Android App of the Week – Wave Launcher
I like tweaking my UI.
There I said it.
I wont ever be happy with a stock interface. I will always want the phone I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on to work the way *I* want it to work. I’m demanding like that.
The frustrating thing about Android is navigating between open programs can be frustrating, and launching new apps while within an app can be tedious.
The awesome thing about Android is when there’s a hole in the UI, someone has probably already found a solution for it.
Enter Wave Launcher.
Situation number one:
You’re in the middle of an email, and someone has sent you a link. You click on that link, it opens your browser, you read the link, then go back to the email. If you want to toggle back and forth between your email and the browser you can’t, using the stock “hold the home key until recent apps pop up” list. Apps that weren’t specifically run from your home screen or app drawer will not show up in the recently used list. Any app that is opened from within another app will similarly stay hidden from Android’s stock ability to multi-task. Which sort of defeats the purpose of multi-tasking…
Situation number two:
While writing an email, you need to look up a word in your Dictionary app. How do you get there? There is no stock way to go directly to your app drawer. There is no hardware button, or option to get to a list of your apps from within an app. You have to hit home first, then hit the screen to launch your app drawer.
This is phenomenally frustrating, as even Windows Mobile 6 had solutions to help with multi-tasking–so what’s a tech savvy guy to do?
Borrow a little functionality from WebOS of course.
WebOS is notable for being the finest example of mobile multi-tasking currently available, and one of its best features is a wave bar which can be launched anywhere in the OS by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Wave Launcher replicates this functionality for Android, allowing users to customize a select number of apps to launch anywhere from within Android.
You’re able to customize which direction the bar comes in from, and how much screen real-estate is dedicated to activating the bar. This was helpful for me, as keeping the entire bottom of the screen active caused a lot of conflicts with closing my notification tray. Now I use the center bottom to activate Wave Launcher and the corners of the screen to flick notifications back up.
But what if the app you need to launch isn’t on your custom Wave?
Wave Launcher allows you to launch an app drawer overlay!
Essential, by holding your finger at the bottom of your screen for a set amount of time (that you can customize), Wave will show you every app loaded on your phone. No need to hit the home key first anymore. We finally have true app access within every area of Android.
The only issues I’ve run into so far is with games. With many games requiring significant resources, activating a graphical interactive layer with transparencies on top of a game can sometimes lag the phone pretty badly. Usually this will either activate an app by accident, or cause a game to go into a force close. For day to day activity though, I’ve run into few issues with this UI tweak.
If you like having a little more control over how you organize apps and services on your phone, Wave Launcher is an easy recommendation.
Wave Launcher on the Android Market ($1.99)
Review: The HTC One X on AT&T
Review: Swann’s iFly Micro Lightning RC Helicopter
Android App of the Week: The Avengers-Iron Man Mark VII
