Lightning Launcher

With this evaluation, we continue with the newest member of our ABT staff, Mario Vasquez, who will be heading up our “Mobile corner” as Contributing Editor. Mario (aka ZeroEnigma) will help ABT with mobile platforms. This is the next of many of his upcoming evaluations, articles and blogs.

 

We also welcome your comments on these blogs and articles and all of our staff are ready to serve you. Also, please remember that each editor speaks his own mind and is responsible for what they write. There is no ABT site “point of view”.

Mark Poppin,

Senior ABT editor

Lightning Launcher 3 (publisher:PierroX): Free

Our favorite part of the Android platform comes from its ability to be customized.  A major part of that customization comes to us in the form of Launchers.  Launchers are the first thing you see when you unlock your device;  they are the central hub to your device.

The two that have dominated this area of the market are Launcher Pro and ADW. These come with a multitude of widgets, icon themes, skins, transition effects, gesture controls, custom fonts, and more. Stock launchers like HTC Sense also offer many features that plain android does not.

The main problem with these alternatives to Android’s stock offering is their literal size in megabytes and heft on the system that could be used to speed up everything else.  This is especially evident in lower end devices that don’t have the power that newer devices do. You will always run into a review of an app/game that says something like, “runs very slow on –enter device name-.”

In comes Lightning Launcher, a super-small launcher that is ultra-speedy and responsive. Lightning Launcher includes basic options like themes, custom icons, custom fonts, custom labels and other functions that offer personality while giving you guaranteed lightning. You get one screen to play on, and pure speed. Some might not appreciate not having more than one screen and that should be considered before using the launcher.

This is exactly how the publisher describes it:

– This application has been designed to minimize memory usage and be fast: the more memory you have for your applications, the faster they will run. In other words Lightning Launcher has been built from the ground to preserve your phone’s resources and keep it smooth.

– Lightning Launcher drops rarely used features and focuses on useful ones. This launcher comes nevertheless with a fair amount of features and customization options. Icons and widgets can be moved, scaled and even rotated freely. Each object can be configured independently, you can change the font, the label, the icon and much more!

(App drawer)

– The package is extremely small (only 54kb !!!). What it means is that the Android system does not need to load several megabytes to run this app. Lightning Launcher starts faster and run in perfect harmony with your other apps.

In order to keep this package small, the publisher has a separate “Lightning Launcher setup” application. This doesn’t appear in your app drawer and is simply an add-on to the launcher that opens when pressing menu- customize.  In this area, you will find themes, app label customization, color changes, font changes and more. The custom options are fun to mess with, but there really isn’t much In terms of themes available, themes in the market yet, or custom icons included with the launcher. What really makes this launcher almost not recommendable is the .99 cent purchase of an “Any app widget” add-on to add widgets.  If you like this launcher then buy the add-on, thankfully everything else is free.

We ran Lightning Launcher for about two days and the ease of opening things and going from screen to screen was greatly missed when switching launchers. Opening things like the camera, contacts, and messages took less than a second on our HTC Evo 3d. The launcher looks very clean and everything is easily accessed, although some might miss having mutiple screens for widgets and so on. With Lightning launcher you’d be limited to only one or two in order to be able to have that quick access to frequently used apps with icons on the home

(Zune theme included with launcher)

Overall this Launcher is a great alternative for those looking for a clean look with some of the best responsiveness that we have seen from a launcher. Widgets are, too some, a major part of android and the forced purchase of .99 cents in order to add widgets to the launcher almost kills it. The difference between other heavier launchers is noticeable and only you can decide whether you prefer a small and clean launcher or one with custom docks, multiple screens, transition effects and so on.

This Launcher is free and we recommend trying it, you’d be surprised how its light and speedy interface can win you over.  Here is the developer’s YouTube video demonstrating the launcher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FccFWyHSb94#!

Score: 3 out of 5

Pros

-Speed and overall responsiveness

-clean and simple look

Cons

-Not a lot of available themes or custom icons

-Only one screen to work with

-requires a .99 cent purchase in order to add widgets

–Mario Vasquez, ABT Contributing Editor

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