Related
Ulitmate Launch is a Today Screen launcher that works in a similar fashion to iLauncher or SBP Pocket Plus except it is much better. I have been using it for about a week and i am sold. It is far and away the most useful today screen app and it uses very little memory. You can also set it to not load tabs until they are activated saving even more memory.
Ultimate launch allows you unlimited tabs that can either be placed at the top or at the bottom of the launcher. The tabs can be switched with finger or stylus gestures or by touching the tab you would like directly. The animation for switching between tabs is customizable and offers a cube like spinning which will no doubt keep you playing with your phone more than you already do.
Ultimate launch is also able to nest other today screen plug-ins so you can have HTC home on one tab, Weather Panel on another.
www.ultimatelaunch.de is the website to go get this fantastic application.
You can use standard XP Icons to further customize your tabs and programs.
To find Icons-
Google of course
Deviant Art - www.deviantart.com Awesome site all the way around but many artists on here sharing thier works for free.
CrystalXP - www.crystalxp.net Similart to deviant art.
This is my current set up-
http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/4/2/27/f_ULm_bb15642.gif
I have 7 tabs I have it set to spin as you can see I have it set to show all of the icons but blur the inactive icons.
Added some icons http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/111588/Ultimate-launch-icons-zip.html for you to use if you choose.
this was a good application too bad it has not been updated over a year now ... but i think spb mobile shell had used this idea to make it more useful IMHO
I loved this program on my Mogul...
Too bad he didn't take the next step and try to make it into what second today or TF-Detacher is...
Probably impossible to anyway...
I like it very, very much. Is one of the best ever.
Nice Post
Couldnt find anything newer to plagiarize?
Welcome to the begining of 2008.
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=195798
masrawy96 said:
Ulitmate Launch is a Today Screen launcher that works in a similar fashion to iLauncher or SBP Pocket Plus except it is much better. I have been using it for about a week and i am sold. It is far and away the most useful today screen app and it uses very little memory. You can also set it to not load tabs until they are activated saving even more memory.
Ultimate launch allows you unlimited tabs that can either be placed at the top or at the bottom of the launcher. The tabs can be switched with finger or stylus gestures or by touching the tab you would like directly. The animation for switching between tabs is customizable and offers a cube like spinning which will no doubt keep you playing with your phone more than you already do.
Ultimate launch is also able to nest other today screen plug-ins so you can have HTC home on one tab, Weather Panel on another.
www.ultimatelaunch.de is the website to go get this fantastic application.
You can use standard XP Icons to further customize your tabs and programs.
To find Icons-
Google of course
Deviant Art - www.deviantart.com Awesome site all the way around but many artists on here sharing thier works for free.
CrystalXP - www.crystalxp.net Similart to deviant art.
This is my current set up-
http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/4/2/27/f_ULm_bb15642.gif
I have 7 tabs I have it set to spin as you can see I have it set to show all of the icons but blur the inactive icons.
Added some icons http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/111588/Ultimate-launch-icons-zip.html for you to use if you choose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice Post
deleted dup post
eehrhard said:
Couldnt find anything newer to plagiarize?
Welcome to the begining of 2008.
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=195798
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL. That's pretty funny.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just trying to spread the word on a (at one time) great program
Hi Folks
Just wondered if anyone has any suggestions for full size widgets for the hero?
Basically my home screen has clock,weather widget and a couple of other freqently used widgets.Swipe to the left and I have a full page of 16 other widgets.Swipe to the left again and i have a full size music player.Last swipe to the left and i have the full size bookmarks widget. If I swipe right from my homescreen then I have my camera album and thats it! The next two pages are empty
Now i for some reason dont like it I dont like to see the unused space but i'm struggling to find anything to put in them. I dont use twitter and not bothered about the footprints widget.
I have had a search on the net for something but as of yet been unsuccsesfull.
Anybody have any suggestions? Dont matter if its a novelty kind of widget or whatever....I'll give it a look!
Thanks in advance
Gaz
I too currently have an empty page
Mainly due to the fact bookmarks widget is not working on latest build of VillainRom.
Can't think of anything to place on that page at all.
The more widgets then generally the slower the UI and faster the battery drains. If you don't desperately need something there I would leave it blank.
cyberkid2002 said:
The more widgets then generally the slower the UI and faster the battery drains. If you don't desperately need something there I would leave it blank.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this just because there is more on the screen graphically or do the widgets themselves slow it down? I was under the impression that the widgets are only shortcuts to the programs and so obviously use no memory untill launched!?
