Always seems to be a ton of threads about why people hate touchwiz and how eager they are to get rid of it but...what do you like about what Samsung did different?
I absolutely love the pulldown menu modifications
I love the music/call controls in the pull down, and like the power widget there. This is something I really wish that Google would adopt/roll into stock android later on (or at least Cyanogen).
I also like the shortcut to adjust your phone's brightness (rolling finger across the top bar).
I personally prefer the way this phone handles making a call on a 2nd line and conferencing people in...it's much better than stock android (I came from a Moto droid and conferencing in a new # was always kind of a pain in the ass).
I personally prefer the way they redid the calendar to stock (I seem to be in the minority here though).
I use google voice for all SMS, so I can't really comment on that.
I use LauncherPro, so the actual look of the launcher doesn't bug me...
Actually, the only thing I truly hate about the modifications Samsung made was the damn alarm program..it's way worse than the droids, and it's way too easy to turn off...and the snooze button is hard to differentiate from the turn off alarm button.
Overall, Samsung has some nice stuff if they just abandon the cartoony iPhones look of the launcher and work on a few of the performance hickups here and there.
hydrogenman said:
I absolutely love the pulldown menu modifications
I love the music/call controls in the pull down, and like the power widget there. This is something I really wish that Google would adopt/roll into stock android later on (or at least Cyanogen).
I also like the shortcut to adjust your phone's brightness (rolling finger across the top bar).
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Other than the calendar (which is a near-total fail for me; maybe others' calendars don't have the same bugs as mine - which is a scary thought, b/c it makes a global "fix" seem less likely), I really like TouchWiz - particularly the features listed above. The "Power Control" Android widget (or whatever it's called) - which is normally crucial - becomes almost unnecessary, provided you're OK with using the pulldown for toggling GPS, Wifi, etc.; and sliding finger for brightness. (The only Power Control item you can't toggle using pulldown is "Sync," which I almost never turn off anyway).
I like how the TW icons look; and I dig the app drawer, b/c I prefer the "list" view that it offers. I may try another launcher someday, but right now I feel no need -- I'm digging TW (and much prefer it to stock Android).
Don't care for the Samsung widgets at all, but their functions can easily be bested with stuff in the Market.
pavvy said:
Other than the calendar (which is a near-total fail for me; maybe others' calendars don't have the same bugs as mine - which is a scary thought, b/c it makes a global "fix" seem less likely), I really like TouchWiz - particularly the features listed above. The "Power Control" Android widget (or whatever it's called) - which is normally crucial - becomes almost unnecessary, provided you're OK with using the pulldown for toggling GPS, Wifi, etc.; and sliding finger for brightness. (The only Power Control item you can't toggle using pulldown is "Sync," which I almost never turn off anyway).
I like how the TW icons look; and I dig the app drawer, b/c I prefer the "list" view that it offers. I may try another launcher someday, but right now I feel no need -- I'm digging TW (and much prefer it to stock Android).
Don't care for the Samsung widgets at all, but their functions can easily be bested with stuff in the Market.
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I've never once used any of the TW widgets...that's one thing that was a bit of fail
BTW, you can get the TW style of app drawer on 3rd party launchers
I was rather pleasantly surprised with TouchWiz. I think it's much better than Stock Android. I'm not sure exactly why people are complaining about it.
What I like about it.
1. WebOS like UI controls for Music and Toggles in the Notification drop down.
2. Paged scrolling of apps in the App Drawer. I hate inertial list scrolling.
3. Some of the widgets like dual clock and calendar clock. If there is no place to add a widget on that screen, it finds a screen with space. Buddies Now is a nice widget, but it's slow and buggy.
4. The interface to add/remove screens and move screens around.
What I dislike.
1. It syncs all contacts instead of just "My Contacts". Of course this is not the launcher, but the app. But other than this, the contacts and dialer are much better than stock.
2. Pressing the Home button, sends it off to Screen 4 on my phone instead of the center screen. Very annoying.
3. There is an Android bug that prevents folders from being opened. With LauncherPro, I can restart the launcher which fixes the problem. No such ability in TW.
4. Can only change two of the 4 icons at the bottom.
Likes:
Messaging/calling through contacts.
