For the uninitiated, LauncherPro is one of many homescreen replacements available for Android devices. These replacements run over the top of your device’s default homescreen and often add new features to improve the Android experience. For example, LauncherPro, among other things, lets you set the number of homescreens you want, adds a new app drawer, and allows you to hide non-removable applications (V-Cast applications, anyone?) from your app drawer if you’re not willing to root your device in order to get rid of them completely.

To check out the new transitions, update LauncherPro to the most recent version, hit the Menu button on your phone and click on Preferences. Click on the Homescreen Settings submenu and you’ll find a new option for Transition Effect. Here you can choose an awesome new transition, and you don’t even have to restart LauncherPro to try it out!

Excepting the Cube transition, which is still a little jerky, the new transitions are just as fast as the stock scrolling transition. Of course, that could also just be due to my ancient Motorola Droid.

In his latest blog post Fede also promises another update soon that will add to the growing list of goodies available to those who have paid for LauncherPro Plus. If you haven’t given LauncherPro a go yet, there’s no better time than the present! Scan the QR Code below to be taken directly to LauncherPro’s Android Market page.

You can also check out a quick demonstration of all the new transitions in the video below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niGDpeeUXkw

The post Latest LauncherPro Update Adds Sweet New Transitions first appeared on Techerator.

If you’ve ever stared at the above screen for more than ten seconds, you know what I’m talking about. You wait patiently while your home screens are slowly repopulated with your multitude of shortcuts and widgets.

This happens because home screen replacements are treated just like any other application to the Android operating system. If they aren’t the active application (i.e., if a different application is running on top of it) they wait patiently in memory. If the running application requires more memory, the home replacement app might be killed to free up memory. When you close the active application to return to your home screen, it needs to redraw itself since it’s no longer in memory.

Needless to say, watching a blank screen for half a minute can become incredibly annoying if it happens frequently enough.

What Can Be Done?

As you might have gathered from this article’s title, there are a few things you can do to reduce this occurrence.

Most home screen replacements, like LauncherPro, offer the ability to automatically rotate your home screens if the accelerometer detects that the phone is rotated. This can be handy at times, but depending on how often you use it, it might be more trouble than it’s worth and takes up valuable memory. Auto rotation can usually be disabled in the settings for the home screen replacement (in LauncherPro, it can be found in the Behavior Settings). Note that this doesn’t affect any individual applications that auto-rotate, like browsers, the alarm clock, or Car mode. Changing this setting only affects auto-rotation when on one of the home screens.

Some home screen replacements also contain an option keep themselves in memory (found under General Settings in LauncherPro). I’ve had limited success with this feature, but it’s worth trying to see if your results vary.

For those with root access, even more tools exist to help alleviate home screen redrawing. If you’re running a custom ROM like CyanogenMod, it might have a built in setting (like the one above) to keep the current home application in memory.

Another option is to try increasing the VM heap size. This causes the operating system to garbage collect less often, which in turn means your home screen replacement has less chance to be booted from memory. Changing the heap size can dramatically alter the performance of your phone, so use it with care. On my Motorola Droid I increased the heap size to 32M and haven’t noticed any negative side effects yet. In CyanogenMod, this setting can be found under Performance settings (as seen in the picture above). Note that changing this setting requires a reboot to take effect.

If you still experience a high number of redraws after trying the steps above, you can try reducing the memory footprint of your home screen application. By reducing the total number of home screens, your home screen replacement requires less memory to run. Widgets can also be memory hogs, so if you’ve loaded up your phone with tons of widgets, try dumping some of the less necessary ones.

Home screen replacements are an awesome addition to the Android experience, but can sometimes take a bit of work to manage. Do you have any other suggestions on how to reduce redraw? Let our readers know in the comments section below!

The post What To Do If Your Android Home Screen Replacement Lags first appeared on Techerator.

LauncherPro doesn’t offer the feature set of a home screen replacement like HelixLauncher, but its sheer simplicity is what drew me to it in the first place.

The first thing you’ll notice when using LauncherPro is how smoothly it scrolls through home screens. The screens fly past with no slowdown, and it makes the default Android home screen look outdated and clunky by comparison.

Another welcome addition is the option to choose how many home screens you would like to use (up to seven). This is especially useful for those who own Motorola’s Droid, as it only supports three screens by default. LauncherPro also features an Exposé-like tiling of all your home screens, accessed by pressing the Home button on your phone or by making a pinching gesture on the home screen.

LauncherPro gives you a dock at the bottom of each home screen, allowing easy access to the dialer, your contacts and messages, and the web browser by default. The latest version introduced the ability to change these buttons to whatever you like, so you can launch any application or shortcut of your choice with ease.

The final feature that LauncherPro currently adds is the animation of the app drawer. Instead of just sliding up from the bottom when you press the application launcher button, a list of your installed apps will fly in from off screen, then fly out when you close it. It doesn’t add any new functionality, but it is a little extra eye candy.

Since LauncherPro is still technically in beta, it looks like we can look forward to more updates and feature additions in the future. You can follow LauncherPro’s development at the developer’s blog, found here.

Have you tried LauncherPro yet, or use a different home screen replacement? We’d love to hear what you like or dislike about them in the comments below!

The post LauncherPro: A New Contender In Android Home Screen Replacements first appeared on Techerator.