Gaz
Gazaman said:
Is this just because there is more on the screen graphically or do the widgets themselves slow it down? I was under the impression that the widgets are only shortcuts to the programs and so obviously use no memory untill launched!?
Gaz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
since widgets are "active" shortcuts they are executed the moment you go to the screen they are on. how would it display weather or news when it is a "dead" shortcut?
kendong2 said:
since widgets are "active" shortcuts they are executed the moment you go to the screen they are on. how would it display weather or news when it is a "dead" shortcut?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The weather widget that i use is the one on the clock so not an independant widget. I just assumed that this one was opened when i first chose this clock and just stays open.
Please go easy on me here as im still getting to grips with the whole 'mechanics' of the phone.
So all widgets that i have on my phone scene are active? Most (if not all) are just executable programs like google maps,google sky maps,shazam,flixter,meebo etc and as far as i'm aware dont require to be constantly updated via internet connection(unless opened).
Why would these be active?
If they are constantly active then why would people use task killers? It seems pointless if they are always active anyway!
Like i said,I'm sorry if this is all a bit basic but would be nice to now how it all works as i have actually noticed my phone seems quite slow lately and for some reason notifications on the top notification bar aren't disspearing when i have read my messages etc.
Maybe i have too many active widgets?!?
Thanks
Gaz
you have to make a difference between a widget and a shortcut to an app. the clock is a clock widget with integrated weather support. it is triggered if you go to the screen it is on and by time change (to display the correct time for example). as it has the weather feature it can also activate the background weather service.
a shortcut is the same thing as those on your windows desktop. it is nothing else than a link to the app, and doesn't do anything until you click on it.
check the way you add a shortcut and a widget, after pressing the + sign you have to choose which one you want to add.
It is a gray area as to what a widget is and not all widgets are active. The weather one is active. So is the one I use to give me London Tube status - as others have said they update as soon as you switch to the window (in fact I thought they did it in the background all the time, but i may well be wrong on that).
On the other hand the widget that switches BT or wifi or GPS on or off are not active unless you touch them then they do what is required (switch it on or off) and then become inactive. In reality they are a little mini-programme in their own right, but they are still called widgets.
Shortcuts are not the same as widgets - all they do is open a programme when touched - so Google maps etc are not widgets they are shortcuts.
I have filled all of my screens - any space left after the widgets is now filled with shortcuts to programmes I use most often. Doesn't appear to slow down the phone at all.
does anyone know if there is a way to get the stock launcher home screen to rotate to landscape mode? i have spare parts installed and couldnt find a way to enable it. i didnt want to use another launcher just for this, i would love the landscape mode for tv out (yes phone is rooted) help muh help muh
There's no way to get the homescreen to rotate unless you download launchers such as launcher pro or adw.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant
Tairen said:
There's no way to get the homescreen to rotate unless you download launchers such as launcher pro or adw.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmmm i guess ill have to go with another launcher, thanks!
the captive has the home screen rotation?
When I launch avatar it automatically rotates the screen and then stays that way to display the drm warning. Not really a fix, more of a bug you could take advantage of of you just want it rotated for games. As a real solution I would recommend launcher pro.
Sent from my Vibrant
How does one benefit from swiping through their home screens in landscape mode?
Another thing that proves people like what they like. I hate my homescreen to rotate. I use LauncherPro and disabled it.
^ that could have been my post exactly.
To each his own, I guess. This really bothered me, so I started using Launcherpro and can't see myself going back...Touchwiz is pretty good, but coming from my G1 running CM6, it made me feel too locked down.
flying_squirrel42 said:
To each his own, I guess. This really bothered me, so I started using Launcherpro and can't see myself going back...Touchwiz is pretty good, but coming from my G1 running CM6, it made me feel too locked down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Technically speaking, TouchWiz changes much more than just the launcher and home screen.
Using a custom launcher only overwrites the TouchWiz launcher, it doesn't remove TouchWiz altogether.
Honestly I really like the fact that the home screen does not rotate. It was one thing that used to drive me a little bonkers with some of the G1 builds. Do I flip it left or do I flip it down.
Of course that was just my opinion of course.
Well, for me personally it would be nice if it rotated while I have it sitting on my desk dock. That would be about the only time I would want it to.
