Android Launchers – All you need to know about is here

Hello android lovers!

There might be apps that would make your works easy, or could provide you assistance with some of your stuff, but there are also some which gives you the access to groom up your device’s home-screen, menu and much further to the pre-defined animations. Android launchers are thoseapplications which give you the access to customize your device’s UI, unlike iOS or Windows operating devices. Here you’ll find answers related to the queries of your launcher related questions.

One of the Android’s best features is that it gives you the freedom to customize the phone’s pre-defined interface. You can design your own home-screen or the app drawer or the pre-set animations! All you need is to download the LAUNCHER app from GOOGLE PLAY STORE AND ALAS! You’re done. This app modifies your software design WITHOUT MAKING ANY “PERMANENT CHANGES”.

NOT QUITE A ROM!

This absence of permanent marking feature makes launchers a better choice than AFTERMARKET FIRMWARE REPLACEMENTS. Commonly preferred to as ROMs, these have guided Android’s customization spirit since the early days of Android. More than just an app, ROM is essentially a different version of the Android Operating System, that’s meant to replace the operating service that came to your phone.

While they offer a robust way to make sweeping changes to the way your phone looks and works, there are alsominor and dangerous dis-advantages of using a ROM. The installation process is quite boring and long, and by doing so you are likely to void your phone’s warranty. Also, you a single small un-reversible mistake and you could turn your device into a very costly paper weight.

As a result, ROM’s have dropped their popularity status except for developers and tinkerers. Launchers are those app that have successfully and easily occupied their spaces.

The reason is: Launchers are very easy to use- you need to download the app from PLAY STORE and an easy installation process after which your phone’s is designed in your own way. Neither the change is ever-lasting nor does it render any chance to harm your phone in either ways- warranty as well as phonesuse.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

Here, every android launcher fall under one of the two categories:

1. Design Launcher:

Design launcher focuses mainly on changing the theme, layout, drawers and certain other animating features of home-screen, menu screen, and etc. resulting in creating the simple outlook into a collaborative and catchy one. Furthermore, they allow you to add custom widgets, wallpapers, folder, picture collage and features like double tapping, gesture controls, etc.

2. Smart Launcher:

Smart launcher concentrate their work by putting the most relevant information first and centre throughout your day; collecting information of your home location, work place, time your head out for office, moment you put plug the headset, weather info., night time and lot more data. It then function according to these and fragments/changes your home-screen according to the relevant time and work assigned. You cannot modify your phone’s design by using a home-screen replacement.

A BREIF HIGHLIGHT ON EITHER CATEGORIES

Let’s offer some highlights to design launchers; they were the first ones to tune up the personal customization genre. These apps completely overhaul the home-screen, which is attained by pressing home button or the hotkey (in some phones). This place is used to set wallpapers and shortcuts to different apps.

• THE DESIGN LAUNCHERS

Design launchers acts as a foundation that you can build up with icon packs, wallpapers and widgets. These apps serves to unlock” the existing design limitations, such as how many apps you can build up in individual home screen, to allow for deeper modification. The sole app helps you to modify the pre-set content, but the “real fun” starts when you download the icon packs, play around with widgets, and hunt for new wallpapers. ICON PACKS change the look for some or all the icon of app that are provided with the installation. Most of the packs are free, few require to spend some bucks and other, a “launcher” to use them.

The most popular design launchers are NOVA, Go Launcher EX and APEX. All three have been the most used and have occupied a “must download” place in PLAY STORE. Also, DODOL AND Buzz Launcher have come and provided a good competition for the race.

If you go around to search, you can find amazing and beautiful design that people have created the mixture of launchers, icon packs and widgets. These have given the access to provide people with the power to make their phone look “completely out of the world”. All it needs is to stick around PLAY STORE and you’re done! ULTIMATE CUSTOM WIDGET, a widget modifying app, has also offered a good part in helping these launchers.

