I just bought my first Samsung Galaxy device and am now looking into replacing the Touchwiz launcher with Nova.
However, I'd like to know if using the Nova launcher will eat up more memory or cpu power and result in higher battery usage.
Even when I switch the launcher to Nova, isn't all the Touchwiz stuff still running in the background?
Go with Nova.
It'll fun faster, likely use less RAM and CPU as well. As for battery... Your launcher shouldn't seriously afffect your battery use, I've never seen a difference between launchers. Then again, I've been on Nova for 2+ years.
Don't worry, Touchwiz Launcher should shut down when Nova is set as default.
I'm am a great fan of Nova but seems that is using more battery lately. Unfortunately, until now I didn't find a better alternative (tried to use Themer but on Note 4 it's becoming unresponsive).
Anyway... Nova is great compared to TouchWiz.
Where can I find theme supported by NOVA?
If you have root, open a terminal window and type "su", then confirm the authorization and type "cd /system/app/" then do "ls" to view the containings and then do "rm -rf nameofthedefaulttouchwizlauncher.apk"
Related
Hi,
i am getting my device next week and and dont apparently dont like the TouchWiz UI v4.0 much (from what i saw), what is your experience compare to the SPB shell 3D (or others - if there are other betters...) - is the shell slowing down the device or not.
Anyone tried to install the softwarekeyboard SwiftKey (i used ot my desire HD i and like it).....
I'm using SwiftKey on mine, works fine in portrait mode but the keyboard & word suggestions take up most of the screen in landscape mode.
Not the biggest fan of touch wiz; HTCsense is much better. But that will be easily sorted wen the devs work their magic!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
SPB Shell is vastly overpriced, LauncherPro+ or ADW Launcher are much better options, in addition to being kinder to the wallet.
NZtechfreak said:
SPB Shell is vastly overpriced, LauncherPro+ or ADW Launcher are much better options, in addition to being kinder to the wallet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Plus 1 on the launcher pro plus. SPB is way over priced along with the same crap 3d carousel of theirs that I was using on my winmo omnia three years ago.
SPB + APW Combination wonderful
I know that probably the Samsung Galaxy s2 is the only phone at the moment on the market able to work like this but
TRY TRY TRY !!!!!
SPB 3D with the set of widget APW + APW Google
you have all what you need
smooth launcher with 3D graphic and with a number very nice 3 D widgets included .....
listen well .....
SCROLLABLE widgets
Facebook, Twitter, Messaging, Google, Reader, People, Timeline (Facebook+Twitter)
APW it is actually scrollable also with Touchwiz .... but the quality is very low
with SPB .... they are as smooth as with ADW, launcher pro etc
This is my opinion ... of course I am sure that ther will be people that will not like it .....
SPB Shell 3D is an ok launcher, but for me I prefer GO Launcher EX.. I bought SPB Shell 3D, and I ended up going back to GO Launcher EX.. My wife ended up being the one using it on her Nexus S.. I'll say one thing about it though, it's smooth as silk on both the Galaxy S2 and the Nexus S, so it's pretty impressive what they've done there with all the 3D graphics going on in it..
for 15 bucks though, can you justify it over the free alternatives?
jayquinten510 said:
for 15 bucks though, can you justify it over the free alternatives?
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Definitely not.Bought all 3 spb,adw ex and launcher pro.Now I am back to adw ex because of launcher pro developer stop updating
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afilopou said:
Definitely not.Bought all 3 spb,adw ex and launcher pro.Now I am back to adw ex because of launcher pro developer stop updating
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How do you find the ex version of adw? Worth it? The stock adw was good, but I found everything still worked better on touchwiz
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
The price is a bit hefty, I'll admit that.. It's THE most expensive app I've ever bought, and I ended up not using it and gave it to my wife instead.. LOL
GO LAuncher EX has everything I want, and it's free )
Go launcher Ex is the best launcher so far.....u can also try Tw Launcher 4.5
Been using SPB Shell on my SGS2 for a month now and almost a year on my Nexus one before that. It's just the smoothest thing ever on both devices. No problems and nice default widgets. The carousel is totally useless, I never use it. Desktop management is nicely done and they can be swapped and added quickly. A bit low on the option front, but all-in-all a nice package and has been worth the $15 in my opinion.
No wonder Huawei chose it as a default launcher for future phones.
GOLAUNCHER
And Swiftkey best ,. !!
I brought SPB Shell 3D last week having been using launcher pro before that on my SGS2 and N1. I find it the smoothest experience I’ve had in a launcher. With LPP I found that I could have 5 home screens filled and keep it fairly fluid. With Shell 3D I now have 9-10 and its somehow smoother.
The carousel is really pleasing on the eyes if you go with all black, not a massive amount of use but if you have 10 plus screens it can be quicker for navigation once you start using it more. Again super fluid 100% of the time.
