One of the things that sets Android apart from other mobile operating systems is the control you have over your home screen. You can place as many or as few shortcuts as you like on your home screen, and those shortcuts can be to apps, contacts, or other features of your phone. But if you don’t want to clutter your entire home screen area with shortcuts, you might want to check out Launch-X. It’s a home screen widget that lets you provide quick access to your most frequently used apps or contacts in a single 4 x 1 bar.

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When you install Launch-X, the first thing you have to do is run the application and create a new widget. You can populate it with as many apps or contacts as you like, and you can adjust the size of the icons. If you pay about $1.50 for the pro version, you an also choose whether to display 4,5, 6, or 7 shortcuts in a row, while the free version is limited to 4 or 5.

Once you’ve created a widget, you can ad it to the home screen just like any other widget. Just choose Launch-X from the widget menu and then select the widget you designed from the menu. You can create multiple widgets with different layouts for use on different home screens — or different areas of one screen if clutter is your thing.

Launch-X is available for download from the Android Market. You can scan the bar code to the right to grab the free version, or search for Launch-X to find the Pro version.

Launch-X is available for all versions of Android, but I found that I tended to get a force close error when trying to add contacts to a widget using Android 2.2 Froyo on a Google Nexus One phone. Update: The developer has released an updated version that fixed this bug.

You can find a few more screenshots after the break.

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Like the look and feel of Microsoft’s new Kin phones, but don’t feel like buying a phone that won’t actually let you run third party apps? No problem. KinLauncher is an app that provides a Kin-like program launcher for Windows Mobile.

The user interface sort of falls apart once you actually click a link on the program launcher and realize that you’re still stuck with the default Windows Mobile (or HTC Sense) web browser, email, phone, and other apps. But at least KinLauncher makes the home screen a lot… greener.

You can also customize the buttons on the program launcher, although the default options look pretty decent with messaging, phone, email, browser, music, camera, settings, alarm, recent, and The Spot buttons.

KinLauncher is available as a free download for Windows Mobile. You can check out a video of the app in action after the break.

via xda-developers

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ADW Launcher is a new Android app that replaces your home screen and app drawer with a highly customizable app launcher. At first glance, the home screen looks almost exactly like the default Android 2.2 Froyo user interface, but there are a few key differences.

ADW launcher lets you view your home screen in landscape mode as well as portrait. Second, you can choose which apps will sit in the persistent dock at the bottom of the screen — if you use two apps more frequently than the phone and web browser, you can drag those shortcuts to the dock.

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The app also lets you choose how many home screens you want to have. While some phones ship with 3 and others 5, ADW Launcher lets you select anywhere from 2 to 7 home screens. You can choose to hide the notification bar when you’re on your home screen — although I’m not really sure why you would want to do that.

The app drawer tweaker is pretty crazy. While the Google Nexus One 3D program launcher shows you 16 apps at a time on a 4 x 4 grid, ADW lets you choose how many rows and columns to display in the app drawer. That means you can have up to 36 apps on a 6 x 6 grid in portrait mode, or up to 40 apps in an 8 x 5 grid in landscape.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ADW Launcher also lets you tweak animation settings, other UI elements, and what action should be taken when you pres the home screen.

ADW Launcher is available as a free download from the Android Market. It requires Android 2.1 or newer.

You can find some more screenshots after the break.

via Droid Life

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