Power control in notification drawer
Launcher is starting to grow on me
The interface when a call is in progress
Puzzle piece notifications
Dislikes:
Music player can't distinguish between songs and ringtones
Nearly the same issue with gallery and album art
Can't set the home screen when less than 5 screens
Lock screen but that's purely cosmetic
The media scanner, but I don't think that's TW specific (Be awesome to have it scan on demand)
I really don't like how all the Samsung widgets want to take up an entire screen.
hydrogenman said:
BTW, you can get the TW style of app drawer on 3rd party launchers
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Thanks, that's good to know... I'll have to try 'em sometime, I know they have lots of fans around here.
I actually prefer TW to LauncherPro or ADW. So far everything works pretty well.
I do wish that the samsung widgets were re-sizeable so they didn't take up the whole screen. I like the app drawer, it is just copying the iPhone, but I don't visit it a whole lot thanks to the FolderOrganizer widget. That widget should have come stock with the phone IMHO.
i really like some of the modifications that samsung has added, especially in the dialer and contacts apps (they have already been mentioned). i found another one last night in the calendar app, if you add a location to an entry it shows you a map of the location from the calendar entry.
wolfvgang said:
I actually prefer TW to LauncherPro or ADW. So far everything works pretty well.
I do wish that the samsung widgets were re-sizeable so they didn't take up the whole screen. ......
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Hey. If I do understand you correctly, you are using ADW or LauncherPro and mention that 'everything is working pretty well, also referring to 'samsung widgets'?
How do you access 'samsung widgets' from say ADW Launcher - ESPECIALLY BuddiesNow ??
I can only access it from the default launcher, but do prefer ADW also - but am stuck
Thanks for your help or ideas.
I don't understand anyone wouldn't use LauncherPro.
The scrolling dock is genius. I have about 15 apps that I use regularly, so the dock does a really great job to accommodate that. Also, you can easily add your own custom icons, and do away with the default ones that come with TW and LP.
I also hate that on TW, you have the home screen # indicators at the top, giving you a lot less home screen space.
The app drawer, though not as easy to use as the Applications viewer in TW, is at least original. This phone already looks like an iPhone, so having a very Android-esque applications viewer is refreshing.
TW does a lot fantastic things, some of which you guys mentioned, but the general layout of it is pretty ****ty, and LauncherPro is just about perfect... and free.
I like the toggles on the notification pull down. I don't like how the brightness slider has no visual feedback to determine what the current bright is set at. If there was a slider widget attached to the bottom or a popup when the slider is in use that would make it easier.
I like the swipe on contacts for the call/sms.
After loading JI6, I tried using the TW launcher again, but I couldn't find any of the TW widgets compelling so I'm back to Launcherpro.
Just found this out, if you dislike the iPhone style of the app drawer, left to right, changing it to Alphabetical list gives me the normalish way we are used to the app drawer working, up and down.
Now if we could just remove the annoying outline on the icons I'd be set
Coming from an iPhone, Touchwiz was a bit too iphone-ripoff for me. I personally use Launcher+ but TW did have some good points.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
my biggest dislike is that contacts and dialer are no longer the same application. I never had a dialer shortcut on my phone before because I could just use contacts, now I have to use up 1 more space for the dialer.
Owenv said:
my biggest dislike is that contacts and dialer are no longer the same application. I never had a dialer shortcut on my phone before because I could just use contacts, now I have to use up 1 more space for the dialer.
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You can access the contacts from the dialer, would be an extra click if you really want to not have that extra icon
z0phi3l said:
You can access the contacts from the dialer, would be an extra click if you really want to not have that extra icon
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yeah but as far as I know you can't get to dialer from contacts, and I'm used to having the contacts icon on my home screen. I know I could just change it but you know what they say about old habits. however it isn't a problem since I have another contacts app that solved it for me.
My favorite feature is the dialer. I love the fact that it has speed dial unlike stock android. I also love the predictive dialing. These two are the biggest for me.
Is there any way to change the apps on this bar? For example I would like to change the Music Player to Google Music.
Thanks
Those aren't apps as much as they are "mini apps" that only work with that launcher, I believe. No method of customizing from what I could see.
It doesn't look like it so far. I've been looking through the system settings and can't find any way. There doesn't seem to be a configuration option for the dock bar. A long touch on the apps doesn't do anything.
I'd love to change them out as well. A better calc, the Google Music app, and so on.
Okay, so I know this has been asked before, I've been searching XDA and googling and have found some threads on the topic, but most of them are old and unresolved. So I'm reaching out to see if maybe there's a new development that I haven't been able to find.