THEMER, a launcher which is created by the people who run “MyColorScreen” (a website, open for people to show-off their customized hard work of screens), is quite an amazement which offers stunning home-screen modification. You can fool someone by displaying a full working electric circuit board or an UBUNTU touch OS on your home-screen easily. Themer makes the process of tinkering your phone’s aesthetic INFINITELY, because you can use pre-made design built by a community of Android Enthusiasts. You can easily switch over to different themes as you like, just download the theme you like, with add-on icon packs and that’s it!

• THE SMART LAUNCHERS

Smart home-screen replacements have very different goals from those of design launchers. These app prefer to put the information YOU need at the TIME you want them. Eventually, they make your work easy as you’ll not have to search the app you want at the time.

With time you use them, the more you use, the smarter they become. This is because they learn with time what you prefer at a certain moment. Ex. You plug-in you headphones, and then you search for the music app to listen the tunes. Wouldn’t it be nice if just plugging the hardware will offer you with the app you want to use at the first place?

This is what the smart launcher focuses on. Some are so well coded that they ask you for the home and work addresses, so they might know where you currently are. By doing this, they can show you theapps you might want at the home or work place. They might even switch the phone modes; DO NOT DISTURB at night time, GENERAL when you’re at home and many more.

The top home screen replacements are YAHOO owned AVIATE and EVERYTHING ME launchers (I personally use AVIATE launcher, and believe me, I need very less to press the menu button; I get all the apps I need to switch at the very right time). AVIATE comes with its own design and keep the apps accordingly in groups which makes your phone look tidy. This app is aware of your locations (which it collects using your data connection), so it can show you the right apps and widgets when you wake up in the morning, commute to the office, walk around for lunch, or switch in the head-phones for listening music. AVIATE does not offer much design customization, though you can add your own widgets, move and shift apps shortcuts in the home-screen and change the theme from light to dark and vice versa.

EVERYTHING ME emphasizes on “search”, with a large search bar, that you can use to search apps, contacts, songs, etc. throughout your phone. You can also use the same for web search. This launcher also provide categorising apps in different folders based on category; such as entertainment, work, etc. also suggesting new apps you can download in each of the category.

Another choice is, newly launched US-only Terrain, which evolved out of Samsung Accelerator Program, and is designed to replace TouchWiz. Though it’s not just for Samsung Phones, you can use it in any devices having Android version 4.1 and above. Terrain is more subtle than AVIATE and EveruthingMe, leaving your home-screen untouched. It comes with two menus: one that houses helpful widgets for your Facebook news feed, recent apps, your calendar and more, while other one arranges your apps in an alphabetical order which renders them easy to find.

You might also remember that Facebook also tried to leap in home-screen replacement with Facebook Home, which literally transformed you full phone into a full-screen News Feed. The app is still available on PLAY STORE, which its popularity was affected as it was released with HTC First (also known as Facebook Phone, in year 2013).

..Well well well, what’s the point of all this?

Using launchers can be overwhelming at first, and to make it more clear; THEY ARE NOT AT ALL “MUST HAVE” APPS TO GET A GOOD ANDROID EXPERIENCE. Still, they are worth to tinker with. By the way, who cares to follow the mainstream? Who would deny adding flying features to the pre-defined animation features?

Nothing is to focus constantly and getting seriously affected while playing with launchers; you can go back to the stock features just with a few taps.

SOME TIPS TO HELP YOU ELECTING THE RIGHT ON THE GO:

1. DESIGN LAUNCHERS:

THEMER comes with numerous predesigned themes that you can customize according to your ease. Simple designs can be created easily by selecting the factory features of a launchers. However, if you want a “true” customisation, you need to invest a lot of time in gathering icon packs, widgets, etc. and finally, patience to make it your wish-like.GO LAUNCHER EX is a free launcher with hundreds of themes, but you need to download individual themes from PLAY STORE to make’em work.

2. SMART LAUNCHERS

AVIATE is the simplest smart launchers, I recommend it for starters. It gives you what you want at the perfect time. EVERYTHING ME is the best home screen organizer, categorising your apps in “smart folders”. TERRAIN has a simple home screen and gives a menu hiding convenient information.