HOME screen Rotation
I am running froyo Jpm on the S and I am really missing the HOME screen rotation, Really. And was hoping and hoping with all my heart that someone from xda dev could come up with a home screen rotation fix.. If someone has please point me in the right direction and also one more thing Home Screen rotation Rocks!haha. And it should be there when you wont it.. So please help us home screen rotation Lovers. Thanks
Reason to have landscape.
I have a phone case that has a kickstand allowing for my phone to be set long ways (on its left hand side, so the cable is coming out of the left at the bottom of the phone) because when I stand it up and plug it in it jsut falls over all the time. (The USB cable that came with the phone is REALLY stiff, compared to the MTS3GSlide/Cliq/G1) So it would be really nice if it would go to landscape mode allowing for horizontal scrolling across screens ( I guess that the widgets would also have to be able to handle on the fly the switch betweens[ can that even work?] or be removed) And also have the status bar be across the top (like normal) while it sets sideways. I mean most of the games, video players etc already auto switch to landscape so you can have the width to handle the frames anyway. And so that when my phone is on its side (which is roughly 9 hrs/day minus lunch and smoke breaks) I can still read the stuff properly. I guess that the pulldown on the status bar would also have to work and so on. I wish I knew enough programming to make this happen myself. But that is the ONE biggest thing I miss the most about the G1, landscape homescreens. I'd seriously take that over a lag fix any day.
I have just recently booted and rooted my new tablet. Im curious about some interesting uses of Tasker in a tablet as opposed to phones.
Thanks for making this stuff so easy!
nothing different bro
you will have to use the same way for the tablet at well...just a diff if u using in car it would enhance
wrathofnero said:
I have just recently booted and rooted my new tablet. Im curious about some interesting uses of Tasker in a tablet as opposed to phones.
Thanks for making this stuff so easy!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're into a "hubs" style look for your tab, using Tasker with Minimalistic Text provides an easy way for links to navigate the various screens set up.
I'm no tasker wizz, but I find it useful to have the screen remain on when AC power is connected. I take my tab to work and this lets me to see incoming messages, change songs, etc., while I use my PC.
Maris_ said:
If you're into a "hubs" style look for your tab, using Tasker with Minimalistic Text provides an easy way for links to navigate the various screens set up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious about these hubs. I've seen the minimalistic text, but I hadn't really had time to solidify a use for it.
Hubs are great until you realize how much extra resources these additional widgets take up to suppor them. Depending on number of home screens and images used multipicture livewallpaper can take up a bunch of memory. Minimalistic text takes some too. It can all add up culminating in pauses and stutters jumping from app to app or screen to screen as the OS tries to shift resources around. With some work though things can be optimized to minimize impact.
Sent from my SCH-I905 using Tapatalk
Check out this link for more details on hubs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1232357
There are some great ideas, examples, and instructions in there.
I suppose if someone goes overboard with widgets on homescreens it could impact battery life, whether using hubs or not. I haven't noticed any difference, personally.
i got really annoyed with minimalist text because you could only make icons that are really small
so what ive done is just find my wallpaper images and on photoshop overlay the hubs then use multipic to make a differenT wallpaper for each homescreen then make transparent icons that swich between homescreens and put them ontop of the writing i have overlayed in photoshop kinda confusing but it works !
look at any of my themes and all of them in the screenshots have my homescreen with this setup
I set my tasker to change my wifi settings to off when screen is off and always on when I am listening to pandora or streaming radio so that I can save some power by not having to have the screen on all of the time while streaming, but that is all.
I want to read your review of ICS on your Iconia. What do you like, what you think is lacking and should have been different as compared to HC. Positive and negative reviews are important so don't feel like you only have to pick just what you like or what is wrong with it. Write it all. Your first impressions and if you want, a followup later - once you've had some time with it.
I'd like to ask that you put some thought into it. Not that it has to be long but no single sentences. I'll just get a mod to clean the thread of them.
I'll get the ball rolling:
I went ahead and installed and can report no issues so far. A couple of things though.
After it booted [after the install] it wouldn't connect to the network automatically - I had to manually tell it to connect, though it still had the credentials and has since connected fine upon multiple reboots.
The browser bookmarks synced automatically. My problem was with HC - for the life of me it wouldn't sync my browser - all my other computers synced up fine with my primary and I tried everything I could to get it to sync with HC but it wouldn't and that was from a fresh reset a few weeks ago. After rebooting into ICS I found all my bookmarks synced up quickly so I'm happy again.
