Gadgetory

now normally I wouldn't do a topic like this because I'm not really into the whole instigating holy wars thing but today we'll be tackling one of the things that comes up almost every time people are talking about their iPhones and their Android phones customizability now iOS operates one way the way Lord Jobs and high priest kook intend for it to with home button functionality gestures app organization and animations all pre designed to deliver a uniform experience to each and every iPhone user on the planet but that's not necessarily a bad thing if they all work the same way it's simple to search for a solution to a problem you're having and in the case of Apple specifically so much research gets done to make the process intuitive that for many people it likely ends up working away they'd want it to anyway but that's not always the case and one of the biggest complaints I hear about Android even from diehard fans is that while they might like the hardware of a given phone they absolutely hate the skin that's running on it software layers like Samsung's TouchWiz HTC Sense and Sony's Xperia UI one of the ways to get around these often bloated unintuitive and limited interfaces is to route your phone and install a custom ROM but if your issues are not related to performance unremovable bloatware or base functionality of the device but rather just the look and feel of the home screens and app tray then it might not be worth the effort and potential warranty concerns associated with that because there is another option for pretty much overwriting the stock interface of your phone it's called a launcher and unlike custom roms launchers don't involve any command line tomfoolery or risk of breaking your phone just find the one you like on the Google Play Store select it and tell your phone to always use it the next time you hit the home button jiggery poof you're done now while launchers come in many shapes and sizes with widely varying capabilities and there's a fair number that are kind of difficult to categorize cleanly they mainly consist of two types the first is style launchers ones that are mostly designed to change the visual appearance of your phone without really innovative the core functionality a great example of this is one that changes your desktop background to an always-on view from the phone's camera that makes the screen appear to be transparent but most of them are focused on allowing you to customize your phone's appearance the second type is functionality launchers similarly to style launchers these usually introduce their own visual design to your phone but with aesthetic customization options somewhere between your default skin and a style launcher these launchers attempt to change the way you interact with your device to make it faster and or more intuitive to get the information you need and the apps that you're trying to reach by rearranging icons adding new gestures and even proactively providing you with contextually relevant information as you go about your day which I guess leads pretty well into our sponsor spot for today's episode if you've got an Android phone and have never tried a custom launcher before maybe consider giving yahoos a v8 a shot it's a functionality oriented launcher that's all about organizing your phone and information so you don't have to do it the regular app tray is replaced by one that can be scrolled much more quickly and includes a search button your home screen stays completely clean other than your bottom shortcut row in any widgets you might decide to add to it your most frequently used apps are all automatically organized into their main categories when you swipe to the right and if you swipe to the left a v8 provides you with all kinds of contextually relevant information depending on where you are and what you're doing at work I've got shortcuts for sending emails and Quick Links to my productivity apps at home I've got widgets for news and weather and if I plug in headphones it'll be like sup hears music apps it's free the link in the video description 88 yahoo.com so give it a try if you're looking for something a little bit different for your Android experience guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it just like it if you just liked it leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this and as always don't forget to subscribe to tech wiki from our fastest possible episodes just like this one