other people's screenshots here, and they're also mostly inconsistent and/or misaligned, but no one seems to care... It drives me crazy to look at my phone if some widget is 1px misaligned with another one...

2. I don't like the search bar. I want to get rid of it. I can do this by just disabling it, but that means that:
i) I can't use it anywhere else
ii) I can't use that area for anything else...

I searched, and I know that there are launchers that do this, and I tried them, but I like the stock launcher, I have no problem with it. I just want to remove search bar and change my grid to 4x5. Launchers change far more stuff than just homescreen area, and I don't want to change them.

Any ideas?
How can I disable search bar AND use the space WITHOUT installing any launchers?

 

I tried Nova launcher now, and it is fantastic! I knew about it before, but I was afraid it would change everything as other launchers do.

Thanks.

 

I don't like it, because:
- It's on all homescreens, this means it's taking up 4x5=20 slots. Even if I use it, why would I want it on all homescreens? I would put it on just one screen.
- Even then, it's not movable, you have to have it at the top.
- It's style is not consistent with anything else, and it's not configurable.