Showing posts with label Utility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Utility. Show all posts

AAQR: Nemus Launcher (home launcher)

Nemus Launcher, from the folks who brought you the VERY eye-candy-ish Regina 3D launcher, is sort of the opposite of Regina. It's light weight (just over 1 MB), yet quite nicely featured. However, its various limitations makes this a very niche choice.

Nemus Launcher gave a very good impression: it feels quite snappy with very smooth scrolling. It has a good looking "dock", which can be configured by simple drag and drop. Just drop an icon onto the dock and voila, that's it. The icons are also full sized, not shrunken version like in other launchers.

It also let you know the app drawer is getting refreshed with a the spinning circle behind it. The app drawer is also improved: it can be used to manage running apps and a shortcut to "Manage Apps" choice under settings / applications. The app drawer can be shown in two styles, the normal vertical list and the Samsung style horizontal "paged" style.

The "screens" (panels) on the desktop can number from 3 to 9. There's an edit screen that lets you easily adjust the order, add more panels, remove panels, and so on.

Its folder support is impressive... Basically stealing the iOS style folder management. Just drag one shortcut onto another to make a folder. It doesn't have sorting or "starred / favorite" tagging.

However, there's a few problems. First of all, this app is portrait layout ONLY. It will NOT go into landscape mode EVER. It does NOT react to orientation sensor. Second, it is somewhat crash happy, at least on my OG Droid. I've seen it FC numerous times, even as I go into and out of settings. Third, it is virtually undocumented. There is no mention of the app on the NemusTech home page (in fact the whole page is in Korean).

All in all, Nemus Launcher is a smooth launcher that is pretty good if you stay in portrait mode most of the time. It makes folders extremely easy. Indicator on the app drawer to let you know it's refreshing is also very neat. On the other hand, no landscape and occasional FC makes this launcher a bit niche for me.

7 out of 10


http://www.appbrain.com/app/nemus-launcher/com.nemustech.launcher
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AAQR: Convertr (Utility, $0.99)

Convertr is an almost universal converter of units, from almost anything to almost anything else. Area, volume, density, force, power, length, weight, angle, and more are all possible. You can even activate / deactivate the stuff you never use. That's pretty interesting.

I don't know about paying 99 cents for it though. You can get access to that on Google easily. There are also a ton of other apps that do the same thing, albeit not as pretty, but free. So do you need this app? Maybe not.

This was give away one day on Amazon Appstore.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/convertr/com.vervv.convertr $0.99

AAQR: LBE Privacy Guard (free)

LBE Privacy Guard,
screenshot via Appbrain
LBE Privacy Guard for Android takes the "SuperUser" whitelist approach to all sorts of "permissions" on your Android phone, if you take your privacy VERY seriously. It gets a bit annoying if you have a lot of apps, but it is pretty interesting app.

Basically, the app can tell which app is accessing what, and intercepts the call. For example, "Expenses Manager" intercepts stuff that costs money, such as sending SMS, calling phone numbers, and so on. When an app does that, you have to specifically allow the app to do so (similar to the way "SuperUser" whitelists an app) else the request is denied by default in 10 seconds.

The various "managers" let you control which apps have access to which permissions. The Security Log shows you which apps accessed what permission.

This app controls app permissions in real-time, in case you did not see all the permissions it needs when it installed. It gets a little annoying if you have a lot of apps to approve, but it does seem to work. Definitely give it a try.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/lbe-privacy-guard/com.lbe.security
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