Go Launcher 5.0 Review

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This post was published 10 years, 5 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.

Go Launcher has been around for a long time now, and for a good while it was people’s go-to homescreen replacement.

Once Ice Cream Sandwich hit people’s devices however, there was an influx of new custom launchers which took over, most notably Nova Launcher.

Since then, Go Launcher has been banished to the dreaded uninstalled apps list for the majority of users, largely due to the outdated Gingerbread UI. However, the Go Development team were not about to wave goodbye. They wanted to fight back. Thus, Go Launcher 5.0 was born!

First Impressions

My first impressions of the “New Go Launcher” were a mixed bag.

Initially I felt nostalgic, as Go Launcher was the first home screen replacement I used back in the day when I had just purchased my beloved Galaxy SII. However, those feelings of nostalgia were short-lived, as surprise and excitement took over as this was absolutely an all new Go Launcher. Straight away I could see that this was going to be better than I had thought. I could feel it might actually be something quite amazing!

The Good

The new UI is a real treat to use. It’s clean, quick and beautiful. The new animations are extremely smooth, especially considering how complex they are. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it could rival Nova launcher on the smoothness front.

The app is very well thought out, with the app automatically categorising your apps into folders, however this can be disabled if it isn’t to your liking.

As ever, the theme store is prominent in Go Launcher which is good in that there are thousands of themes available, and bad in that almost all of them require you to pay. Rest assured, icon packs such as Stark (pictured) and other popular packs are also compatible.

A new feature is the ready-made “Screens” which are pre-configured to perform certain tasks. These screens are actually really cool and work well. Currently only two are available, calendar and favourite contacts, with the promise of more coming soon. Some of these future additions are already listed. There is a gallery screen, calculator screen, and a mysterious “Discover Panel” which looks suspiciously like Samsung’s My Magazine or HTC’s BlinkFeed. I will make an updated review when these are available.

I have also downloaded Go Locker, which replaces your systems lockscreen. This too has undergone extensive changes, which all seem to be for the better. Swiping from the left side of the screen unlocks your device, swiping up from the camera icon opens the camera. Swiping from the right takes you to a page with icons for your recent apps, shortcuts to themes, wallpaper, notification and security settings, as well as weather and settings shortcuts. There are also quick toggles for WiFi, Mobile Data, Bluetooth and the Torch application.

The Bad

The stock icons and UI closely resemble iOS, although an icon pack will quickly remedy this. The app also contains ads in some settings menus which requires you to purchase a “Prime Version” to remove. It isn’t uncommon to see free and prime versions of custom launchers, but most, like Nova,  just restrict certain features until you buy prime and don’t use ads. Go Launcher Prime also seems rather expensive at £3.63 here in the UK ($5.99 in the US).

The app also consumes a vast amounts of your device’s RAM. Now on my S4 which has 2GB you don’t notice it in performance, however battery life will likely suffer.

There are also some elements left over from more outdated Android versions. On devices with onscreen buttons, such as my Nexus 7, there is a permanent legacy menu button to the left of the Navbar, despite the quick-menu being accessible from a swipe upwards from the dock or a long press on the empty space of a homescreen. Also, when used on a large screen such as my Galaxy Note 10.1 the old “Stretch to fill screen” button appears, something that hasn’t been necessary in a very long time. Hopefully these issues are addressed in a future update.

Conclusion

All in all the new Go Launcher is extremely good. There are a few niggles, but I’m sure they’ll be ironed out eventually. Personally, I’m going to try using it as a daily driver for a while and see how things go. Hopefully it’ll just get better and better and Go Launcher will, once again, reign as king of the homescreen replacements.

What is your favourite launcher? Let us know in the comments!

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GO Launcher -Themes&Wallpapers
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