Smart Launcher 2

                                          

SIMPLE, LIGHT, FAST.
Smart Launcher 2 is an innovative launcher, featuring minimalist design, low resource requirements and a user-friendly interface that allows you to launch any application with just a few taps.
SL2 has been downloaded by over eight million people!

MINIMALIST DOES NOT MEAN UNDER FEATURED
Smart Launcher 2 is completely different from any other launcher on Play Store. It has been written from scratch.

The Flower
It gives you access to the most common apps. No need to select every time a specific app for the activity you want to start. The double tap option allows you to launch a second activity from the same icon.

The Drawer
It automatically organizes your apps into a few important categories. Exploring and finding your apps has never been so easy.

Themes and lockscreens
Almost every element of the UI is customizable. SL2 supports every Apex and Nova icon set, and more than 300 themes have been created specifically for Smart Launcher!

Plugins, Notifications and Customizable gestures
Add features by installing what you need. Get notifications directly on your homescreen
and assign gestures to your favorite apps to allow you to start them faster.

Hide unused apps
You can hide whatever apps you want, and if you want to protect your apps against prying eyes you can protect them with a password.

One launcher to rule them all
SL2 is optimized for almost every Android device. You can use it on your phone, on your tablet and even on your Google TV. Every part of SL is designed to be comfortably used both in portrait and landscape mode.

Constantly updated
Since June 2012 SL2 has been updated more than 150 times. It completely supports the latest Android API, and we always listen to user suggestions. Do you want to help us with the testing of new versions? Join the beta g+ community : plus.google.com/u/0/communities/114803489211052363907

Size : 1.8M
Current Version : 2.5
Requires Android : 2.1 and up

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4Gmark (Speedtest & Benchmark)

                                              

4Gmark is a tool offering a comprehensive and reliable benchmark of the quality of service for smartphones. It allows you to compare smartphones, networks or places on every technologies 2G (Edge, Gprs), 3G (Umts, Hsdpa, H+, Dual-carrier), 4G (LTE) and Wifi.
When you perform free tests with 4Gmark, you participate in a collaborative project to aggregate a base of information for understanding and improving the quality of service.

The “Speed Test” quickly calculates downlink and uplink network speed (average Bitrate).
At the end of the Test, in the results, you can benchmark your results against the average bitrate obtained by other users in your country, in the same area or using the same smartphone (wifi or cellular).
The “Full Test” is a scenario with all protocols (latency, transfer, web) giving full visibility over the quality of the connection environment. It calculates a score which let you compare between them different smartphones, networks or places.
At the end of the Full Test, in the results, you can benchmark your results against the average score obtained by other users in your country, in the same area or using the same smartphone (wifi or cellular).
Also in the “Custom Test” section, Customized scenarios of tests are available.
Finally as a bonus, a dashboard that will offer the most current real-time information about your hardware, your location, your cellular and your wifi connection.

Size : 8.8M
Current Version : 1.4.11
Requires Android : 2.3.3 and up

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3D Sense Clock & Weather

3D Sense Clock & World Weather is a full featured, size 4×1, 4×2 and 5×2 fully customizable digital clock and weather forecast widget
The widget features the following:
- World weather forecast application (no need to add a widget if you don’t want to; you can check out the weather forecast by opening the application)
- 3 widget sizes; 4×1, 4×2 and 5×2(for Galaxy Note or tablets)
- Several skins to choose from
- Support for external theme packs containing even more skins (theme packs can be downloaded separately)
- Several weather icon and battery skins
- Different fonts for the time
- Portrait or landscape mode
- 12 or 24 hour clock with date
- Display of current week number
- Supports dynamic location (optional) – use this to automatically update your location and receive weather forecasts as you travel
- Weather for current location (condition and temperature, low and high temperatures and weather icon)
- Detailed weather forecast display including the following:
- Local time
- Sunrise and sunset time for current location
- Humidity and wind conditions
- Current condition, temperature and low and high temperatures
- Current condition icon
- Last weather update time
- 4 day weather forecast
- World weather: Choose to display weather information for any number of different locations worldwide. Just select your favorite locations and you will immediately have updated weather and time information.
- Launch up to four different applications by tapping different widget hotspots (is user defined)
The widget can be fully customized with the following options:
- Choose the widget and weather icon skins
- Choose the text color for the time, am/pm indication, date, location, current weather condition, current temperature and hi/lo temperatures
- Display shadow on the time
- Choose the font for the time
- Display 12 or 24 hour time with optional AM/PM indicator (if 12 hour format)
- Beep every hour (optional)
- Select the date display format
- Display a manually selected location’s time instead of phone’s time
- Optionally show or hide specific elements of the widget (hi/lo temperature, weather update time, am/pm indicator, battery status, next alarm, etc)
- Use current location to display weather info or specify any location you want
- Get location updates from the network (cell/WiFi) or your GPS
- Display temperature values in Celsius or Fahrenheit
- Optionally display the next alarm (under the hour)
- Select automatic weather refresh period (15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 hours)
- Enter your favorite world locations to watch local times, current weather conditions and weather forecast information
- Update weather on WiFi and/or GPRS
- Choose whether you want to update while roaming or not
- Play notification sounds on location and weather changes and updates
- Select what application to launch when tapping the hours
- Launch more applications by tapping the weekday or month
- Optionally display the battery level
- Specify how to receive location updates (how often and for how much distance)
- Select alternate weather forecast service
The application is localized in the following languages:
Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Croatian, Czech, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese
IMPORTANT!!!
- This is a widget, not an application. To install it please refer to the help.
- If you are using a task killer exclude the widget from it
Please report any problems, suggestions or requests via e-mail

