Gadgetory

Joe Levi with pocket now and this is a hands-on with a v8 launcher an Android launcher from Yahoo we tried out the Yahoo a v8 launcher on our huawei ascend mate - overall it looks very nice it looks right at home let's get into exactly what it does first of all you've got a big picture area that can be shared with a widget or two if you're lucky unfortunately updates to this screen aren't quite in real time as you can tell our clock it's about 11 minutes off and that's not uncommon now that's kind of a battery saving thing we assume and we hope that it catches up but in the mean time it's more of an annoyance than anything at all you can also see we've got a nice picture album you can put a couple side-by-side if you want down at the bottom of your favorite apps and you'll notice you've got missed indicators so I've got a missed call and I've got an unread email that I still need to get to you can customize these and you don't have to have five you can have less you can even have a couple more depending on the size of your screen let's go over to apps first we'll scroll over to the side this is kind of interesting it goes through and automatically categorizes each one of your apps into what you do at home social productivity entertainment music news transit photography and you can add even more collections this will automatically pull in app so that it thinks belong you can even add your own and if you want to find out more tap on the icon and it brings up suggestions if you want to add something you don't have to go to the Play Store all you have to do is add and all of the Play Store stuff happens in the background while you wait of course if you need credentials you'll have to go ahead and put that in but it's a relatively easy way to get information and applications into the appropriate categories it's your full list of apps you just slide one more time it's alphabetized and it's got kind of this quick index so you can see exactly where you are in the list one thing that's kind of inconsistent is the alphabet kind of blends in with this first row of icons and it's a little bit difficult to see where one thing starts another one stops so in the future we'd like to see that moved over to the side even though there will be a little bit of wasted space panel to the left right now has this cog now this is time location and activity sensitive so right now it thinks I want some settings informations it's showing me my battery percentage in the state of my battery saver it's got a utilities collection my quick toggles and a bunch of other things including my home and work location so I can hurry and quickly change those if I want to here we can see this is morning time I've got all of this other stuff in here it's got my calendar it's got the current weather and a forecast and it's doing all this automatically for me it's got some of my morning news so I can quickly swipe through there just be careful not to get too aggressive or you'll come back over to your home screen and then of course it's got another collection we can add more collections we can add more widgets just like that any one of these while we're moving I can quickly get directions to my home which you saw pre-programmed on my settings page directions to work directions to the location of my next meeting and a bunch of apps that fall into the transit collection and again the ability to add another collection of widgets or add a widget nearby tells you what is around you what's near your location you can go in and find more information about it very quickly and easily including some nice cover art that's sometimes accurate and sometimes a pizza box so it means a little bit of work there but very nice you've got tips you can add icons you can add widgets all kinds of stuff the really really weird thing or creepy thing if you will the other day when I first installed this I was out to lunch I pulled into my local burger joint and after I placed my order I looked and there were tips down in the field now unfortunately that burger place isn't rated very well and had I known that just a few minutes before I probably would have picked some else to go but it knew where I was and it presented information to me immediately almost when I needed it you've got other things you can do listening for listening to music and and podcasts and whatnot you've got work for what you do during your work life and this is all going to change based on where you are and the time of day so it's very very context sensitive and showing you what you want now if you like showing this kind of stuff off there's even a share button tap on that and it'll let you share you from your current home screen via whatever social network that you want to overall kind of cool really an interesting approach to a launcher it's something that takes a little bit of getting used to but the nice thing about it it gets used to you rather than the other way around and I can't tell you how glad I am to finally see this because this is the same way that I organize my icons and folders this did it all automatically for me which is nice because I haven't had a chance to go through and do that on this wall way yet to make it look like my own and this launchers just automatically done it and it's super nice super happy gets you the information that you need right when you need it but we love it it's a nice launcher and we think you should give it a try you're into Android launchers and want to see what you can do to customize your Android head on over to pocketnow.com if you liked the video subscribe give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends on any one of your favorite social media networks for pocket now I'm Joe Levi we'll catch you next time