The widgets included are good; the animations on the weather for example are subtle but well done. The folder system is the best I’ve had on android and the way home screens are reorganised to make room for additions is something Google need to have a standard because it makes so much sense. There is even a little buffer zone where if your screen is full, icons/widgets will drop off to the buffer to accommodate the new item, and will change back if you remove it -awesome!
There is still room for features we have come to expect from Go/ADW/LLP. Customisable dock, hiding apps in the drawer, homescreen looping, restart launcher etc. The memory foot print is pretty big I've seen it hit 80mb, wouldn't surprise me if it passes 100mb at some points.
I have compromised a little the way I like my launcher to look, like having to have a 3rd party app drawer as I hate it unorganised but in return I am getting alot of positives.
The price is relatively high and more advanced features are needed in the long run but if you take this as a work in progress the speed and shine of this launcher take some beating. in its current version I give it 8 - 8.5 / 10
Is battery life reduced when you have 2 launchers. I installed Espier and noticed now that I have 2 launchers battery life has reduced is this normal? I like the way to uninstall apps from espier. I still use TWLauncher and just use Espier to uninstall apps since I did not set a Default launcher I guess both are running simultaneously.
dudejb said:
Is battery life reduced when you have 2 launchers. I installed Espier and noticed now that I have 2 launchers battery life has reduced is this normal? I like the way to uninstall apps from espier. I still use TWLauncher and just use Espier to uninstall apps since I did not set a Default launcher I guess both are running simultaneously.
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Activate one of the Launchers, then go to Settings > Applications > Running Services, if you see both launcher you're using in there, then yes, both are consuming battery. Normally, you should only see the launcher that is ACTIVE.
I've seen a similar behavior, but in my case is I found that the problem was with the launcher itself, in this case "GO Launcher EX", I've noticed that after a while, it will start consuming CPU (around 3%) even if it is idle, the solution I found is restarting it (the launcher).
I've tried the V6 supercharger script, nova, and apex. NONE of them eliminate launcher redraws. It's so annoying!
The only launcher that provides a smooth stock experience with no redraws is...the stock launcher. Why? I love the features of the other launchers, especially being able to back up my homescreen. But the redraws kill the experience. Why is it so hard for aftermarket launchers to replicate the experience?
Whaa...
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1
Try adding this to your build.prop. I had the same problem and this little tweak locks the home screen in memory works great for me. Pay attention, that you don't mess something up in your build.prop!!!
Sent from my R800i using XDA
I believe Apex has the option to lock the launcher in memory, if not do the build.prop tweak in the post ^ mine.
Hydrony said:
ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1
Try adding this to your build.prop. I had the same problem and this little tweak locks the home screen in memory works great for me. Pay attention, that you don't mess something up in your build.prop!!!
Sent from my R800i using XDA
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Add. "ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1" right? I I might use this cause it annoys me too
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Try a less intense kernel too.
Wow. My nova launcher rarely redraws. Rarely. And when it does its quick.
let it be.
Laucher reloads and redraws are the results of Androids wonderful memory management. You'll have to find a launcher which locks in the memory, but by doing so, other apps will auto-kill faster than usual.
When I run nova or anything other than stock launcher, system panel shows its process as "perceptible" and using 40mb of ram while stock launcher has a process running too. Essentially I find its running both launchers, being more prone to kicking it out of memory.
Also on 4.0.1 this happened with the stock launcher getting redrawn. On 4.0.4 it seems to be fixed almost completely.
I still don't have perceptible in my sys panel and my nova usually hovers around 42ish and Max around 50. But I did buy the nova prime and set it as default. No sign of the other launcher unless it is system UI which hovers around 25mb.
let it be.
Yeah I'm jealous then. I been messing around tonight and can't get it to stop showing like that.
RogerPodacter said:
Yeah I'm jealous then. I been messing around tonight and can't get it to stop showing like that.
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This is why I freeze/uninstall all launchers except the one I'm using in Titanium backup. Though you shouldn't really have to, because Android should kill off the old launcher process eventually (when it needs more memory for something else) and it shouldn't return unless you manually switch back to that launcher. But I freeze it anyways just to ensure it doesn't interfere with anything. I freeze a lot of other Google/Android services that I don't use too.
I have been using apex launcher since the beginning on my galaxy nexus. However after android 4.2.2 update, I found that redraws have been really frequent and annoying.
The same happens on my nexus 7, especially after using memory hog apps like the "new hangouts" (really, really poorly optimized...)
Indeed apex reloads always, after exiting from hangouts.
Recently I tried also nova launcher (importing all settings from apex, so my configuration is identical), and I have to say that nova has much less redraws with respect to apex (both on galaxy nexus and nexus 7).
For example when rotating the screen from portrait to landscape, I don't experience any visible redraw with nova, while apex was redrawing quite often...
So far so good, I decided to switch to nova, even if I liked apex really much
wetter app caused launcher redraws
I also had frequent launcher redraws on my GN... the issue came with Android 4.2 and got MUCH worse with the recent 4.3 update (i'm on stock rom).
yesterday I removed the widget from wetteronline.com's "wetter app" I had on my homescreen - and surprise! I could not believe it, did not have a SINGLE launcher redraw since then (2 days heavy use) what a relief...
so I still think it is a bad memory management issue in Android, but maybe it is worth trying if one of your apps or widgets is contributing to the problem.
