Guest dialmformostyn Posted January 28, 2012 Report Share Posted January 28, 2012 At a glance aShell Home Screen Launcher doesn't appear to be anything to write home about: Icon dock? Check. Resizeable widgets? Check. Fancy transition animations? Check. It seems to have simply taken a page out of the same book ADW, GO and Launcher Pro did format wise. That page can't be a bad place to start, given that those are three of the most popular launchers on the Market. But while the format clearly works, it hasn't evolved as much as you might expect. Enter aShell's Content Tabs. Swipe up on a dock icon and a scrollable drawer opens from the bottom, which can fill as much screen as you see fit. So swiping up on the message icon will show your SMS inbox, tab across to the phone icon and you will be able to scroll through your call log and quick dial recent contacts, and the app drawer icon will reveal a task killer. More after the break... Testing the task killer also led me to discover the utterly ghastly collection of sound effects included in the launcher, as a laser gun blasted away my unwanted processes and dropping icons into the homescreen bin resulted in glass smashing. As I said: ghastly. For the time being you can change the dock icons to app or shortcut you like, the Content Tab feature only seems to works with the default options. There are some quick settings (with, ahem, "borrowed" icons) for changing the appearance of the launcher, but it'll take the input of the themer community to get aShell looking as good as its competition. The launcher is a good start and a great concept, but lacks a bit of polish in some areas. I love the idea of Content Tabs, even if I did find myself accidentally moving the icons from the dock to the home screen on more than one occasion. But nonetheless the template is there for a intuitive and unique style of navigation and customisation. As a curious aside, the only other products in the Market by aShell developers Mobilityflow DMD are a series of "Erotic Sexy Dancers Wallpaper" apps. I had no luck in finding a "novelty pen" setting aShell's options that shows a lady undressing when you turn your phone upside-down, but in fairness, it is currently in a "Pre-Beta" stage of development, so give it time. Source: Android Market This item was promoted to the News page - click here to view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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