No screen issues and it's far more snappier than it was on fresh vanilla HC. To be fair, I reset a few weeks ago and only installed about 5 apps - aldiko, dropbox, docs etc... the basics. Even vanilla HC was a bit of a bear sometimes but ICS is not.
No more stuttering when swiping through homescreen in orientations other than normal which is great to see.
I much prefer the new app drawer. It's a much more unified experience and swiping is so snappy! That's is the biggest things for me. But it's also nice to see a clean area. The HC apps/widget/wallpaper nightmare was just that. Not in terms of navigation, it just looked fugly and dropped me out of the whole HC look. Now it's far more complimentary to the ICS experience.
The whole swiping apps/notifications features is nice but I'm not sure it's really doing anything. I opened Gmaps and saw it listed in the running apps list in Settings - went to the homescreen - opened up the recent list and swiped Gmaps out - went back to settings>apps and it was still present. It wasn't a solid test, to be sure, but I'm not sure how significant the swipe to remove tasks is and whether it is actually meant to kills tasks or just remove them from the list. [confusion on my part] Second to that, I'm pretty ambivalent about the swiping notifications feature - an X to press, a tab to swipe - it's all the same and neither adds to or takes away from that basic function.
I could care less about the ring and I haven't read anywhere that we were suppose to get it at all so it's no surprise to me to not see it. Same with face-unlock. It's not something I would use.
Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Looking good so far.
Since the update I have been testing all of my apps. So far all are working correctly. I was disappointed that I lost root, however that was an easy fix. I searched the forum and found an easy way to get full root. Had a few hickups at first with the browser and network connections, but they seemed to correct themselves as the day progressed.
Overall I am very happy.
nishka256 said:
Well for my Acer a 500 the stock browser is super sloooww. It was super fast before the update. My screen flickers within some apps. For some reason scrolling is slow also. Before update I could swipe and scroll and it would scroll fast and its not the same anymore. For instance before update on my browser I could scroll down and it was so fast I would have to back up to get to exact spot I wanted to read. Now I scroll down and it only goes down a short distance and have to scroll again. I cannot remove zinio, tegra games and a few other bloatware that I have no use for. These are my big complaints with the update now.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Screen flickering is what I am also experiencing quite a lot with ICS. With honeycomb, that was never an issue but a lot of apps make the screen flicker in ICS. For me, the stock browser and scrolling is blazing fast with ICS. It had a bit of lag when on honeycomb. Also, I just tried uninstalling zinio and I was able to. Couldn't do the same with tegra games, however, though!
So far I am really liking ICS but there are definitely a few issues that need to be worked on. The update process in itself was not smooth. I had to try 4 times, reboot and even factory reset before I was able to update the tablet to ICS.
Overall, I am having mixed reviews.
I had no problems downloading or updating. I just don't see much difference from honeycomb. I can now use some ics only apps, so that's ok. Switching home screens seems to have less lag. I guess I just expected more from this update.
Overall I guess it is nice to be up to date but it still feels llike the same old tablet.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium
ICS + A500 : Home Screen Long Press Disaster
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!
So far, so good. I never expected the Ultimate Tablet Nirvana from ICS... just incremental improvements. The A500 is smoother and more responsive. I really like the new media player, especially the row of movies/clip thumbs, etc at the bottom. Chrome is a big thing. I've used about every browser out there and was never fully satisfied with any of them. Chrome, for the first time, gives a desktop experience on a tablet. That alone makes the ICS upgrade worthwhile.
On a side note, my 64gb micro-sdxc card arrived the same day I updated, so that's another nice In Your Face to the iPad rabble out there. 80gb of storage.
idroids said:
If I'm missing something PLEASE let me know.
Otherwise why are people taking this sitting down?!
BEFORE ICS long press on Home Screens brought up:
1-split screen with Widgets and Apps below and ALL 5 Home Screens above
2-sending Widgets and Apps to specific Home Screens was a breeze
3-click on a Widget and send it to the page of your choice and watch it go there
4-click on one Widget after another and off they all go
5-the same applies to Apps: you can click on 10 apps one after the other and they all add themselves to the Home Screen of your choice
6-then with simple tap and back to the Home Screen
AFTER ICS long press on home screens brings up...are you ready for this?
1-Choose your wallpaper (WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF THE LONG PRESS)
2-to get to the widgets list you have to press the apps grid icon at top right
3-that brings you to a tabbed list of Apps and Widgets (this is the OLD SLOW way of adding Apps and Widgets to your home screens!!!)