Lenovo’s Fitness Smartband: Smartness Redefined

There has been a significant rise in the number of wearables being launched recently. Evidently the rise in technological advancement has provided us with new smart and compact solutions to build gadgets that take up very less space and provide a wide variety of functionalities. Just a decade ago the thought of having a mobile phone functionality in a watch felt absurd but now we have all kind of smart watches as extensions to our smartphones and some of them being autonomous phones in themselves. So more thoughts were poured out to realize the potentiality of these type of gadgets and the first most basic concept put under the spotlight was a fitness bracelet. A band which will gather all your basic health parameters and send a report to your smartphone to analyses your fitness status. And in support of this Lenovo has decided to launch its fitness smartband.

Currently named the Lenovo Smartband SW-B100 (let’s hope a catchier name is on the way), the blue or orange wearable is a fitness smartband similar to what we’ve seen from companies like Xiaomi, Fitbit, and the upcoming Razer Nabu. The Lenovo Smartband SW-B100 does not change its essence from the rest of bracelets. The Quantification of daily activity is able to measure the motion of the user in their day to day routine, counting steps, distance, calories burned and even heart rate, by making use of the reader which is located at the bottom and that takes data from the wrist, as we have seen in recent smart watches. Lenovo has got its approval form FCC for the fitness smartband. However based on the documents found at the FCC, it seems that Lenovo will not be turning to Android Wear for their platform of choice. Instead the company seems to be following in Samsung’s footsteps with the Samsung Gear Fit by choosing to go with an alternative operating system instead.

It can also monitor sleep by measuring the amount of rest at night and you will be able to see all those details straight to your smartphone thanks to a dedicated app, which provides statistical data periods that is daily, weekly and monthly and supports from Android 4.3. As an extra feature, Lenovo SmartBand indicates that SW-B100 also allows the user to unlock the computer when it detects it is close without entering passwords, but no further details regarding this feature was given. There is no word yet on when Lenovo plans on fully revealing this SW-B100, not that there is much left to be revealed aside from pricing. Given that it is already in the hands of the FCC and the Bluetooth SIG, and that the device looks quite finished, it might be really soon now.

Flock: A whatsApp Like App For Professionals

Serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia, The CEO and founder of Directi Group has launched a professional chat app called Flock.

The application would be available for free to download on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Chrome.

Flock aims to be the WhatsApp for business users that allows employees to sign in using their work e-mail and sync the entire office directory to the employees’ devices.

“This is not a duplication of existing applications such as Viber, WeChat, WhatsApp or any other applications. Chatting is a crowded space but nobody has really nailed it yet for business,”

Turakhia told a website ‘Business Line’.

Flock allows employees to sign in using their work email, and automatically syncs the entire office directory to every employee’s device. This is something services like WhatsApp and Skype don’t provide. Also, on public instant messaging services an employee’s personal and business communications get mixed up, which won’t happen on Flock.

It also allows external members (like clients) to be included in the chats. Users can share files as well, which are stored for a period of 30 days after which it’s removed from Flock’s server. Team members not on Flock can also be messaged, and they will receive an email notification with the message(s).

Flock was developed in India and challenges similar applications that are bloated with features or mixes business and personal communications. This application only recognises corporate e-mail IDs (while sending friend requests) is to free to download and install. It also runs on desktops.

While ‘Flock’ is intended to be free, it will bundle other services under Riva FZC, the umbrella holding several applications such as Ringo and Hola (both cheaper voice calling applications) that would bring in revenues.

Sunswift eve- The Solar Powered car

Vehicles are the most important part of a man’s life. Every work can be done by a vehicle. For saving time or to do a work fast, vehicles are used. Technicians have done an enormous work on modification of vehicles. The mileage of cars is increased, to save fuel. But fuel is a non-renewable source of energy and it may stamp out one day. So we need a renewable source of energy for fulfilling our energy need. So to overcome this problem, technicians invented a car which runs with the help of solar power.

