Alright, there’s nothing wrong with the stock Ice Cream Sandwich launcher, especially when in tandem with the Samsung Touch UI. There’s nothing to hate about this set up on my Samsung Galaxy S3. But then, the stock ICS launcher is not a perfect either. Hence, you’ll probably end up using third-party replacement launcher.
One of these alternative launcher happens to be one of the most popular as well. It’s called Nova Launcher of which you may have already heard of before. Given the excellent features and performance of the stock ICS launcher, does Nova Launcher stand a chance of getting adapted by users with devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich?
Well, read on to find out.
Nova Launcher – Features
As hinted at the start of this post, Nova Launcher is an alternative launcher and home-screen replacement app for Android smartphones. The app is available in both free and premium versions, with the latter offering more powerful, customization features. If you don’t want to spend for this app, the free version will suffice for your customization needs.
Nova Launcher can best be described as a highly customizable, performance driven home screen replacement app for Android 4.0 smartphones. Its key features include the following:
- It lets you change the ascent color of the launcher with its full color picker support.
- The app also lets you use ADW or Go launcher icon themes to all of your phone’s app icons. You have to download these icon themes from Google Play and install them to make them appear in the selection of Nova Launcher’s Icon Themes.
- Nova Launcher also features Scrollable dock, allowing your to keep all your favorite apps on the dock with up to 7 icons per page and for up to 3 pages.
- You can also customize your phone’s app drawer using transparency and scrolling styles such as horizontal paginated or vertical continuous
- For those who are fond of fancy scrolling effects, Nova Launcher gives you the Cube and Cardstack scrolling effects. If you want more, you should get the Prime version of the app.
- The app also lets you infinitely scroll through your desktop
- For those who use folders for app categories, you can also change the background, preview style or even replace the folder icons.
Other features of Nova Launcher include – backup/restore, widgets in dock, widget overlapping, bulk add, activities shortcut, drawer groups, gestures, hide apps, dock swipes, unread counts, and more scroll effects.
Setting Up Nova Launcher on your Android Phone or Tablet
Right after downloading and installing the app, a new icon will be added to your device’s home screen. Simply tap on this app icon and you will be brought to Nova Launcher’s Settings screen. From here on, you can pretty much select any customization features that you want to use on your device.
The customization is pretty straightforward so you’ll quickly find your device’s interface fully customized as soon as you’ve explored all the settings available.
Once you’ve set the customization options that you want to use, you have the option to make Nova Launcher as the default launcher. Doing so will prevent the stock launcher from appearing.
Final Thoughts
Nova Launcher is a great home screen replacement and alternative launcher for your ICS-powered devices. The app’s free version has so many features that will get you hooked into customizing your Android experience. The launcher performs pretty fast even with animation applied so you can stop worrying about slowing down your phone’s navigation performance. Nova Launcher will not do this to your device. On the contrary it will improve your device’s performance.
Should you download and install this app on your device? Oh yes! We highly recommend giving Nova Launcher a try, at least the free version. You would probably end up getting the premium version later on.
Download Nova Launcher
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