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Launcher8 Is A Great Windows Phone 8 Style Android Launcher With Live Tiles

In LauncherWP8, we found a very effective solution to give your Android’s home and lock screen a Metro Modern makeover. Seems like our beloved launcher has just got some serious competition, as the QiHang Dev Team has just released a similar alternative to the Play Store by the name of Launcher8. Filled with Windows Phone 8 style Modern goodness, Launcher8 is a free Android home and lock screen replacement app that pips ahead of the aforementioned alternative in a number of ways. For instance, it sports live tiles for contacts as well as Gallery photos. It also has a dedicated lock tile to help you quickly lock your device without requiring to reach for the power button. Unlike LauncherWP8, this app allows you to switch the app drawer between list and grid views, and offers as many as four different themes for the lockscreen. Launcher8’s home and lockscreen is customizable in a number of ways, and to top it all, you can backup and restore the app’s themes, complete with your custom alterations.

The app lets you add system shortcuts to the home screen (or rather, the Start Screen) in the form of tiles, and offers various contextual menus for Caller and Messaging tiles to associate the required notification type with them.

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As with LauncherWP8, you get to choose the desired theme color of the home screen as well as lockscreen. In addition, you can pin multiple tiles to the home screen, each mapped to your required app, widget, system shortcut or the Launcher8-exclusive time, lock, contacts and gallery tiles.

Holding down on a tile allows you to reposition it, resize it, unpin it, change its color, picture, or the app associated with it.

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As in the Windows Phone launcher and most of its Android clones, swiping to left on the home screen reveals the app list. The list is viewable in three different modes: alphabetically, vertically paginated or as a grid. You can quickly pin an app to the home screen from here by long pressing it. Unwanted apps can also be hidden from this screen by hitting Menu > Hidden apps.

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In order to work properly, the aforementioned lock tile requires you to install Anall Lockscreen from Google Play Store. You don’t have to look for the app manually, as tapping said tile will automatically redirect you to the download.

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To wrap it up, the app is currently the best way to give your Android device a taste of Windows Phone 8, while enjoying the typical Android style control over the UI.

Download Launcher8 For Android

3 Comments

  1. Gmail notifications don’t appear on the tile for me..is that how it is or is it just so in my case?I do get notifications on the tile for missed calls and messages..