The UNSW Solar Racing Team Sunswift designed a solar car named as Sunswift eve. it is a sunlight based auto dashing group of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Building a sun powered fueled vehicle with both speed and extent was a significant objective for the understudies of the University of New South Wales. Sunswift eve is a sunlight based fueled auto that has totally crushed the past sun powered controlled area rate record. The group at present holds various world records, including the Guinness World Record for the speediest sun beside the controlled vehicle, and is best known for its support in the World Solar Challenge (WSC). The Sunswift eve endeavored to break the 26-year-old Guinness World Record for most noteworthy normal speed over a 500 km separation. The past record of 73 km/hr. was situated in 1988. On July 23, 2014, the Sunswift eve arrived at a normal velocity of 100 km/hr. over the 500 km course. The record is even now held up check by the International Automobile Federation. It has created an advantageous track record, winning numerous prizes and breaking various world records.

The Sunswift group has constructed a sum of 5 separate autos, the latest of which is Sunswift V. One of the main considerations that keep us from exchanging over to renewable vitality controlled vehicles is that there aren’t any true options out there. The least expensive electric autos are still more lavish than their ignition motor partners and are not quick enough and don’t have long extended. Anyway, with the fuel costs arriving at an untouched high, new blood has begun bringing some genuine changes in the realm of battery fueled or sun powered controlled autos. The UNSW Solar Racing Team – Sunswift, is Australia’s top sunlight based auto group. The Sunswift eve is a zero emanation sunlight based and battery stockpiling electric vehicle, fit for blanket 800 kilometers on a solitary charge and accomplishing a top pace of 140 km/hr. (87 mph). The auto’s engine was supplied by the Australian National Science Agency (CSIRO) and works at 97 percent productivity. As per the International Business Times, this implies the Sunswift “expends to the extent that as a kitchen toaster.

The record-setting triumph is an approval of that exertion. “There are numerous sun oriented autos out there with a long extend, and numerous other sun powered autos fit for much higher velocities but Technicians are attempting to do something momentous and overcome both. Sustaining speed and execution in excess of 500 km is a vital benchmark for a sun powered vehicle. It’s “basically the extent that an ordinary individual would need to drive in a solitary day,” importance business sunlight based vehicles are that much closer to reality.

Blaupunkt launches Las Vegas 530

Current contraptions are extremely helpful for every one of us. Devices including cell telephones, GPS frameworks, laptops and so on helps us from various perspectives. Like GPS framework is utilized for exploring us while driving. However engineering isn’t stops here. Individuals need more vehicles contraptions synthesis for their Leisure and entertainment. The larger part of us will most likely be unable to purchase the autos with German building, however there’s something else to offer with German Engineering that a significant number of us can bear. Blaupunkt, which is one of the heading vehicles infotainment marks in India and universally has recently proclaimed the Las Vegas 530 infotainment framework for ₹ 23,990 and this infotainment framework is an aftereffect of German designing.

 

The Las Vegas 530 is valued truly well and worth looking at before you finished the infotainment framework for your auto. “Basic capacities clubbed with German Engineering” is the manner by which Ms. Preeti Bakshi, Head Marketing, Blaupunkt India, characterizes their new Multimedia System, LAS VEGAS 530. She guarantees that the Las Vegas 530 furnishes clients with an incredible sound experience loaded with ideal clarity and rich bass beats. We are sure it will be generally welcomed. Blaupunkt is perceived as an image of German quality and advancement since 1928, and the new framework is asserted to exemplify those qualities. It wasn’t long prior when Blaupunkt affirmed its SAN DEIGO 530 framework – the item has made waves in the business sector! San Deigo was an item with music and in addition route characteristics. The LAS VEGAS 530, then again, is implied for a crowd who need just sound related peculiarities, and are not intrigued by a route framework. This new mixed media framework accompanies a 6.2-inches advanced TFT screen show. It has TFT touch show, which has a determination of 800 x 480 pixels. It accompanies the usefulness of inherent Bluetooth calling, telephone directory, download and sound streaming as well. The screen will likewise show pictures from your stockpiling gadgets, Co-travelers can scroll and delight in the puts away the minutes. It has been stacked really well in the usefulness office.