Size : 7.8M
Current Version : 0.66
Requires Android : 1.6 and up

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Android 4.4.3 KitKat fixes pesky camera drain issue

The biggest fix sorts out a pesky battery drain that could happen when an app would use the device's camera. It was damn annoying (especially if you have a pretty lacklustre battery to begin with) so we're glad it's now a thing of the past.

There's also a snazzy new dialer app, which is the one that leaked out a few months back.

On top of that, there are a few other bug fixes and various tweaks in there too but nothing groundbreaking.

Only a matter of time

We checked our in-office Nexus 5 and there was no sign of the update just yet.

It looks like, on a visual layer at least, there isn't a great deal of change on Android 4.4.3, with a refreshed Phone app the only difference currently reported - although you can expect various behind the scenes improvements.

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The Android Market

As mentioned earlier, one of the main factors determining the success of a smartphone platform is
the applications that support it. It is clear from the success of the iPhone that applications play a
very vital role in determining whether a new platform swims or sinks. In addition, making these
applications accessible to the general user is extremely important.
As such, in August 2008, Google announced Android Market, an online application store for
Android devices, and made it available to users in October 2008. Using the Market application that
is pre installed on their Android device, users can simply download third-party applications directly
onto their devices. Both paid and free applications are supported on the Android Market, though
paid applications are available only to users in certain countries due to legal issues.
Similarly, in some countries, users can buy paid applications from the Android Market, but
developers cannot sell in that country. As an example, at the time of writing, users in India can buy
apps from the Android Market, but developers in India cannot sell apps on the Android Market.
The reverse may also be true; for example, users in South Korea cannot buy apps, but developers in
South Korea can sell apps on the Android Market.

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Android Devices in the Market

Android devices come in all shapes and sizes. As of late November 2011, the Android OS powers the
following types of devices:
➤ Smartphones
➤ Tablets
➤ E-reader devices
➤ Netbooks
➤ MP4 players
➤ Internet TVs

Chances are good that you own at least one of the preceding devices. Figure 1-2 shows (left to right)
the Samsung Galaxy S II, the Motorola Atrix 4G, and the HTC EVO 4G smartphones.

Another popular category of devices that manufacturers are rushing out is the tablet. Tablets
typically come in two sizes: seven inches and ten inches, measured diagonally. Figure 1-3 shows the
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (left) and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 (right), both 10.1-inch
tablets. Both the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 and the Asus Eee Pad Transfer TF101 run on Android 3.
In addition to these popular mobile devices, Android is also slowly fi nding its way into your
living room. People of Lava, a Swedish company, has developed an Android-based TV, called the
Scandinavia Android TV (see Figure 1-5).
Google has also ventured into a proprietary smart TV platform based on Android and codeveloped
with companies such as Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Figure 1-6 shows Sony’s Google TV.
At the time of writing, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (see Figure 1-7) is the only device running on
Android 4.0. However, Google has promised that existing devices (such as the Nexus S) will be able
to upgrade to Android 4.0. By the time you are reading this, there should be a plethora of devices
running Android 4.0.

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Architecture of Android

In order to understand how Android works, take a look at Figure 1-1, which shows the various
layers that make up the Android operating system (OS).
The Android OS is roughly divided into five sections in four main layers:
➤ Linux kernel — This is the kernel on which Android is based. This layer contains all the lowlevel
device drivers for the various hardware components of an Android device.
➤ Libraries — These contain all the code that provides the main features of an Android OS. For
example, the SQLite library provides database support so that an application can use it for
data storage. The WebKit library provides functionalities for web browsing.
➤ Android runtime — At the same layer as the libraries, the Android runtime provides a set
of core libraries that enable developers to write Android apps using the Java programming
language. The Android runtime also includes the Dalvik virtual machine, which enables every
Android application to run in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual
machine (Android applications are compiled into Dalvik executables). Dalvik is a specialized
virtual machine designed specifically for Android and optimized for battery-powered mobile
devices with limited memory and CPU.
➤ Application framework — Exposes the various capabilities of the Android OS to application
developers so that they can make use of them in their applications.
➤ Applications — At this top layer, you will find applications that ship with the Android device
(such as Phone, Contacts, Browser, etc.), as well as applications that you download and
install from the Android Market. Any applications that you write are located at this layer.

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