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What's a Launcher and do I Need One?

A

Av8r

Newbie
I gather it's some easy way to open a bunch of apps that one likes and to save them? I'm just trying to organize a good opening page, but apps like weather, calendar, and Google, all take up so much space. I like the little calendar icon at the bottom of my first screen, but it always says "30" on it no matter what day it is. Is it really so difficult to have it display the correct date, or at least get another widget that does?

As you may have guessed, I'm coming from an iphone, and currently have the LG Thrill.
 
All Androids come with launchers -- it’s a hidden app that basically does the same work that an OS does on a computer, like placing shortcuts on the desktop and creating folders. There are lot of custom launchers that replace the stock version, because it actually is pretty lame. I use LauncherPro.
 
To be a little bit more precise, the Launcher itself is the UI you are using. There are launchers that change the UI to look like an iPhone, or Windows Phone 7. The homescreen, dock and app drawer constitutes a launcher.

Some launchers come with special widgets that work only with that particular launchers, others come with nice effects which make your phone look cooler, and others more customization features to make your phone look different from others.
 
As mentioned, your phone already comes with a stock launcher; third party launchers replace it (the stock launcher is not deleted and always available if you want it).

If you download another launcher (the most popular seem to be Go Launcher EX, ADW, and LauncherPro), you will start out with blank home screens and have to repopulate them with your shortcuts and widgets.

The advantage of replacing the stock launcher (I use Go Launcher EX) is incredible flexibility and customizations, everything from being able to have anywhere from 1 to 30 home screens to resizing widgets to having 15 (or more) items in the dock. Plus everything seems to work more smoothly.

The stock calendar always displays the number 30 or 31; there are many alternative (and better) calendars you can download. Touch Calendar is very good.

There are also several good weather apps to replace the stock app.

The beauty of Android is you can customize the phone to look and perform the most useful way for you; and welcome to the forum.
 
Oh I almost forgot, the calendar icon is not a widget. Widgets can change dates, because they are active apps. The calendar icon on your screen is just that, a static icon.
 
Thanks for the good explanations.

I got started on this question because I couldn't understand why the calendar icon always stated 30. I'll start experimenting with these new ideas and hopefully get a better and nicer UI.
 
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