4-click on Widgets and
5-now press on one widget and ICS brings you back to the home screens where you can drop your widget on the main home screen or push it around to other home screens (very TEDIUS and CLUMSY process!!!!!)
6-now you HAVE TO go back HOME to then press the apps grid icon at top right AGAIN to get back to the tabbed list of Apps and Widgets, then press on Widgets and repeat the process for adding other widgets to the home screens!
7-each and every time you want to add an App or a Widget you ICS forces you to go through this process
8-meaning that you can only add one App or one Widget at......a.......time......!!!
I have to wonder what kind of genius would get rid of the split screen that shows all the home screens, the Apps, and the Widgets?!
Is there a launcher app that would give me back my split screen with a long press on the home screens?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to realize that ICS is written for use on phones and tablets, not just tablets. The old way may have been quicker on tablets but wouldn't be very useful for phones (and their much smaller screens). It was a necessary sacrifice.
I personally don't have an issue with the new way, just because I'm not adding 10 apps or widgets to a screen anyway and I don't find the movements that time consuming vs. the old way. If I WERE adding lots of apps or widgets to a screen then I suppose I'd agree completely. I however prefer the widgets in a bigger area instead of having to scroll forever through them, in fact to me it seems a better trade off for the widgets.
ICS appears to be more polished than hc when it came out. Hc 3.0.1 was not a refined experience. There will be some changes when 4.0.4 is pushed, but it is enough to prevent me from going out and purchasing the next new tablet.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium
The Good:
Everything is more responsive, period. Moving around is quicker, switching home screens is quicker, moving through apps and widgets is quicker. Not that the A500 was slow before, but it had its hiccups. This gives the tablet new life, imo - it really feels like a different piece of hardware.
The interface is more streamlined. I've never been into form over function, but in this case everything works well together. Many apps now written for ICS fit in with the whole scheme of things which creates a more uniform experience and aesthetic. Many ICS App widgets now allow you to choose either their default or black, which fits in with the ICS color scheme.
Some, dare I say most? video issues seem to have been addressed as I can play files I'd needed to use 3rd party apps to play on the included player now. Flash also seems more fluid.
Notifications are easily closed (with one X vs. many).
Widgets are laid out in a drawer vs. scroll bar making it much better and easier (for some) to go through and add them to screens.
Settings have been improved; for example, there's now a setting to see the data apps use, factory reset is now under a more obvious tab and other settings are found more easily as well.
Booting is fairly quick vs. Honeycomb. Seems to boot in under a minute no matter how many apps are installed. Booting is generally fast based on the amt. of apps that are installed, but I seemed to boot in roughly the same time before installing apps as after installing over 200 of them.
Some of the new features are nice, the screenshot ability is definitely welcome and swiping away apps is also great. Note: some apps will never fully close as they use services that run in the background.
The Bad:
Some users preferred the long press, split screen and 1-click adding of apps and widgets to the home screen vs. the App Drawer approach. I am inclined to agree that this method can be faster for adding multiple app icons and widgets to the home screens.
The Ugly: (bugs?)
The native browser still doesn't seem to be able to handle encrypted content from Google Chrome, and so the native browser cannot be synced with a Google Account which has had its content encrypted. It can only handle accounts with their passwords encrypted (which is the default).
How I see it is, if Chrome Beta can handle it, I don't see why there wasn't a setting added to the native ICS Browser to allow for it. To me, this doesn't make sense. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
***At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates (apparently).
Will append to list as I come across stuff.
***Update: This doesn't seem to be specific to ICS. After further investigation it seems this WAS caused by something on Acer's end (as of 4/29/2012, updated 5/22/2012).
UPDATE:
As of 5/22/2012 I have not been having/seeing any issues. I have noticed that when the tablet is extremely low on power (under 10% or so) it turns the wifi off when sleeping, even though I've set it to never turn wifi off. I'm not certain if this is a bug or working as intended in ICS as some power saving feature. This never, ever happens when the tablet is on A/C power or docked. When I wake the tablet, wifi is connected to automatically. I'm personally happy that it does this, but I can see it being a problem for some people...so I don't really want to file this under bug/issues.
Neoprimal said:
At "excellent" strength and a 75Mbps link rate, upon checking for updates I get a message saying "network coverage is poor, move to a location with better coverage to continue". Hopefully some sort of fix comes from Acer directly before they issue more updates as I can now essentially, not receive updates
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm betting this is simply they message they're sending because their servers are being overloaded from the ICS push.