Is there any known way to HIDE apps from the app drawer of a stock launcher? I know that Launcher Plus Pro and some other home replacements have this feature built in, but I'm using Virtuous Unity and am really happy with Sense 3.0 at the moment.
It seems like such a basic function, I can't believe there's a) no native feature to do this; and more surprisingly b) there's no 3rd party app that will do this?
I've found some apps that 'hide' your drawer apps (i.e. Hide It Pro) but this not only hides the app from the drawer, but makes it so you can only launch the hidden app from within the app that's hiding it (meaning you have to go into Hide It Pro to launch the hidden app).
I'm using wave launcher and swipepad for my most used apps and games, and would ideally like to remove these apps from the app drawer so they're not cluttering it up, but STILL BE ABLE TO LAUNCH THE APPS from the alternate launcher/shortcuts. With Hide It Pro I was able to remove the apps from the app drawer, but was then unable to launch that app from wave launcher for example.
My reasoning for wanting to do this is not confidentiality/privacy, but rather just to clean up my drawer/app system. Ideally I want my most used apps to be accessed via the secondary launchers (wave and swipepad) and just have the other, less-used apps in the app drawer. Is this possible?
at the moment, I dont think its possible...but I may be wrong. the best current solution would be to use a diff launcher, but yeah it sucks because all the sense widgets would disappear when trying to add them to homescreens (but the apps still work fine). keep us updated if you find a solution, I would like to know as well
Unfortunately I did not find a way to do it too. I am using Go Launcher EX. It can hide apps from the drawer, and still you can launch them from the home screen or elsewhere.
Thanks for the replies. Yeah from my research it doesn't really seem possible. It seems like it should be a pretty basic function but oh well. Thanks anyway guys.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
This might be of interest to you. [APP][30 JUL]ALTDRAWER 0.7.1 Alternative APP DRAWER [Perfect for MIUI] [Many options] - xda-developers http://bit.ly/qvK3KS
Thanks for that, I came across that during my research. Seems cool and if it replaced the default app drawer I'd be all over it. But I don't want a homescreen icon as my app drawer. But thanks for the suggestion!!
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Hi,
I don't have a clue when it comes to android. I have just rooted my Simple Touch with Glowlight and the relauncher screen looks nothing like any Android desktop I've ever seen. It looks like this:
htp://imgur.com/i5hBgZc - insert an extra t - it won't let me post any links..
I haven't tried to install the NTGAppsAttack yet, as I don't want to install over something that is already incorrect.
Any ideas?
That's how relaunch looks.
The home screen is a file manger, the middle button at the bottom (9 little squares) is your apps drawer, you can configure the home directory and other stuff from the gear button, etc.
You can probably install a standard android launcher, but with all the slidings and and graphics and such it just isn't very well adapted to e-ink
I felt the same way about Relauncher when I first saw it. Seemed to hide the most important stuff. I tried a variety of launchers (also totally new to the Android world). I settled on ADW Launcher. Seems to run and look just fine and allowed me to "hide away" the apps that I didn't want to look at all the time behind the home screen.
I have used ADW and Re-launch but settled on lightning launcher as best for me. You can customize it to have no background and it is very fast. I keep Re-launch on my Nook but set it up to run as an app and not as a launcher (you can find this somewhere in the settings).
Thanks for the replies guys. I have been trying to configure Launcher8 as my homepage as it looks quite clean and it's very simple to use.
Is their anyway to change from having apps on main screen and having to slid across to browse apps installed. Is their a way to make a apps button and then go into this and browse though apps and have shortcuts to them on home screen instead of just having to slid and swipe though screens?
mentalghost said:
Is their anyway to change from having apps on main screen and having to slid across to browse apps installed. Is their a way to make a apps button and then go into this and browse though apps and have shortcuts to them on home screen instead of just having to slid and swipe though screens?
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Install other launchers that support app drawer. To name few Nova Launcher, Apex Launcher, etc..
Sent from my ALE-L21 using XDA-Developers mobile app
As amageek pointed out, you have to install a 3rd party launcher software to get the desired layout, you mentioned.
By personal experience, I recommend Nova. I bought the Prime version(there is a free version as well), wich removes all sorts of ADs, give some extra functionality, and makes the phone a bit more like an AOSP ROM, at least launcher-wise.
An other solution is to make folders in the Huawei Launcher, which almost works as the app drawer in any launcher. The back-side of this is, that you have to make it manually to fit your needs.