Las Vegas 530 gets a 10-band parametric equalizer and 4-channel preamplifier which helps in giving an agreeable sound which is free from aggravations to upgrade the listening knowledge of music devotees while driving. This new sight and sound framework backings radio alongside information transporters, for example, DVD, VCD, CD, Front USB and a micro SDHC. IT underpins different Radio framework dialects, including English (British), German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian. You can accumulate to 30 stations and has a Frequency reaction (Hz) -3db- 30 15.000. The Video playback arrangements upheld are AVI, Mp4, MPEG, MPG, Xvid, Picture playback designs  JPEG, JPG, Audio positions USB, micro SD- Mp3, WMA, Audio organizations Disk- Mp3 with a Bit rate in Mp3-32- 320 Kbit/s and in WMA- 32-192 Kbit/sec.

It accompanies a backing for radio gathering cordiality of the commotion dropping Blaupunkt recipient. It comes in with two implicit mouth pieces to help clients go to calls easily. Blaupunkt is an infotainment accomplice of decision to the world’s heading traveler auto as including Tata, Mahindra, Maruti, General Motors, Proton, VW, Audi, Bentley, Hyundai, Kia and so on. The secondary selling head is implied for the ones who like their music to be their accomplice each time they venture inside their auto and the Las Vegas 530 won’t baffle. In this way, whenever you anticipate getting a pleasant infotainment framework for your auto, you know where to look.

Honda Uni-Cub chair means you’ll never have to walk anywhere again

When it comes to automobiles, Honda is not an unrecognized name. Japan based multi- national corporation Honda Motor Co. has worked very hard since 1959 when it started its first motorcycle manufacturing and combustion engine manufacturing. Many luxury cars have hit the road after being manufactured by Honda. Notable names are Honda CR-Z,  CR-V, Accord, Civic and many more. Honda’s contribution to the automobile market has been a major one and it has once again stepped up to present a mobility device that ought to be remembered for a long time for its uniqueness. In the year 2012 Honda released its first ever UNI- CUB mobility stool and now they have Produced its Beta version which is much more light and compact.

The earlier version of UNI- CUB had been displayed at various technological conferences and centers all around the globe and Honda is now targeting to sell it among the masses. The UNI- CUB also stole the spotlight of Tokyo Motor Show. The UNI-CUB β is supported by a lithium-ion battery and has a range of 5.9 km. Honda has also considered the effect it will produce on the environment and so they have made it completely eco- friendly, UNI- CUB is electrically charged which eradicated the use of conventional fuels and does not contribute at all to the rising levels of pollution. It can attain a top speed of 5.9 km/h. Though the speed factor is not so great but it would be too harsh to judge it on a single parameter. Besides, it is fit for personal use and can save a lot of trouble. No more getting tired standing in long queues and a ride along the park will be so much fun also. The UNI-CUB Beta is smaller and lighter than the original. It uses the same type of balance control technology and omni directional driving wheel system to help users get around in any direction on a little body leaning gesture. The technology inside the device allows the rider to move forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonally by shifting their body weight on the device.  The balance control technology is completely mind- blowing and its features are the result of Honda’s research into bipedal humanoid robots.

Honda has been continuously experimenting the UNI-CUB in collaboration with Miraikan until their hard work resulted in the production of the improved version, UNI-CUB Beta. The UNI-CUB Beta then has been used by Miraikan’s staff within the building. So it is clear that Honda has thoroughly tested it and has ensured the security of its use. That might has cleared many speculation lingering in your mind regarding the damage that one can receive with a lower seating position, making it easier to use for a wider range of people. Additionally, Honda added a stand function, which disables the driving system so users can step onto it more easily and even use it as a stool. Since UNI-CUB β was designed for indoor use, softer materials were employed in the design to lessen the impact if it hits other people or objects. A softer seat makes the thing more comfortable for rolling around the office.