Why ICS for Tablets AND Phones?
Taking the split screen feature away from my A500 is like taking my steering wheel and my automatic transmissions away from my car! Argggghhh!
Cutting corners on an OS so that it works exactly the same on phones and tablets makes about as much sense as saying that the engines used on a 2-seater plane, in a jet fighter, and in a 747 should all work the same so as to give the passengers the same experience. That is "plane" old silly. What is even SILLIER is to insist on putting a plush airliner seat into a 2 passenger plane or to insist on keeping a propeller on jumbo 747s.
I totally get that the split screen (showing ALL the home screens at once above and the Apps and the Widgets below) would not work well on an small phone but why should it since it's NOT designed for a small screen? Why do tablet users have to put up with taking 3 steps backward just so that phone users can take 3 steps forward.
Tablet users should simply be given the choice to customize their experience so that they can take advantage of the extra real estate on their screens instead of being forced to put up with restrictive aspects of an OS that is trying to be everything to everyone. Sure ICS is a big improvement on Honeycomb, but why did some aspects of its OS have to be amputated simply to satisfy some designer's need to have a single OS for 2 VERY different gadgets?
So PLEASE, when the next version of ICS comes out PLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEASSSEEE give us tablet users the split screen again through the long tap on the Home Screens! Think about it! How often are you going to change your background? Making the long tap lead ONLY to the background change screen is such a WASTE of a unique gesture!
Well if you absolutely want long press to open drawer, try Apex launcher, it's based on ICS launcher but there's an option for binding long press/double tap to any function of the launcher. There is many more options that should suits you. Nova launcher is another alternative you can try.
Positives
A couple of the things I noticed right off is that when recording you don't get the terrible background noise you always seemed to get on hc supports avi video format now which I was happy with and the camera and video app seem to be recording at better detail not sure if its me or my cam? The browser is also blazing fast for me now. Layout is also crisp and clean the ring is useful makes taking screenshots a snap.
Negatives...have noticed some apps cause terrible lag for me there was also a lot of lag and freezing the first couple of hours I had the update. Also sometimes the screen flickers stated above ^^^^ none of these are big issues and shouldn't keep you from updating to enjoy
I had a lot of issues with the ICS update. I finally had to do a factory reset. Some issues were solved, but others remain:
Seems to be solved:
- Unstable applications (flashing and crashing, including Gmail).
- Unstable folders (flashing, crashing and all icons on the desktop disappearing).
Unsolved:
- Wifi is unstable and does not auto-connect (I have to connect manually when I restart the tablet or when I get home... it was working fine before ICS).
- The GPS does not work (I am not sure if it was working before ICS... as I had not had the time to test, so maybe it is not new).
- System update does not work (indicates that network coverage is insufficient despite the signal being strong and staying beside the wireless router).
ICS = bitter pill to swallow!
Well I learned the hard way that I shouldn't have jumped on the ICS bandwagon too early!
I cannot believe that in 2012 we have people designing MAJOR OS updates that have MAJOR problems and bugs!
Why not just wait another month or so and work out these major problems before unleashing ICS on everyone.
I mean didn't the ICS designer and programmers TEST ICS ON ALL TABLET AND PHONE platforms BEFORE releasing it to the world?
I'm going to milk my airplane analogy some more and say this:
Releasing ICS without having thoroughly tested it across ALL platforms is like building a plane and not knowing if it is designed well enough to fly at different altitudes and even worse not being sure it can actually land well in ALL major airports in the world in spite of different weather conditions.
Can you tell I am SICK of designers and programmers NOT having done their homework and using the general public to test their new OS for them?!
This HAS GOT to change!
I have one huge problem. In HC 3.2.1, when I press the volume button, it brought out the volume bar, and by taping the speaker icon, I can turn the volume to off, now it doesn't do anything!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's really annoying to have to hold the volume button to turn off the sound.
One Giant bonus I like in ICS is you can make native folders without the need of a secondary app.
Having one strange flaw which is my tablet randomly vibrates for no apparent reason other than that so far so go and the whole UI just seems a bit smoother than it was before on HC. Browser seems Way more Responsive than HC as well.
I'm pretty happy with ICS but GPS is not working at all. I need to check the gps.conf but it was working on HC.
Best feature of ICS: Chrome browser.