Note 4: Which Launcher Do you use? Why?

What Launcher are you using?


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muzzy996

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Feb 3, 2011
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Nova Prime.

Custom gestures for any icon, half-grid icon/widget placement, widget resizing and disabling of widget padding are the primary reasons why. With all of that the entire screen real estate is leveraged.
 

bassplayrguy

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May 3, 2013
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Nova Prime.

Custom gestures for any icon, half-grid icon/widget placement, widget resizing and disabling of widget padding are the primary reasons why. With all of that the entire screen real estate is leveraged.

What is padding?

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bassplayrguy

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I am back and forth between TW and Nova Prime. Since I found an app that let's me pick and choose icons for TW, nova isn't much more attractive anymore, especially since you lose the Samsung functions.

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ESTEEB

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I'm a huge Nova Prime fan, although admittedly, someone recommended it when I first got my N4 and I had no reason to change it. Coming from iphone (since the 3G), android and Nova were a whole new customizable world. I like that I can hide my app drawer icon and use gestures/ swipes instead (Up with 1 finger for app drawer, Up with 2 for Nova settings, down with 2 for phone settings, etc).

My wife is less tech-savvy and, initially, she was feeling overwhelmed with the switch from ios to android. I put the Google Now launcher on her S5 and threw a couple of widget pages (facebook, pinterest), then she was all about it.

Different strokes and all that.
 

Jon Jackson

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sad sad...just paid for Nova a couple of months ago for my S5....I don't want to lose any samsung functions but damn it sure was nice....
 

muzzy996

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What is padding?

Padding is the margins around items on the home screen. Specifically, with Nova one can disable padding to allow a widget to go right to the edge of the screen or two widgets that are adjacent to each other actually touch.

I am back and forth between TW and Nova Prime. Since I found an app that let's me pick and choose icons for TW, nova isn't much more attractive anymore, especially since you lose the Samsung functions.

You're not alone, many people like some of the features that are lost. It's a personal preference thing. Personally I haven't found much value for them as opposed to the benefits I get from a 3rd party launcher so on every Samsung device I've owned I've nixed the stock launcher immediately upon initial setup. On my Note Pro I had high hopes for the magazine stuff when it was announced but it only took me 5 minutes of playing with it after I bought it to realize I'd never have full control over the content being displayed so my main attraction for keeping TW went out the window quick.
 

jmk32

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Nova Prime. Tried to stomach Touchwiz for a couple days out of the box, but couldn't stand the bad use of space and responsiveness. Set up Nova in a few seconds to what i had on my last phone (S4) and love the flexibility to use gestures (including double tap the screen to turn it off which is cool, and swipe down from anywhere to get the notification bar down instead of the LONG reach to the top of this big phone!), fit more apps in the grid in the app area, fix padding for widgets, resizing app icons on the screens, add quicker response, etc, etc.

So regarding lost functionality from chucking TouchWiz - the one I'm aware of is posting S-Notes to home screens won't work. What else is lost?
 

LegalAmerican

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Google Now Launcher. I had it on my Nexus 5 and loved it. Sure the icons are big, but so is the Note 4 screen so it doesn't bother me. I love having Google Now one swipe away, and I love the app drawer icon being in the middle of the icon tray.
 

SteveISU

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Google Now Launcher. I had it on my Nexus 5 and loved it. Sure the icons are big, but so is the Note 4 screen so it doesn't bother me. I love having Google Now one swipe away, and I love the app drawer icon being in the middle of the icon tray.

You lose any s-pen functionality?
 

worwig

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I used TouchWiz on my S3 for a long while.
I used TouchWiz on my S4 for a long while.
I had planned to stay with TouchWiz on the Note 4. But they are 'locked' into this ridiculous 4x4 icon matrix on the desktop screen. Really! I mean this thing has a HUGE amount of screen space. I'm comfortably using a 5x4, and I suspect a 6x5 wouldn't even be to crowded.
I have a few widgets that display a lot more content in this format. And I haven't found anything yet that I am losing out on with Nova.
 

rdroyer

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May 26, 2014
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Anyone have any experience with Buzz Launcher? I just installed it and there's a lot of customizability with it as well as a lot of user created themes, gestures too.