Galaxy Nexus i9250, Stock Android 4.3 Build JWR66V
Hi all,
I've been using the latest XenonHD w/ Air Kernel #580 and for the most part, everything works fine as it should, however there are periods were i get sporadic launcher redraws, the one i use is Apex Pro and have the 'keep in memory' option checked. This hinders my productivity and communication at the hospital because i would need to wait like 10 seconds everytime for the launcher to redraw then i can proceed to opening my medical applications. The main apps i use through the day are Pulse, Spotify, Epocrates, Medscape, Nurse Drug Handbook, Mini-Nurse, Gmail, browser, and etextbooks. Any launcher suggestions I could try where i don't have to deal with these redraws? Thank you
foolie said:
Hi all,
I've been using the latest XenonHD w/ Air Kernel #580 and for the most part, everything works fine as it should, however there are periods were i get sporadic launcher redraws, the one i use is Apex Pro and have the 'keep in memory' option checked. This hinders my productivity and communication at the hospital because i would need to wait like 10 seconds everytime for the launcher to redraw then i can proceed to opening my medical applications. The main apps i use through the day are Pulse, Spotify, Epocrates, Medscape, Nurse Drug Handbook, Mini-Nurse, Gmail, browser, and etextbooks. Any launcher suggestions I could try where i don't have to deal with these redraws? Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a complicated issue. Redraws may be due to memory or the widgets you're using. Try removing some widgets to see if the redraws go away.
Particularly, Blik causes redraws for me but I've learned to live with it because I very much like the widget.
Simply try Holo Launcher (non-HD version), it's the lightest of them. It has an option to keep in memory.
Sent from XDA app
nova with agressive launcher option checked, have all 5 homescreens full with widgets and no redraws
vbauer86 said:
nova with agressive launcher option checked, have all 5 homescreens full with widgets and no redraws
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This!!!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
If so why?
I use to use Nova Prime all the time. I stopped using it when I beta tested One Ui with the Note9 and just never went back.
I think now that Hex is out and samsung seems to have everything I really want now, I just have little interest in it anymore.
I still use nova
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Still use mine to haven't found any that is better[emoji16]
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jbuggy1 said:
Still use mine to haven't found any that is better[emoji16]
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Same here, I have it running on all of my phones.
I prefer action launcher, but the two are similar.
I use Nova Prime...importing/restoring the same exact settings from my OnePlus One days....
Lawnchair v2 launcher is pretty much like nova, but seems more like the pixel. I get tired of customizing Nova everytime and finding my backups.
I used ADW until Samsung support landscape then haven't switch back
First thing I install after unboxing my new phone. Nova all the way
I used to use nova, then switched to..adw... then now using default launcher.. I'm think I'm done with nova hehe. I may switch back to adw...we will see
then: nova, customize to the max
now: stock launcher at any given day, just set it up and be done with it
reason:
perhaps i feel that its due to the age factor
when i was in my university days (early 20s), i have all the time in the world to tinker around with the device, even rooting it and messing up the phone (yet i still have time to fix/reflash/rom my phone EVEN at the university premises)
now that im closer to my 30s, i just DONT have the time to mess around with my phone anymore.
work/reality/love has taken over my time which i just cant afford to allocate for phone tinkering.
not to mention Android has also matured over the years.. back when it was just kitkat or jellybean, there were TONS of mods
but now that most of those mods have baked in to the system, i just dont see any reason for me to mess around with the phone anymore.
i just use whatever that is provided by the phone.
even stock launcher feels sufficient nowadays (one ui launcher, oxygen os launcher, etc)
App launch animations on nova are very bad, its either one ui home or lawnchair v2 with pie animations.
I used ADW waaay back in the day, probably around my Note 2 or Note 3 days. Have used Nova since, it is so much better than the stock launcher even though the stock launcher has improved greatly. Nova still has so many more things you can do than the stock launcher. Plus very easy backup and restore from one device to another. I can't see a single reason to stop using Nova, it is just that much better overall IMHO.
I use Hyperion Launcher now days. Saw an article about it a few weeks ago and decided to give it a go. Im enjoying it quite a bit.
Been using nova for 3 days now..... been having some weird pop up " You're using full screen mode, Home, Back and Recent Button are hidden...blah blah blah "
How do you guys stop this from happening....
Want to use but can't get the fingerprint scanner to always show up on aod and iris recognition not working on lock screen unless I use the default launcher..
I normally always use Nova, but on the Note 10+, with gesture controls enabled, I find that the dock is too low on the phone. I tried increasing the padding, but it didn't really do much. Not sure if anybody else feels the same.
I have been switching between Lawnchair v2 and one ui. I like the stock launcher for the most part but I really like my Google feed to the left of the home screen.
+1 for Nova.