[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] godmakarand:
SWOT Analysis TSF Shell

SWOT Analysis TSF lauancher

(Tried on galaxy note N7000)

Strengths - first and foremost is its rendering. I think this is the only launcher other than Atom which uses full pixel capacity of Note. At least it makes you believe this. Somehow the same widgets and apps placed on TSF home screen come out better than all other launchers. It's another amazing property is grid less home screen, which still allows you to have some semblance of grid because of its icon arranger. Which I think is unique to this launcher. Grid less home screen allows nicer arrangement for some contacts widgets. In all other launchers they resize to show half people tiles. Only in TSF is it possible to arrange them to show in perfect combination.

It's another strength is its vertical sidebar. This makes things a lot easier. And, well, adds class to the whole experience. TSF gives you a feeling that somehow the developers have understood the touch very well. Touch and gestures are used beautifully to control the home screen, folders and app arranger. It's lasso mode is fantastic and becomes a habit. I inadvertently keep looking for the same in all other launchers, just to find that it's not available. Transporting apps and widgets from one screen to another is very simple. This also becomes a habit after some use. There are many app drawer transitions and all of them work amazingly. The animation is fantastic. I am not using many of the widgets and other pinups, as they keep on hogging the battery and RAM. It is simply great as a style statement and makes you standout in the otherwise ordinary launcher market.

Weakness - hmmm... There are many. One is the price tag. But this is altogether developers domain. And Inspite of steep price I have bought it. So what the hell. It's only important before you tap the buy button. After that all launchers price is same. I was frustrated over not being able to arrange my apps in separate tabs in app drawer. Which I use extensively for organisation. And I have found the same pretty useful. That is one of the major reasons for going back to Nova, Apex.

Another trouble is that there are no options for home screen transitions. There is only one method of simple slide with vibrating icons. A after some time I was bored by the same. Surely, when so many options are provided for app drawer, it should not be too difficult to provide some for home screen transitions.

Another major reason for returning to Nova, was meagrely support for third party widgets. I find that frustrating. Sometimes I take great pains to set up my home screens, and when you change the launchers you find that most favourite things are missing as they are not supported.

There is no autorotate mode. And I suggest not to try the landscape mode of TSF launcher. It's horrible. After setting up my home screens in portrait mode, I just tried landscape. After using other launchers one just assumes to get things done in correct manner when orientation is changed. But this launcher fumbles badly. Widgets leave their place, they overlap, and you have to spend a lot of time just searching them and getting them back to their correct position. And then again the nightmare of rotating everything back to portrait. It's horrible. One other aspect that I found was, this launcher was keeping the phone awake and hence using CPU a lot more. Resultant battery loss was evident. But the same may have been caused by some widget I used. I will try to troubleshoot the same later. There are very few options available for gestures. In nova I have set it up for recent apps to show up when I slide up. This unique operation is only possible in nova and in no other launcher is it possible.

Opportunities - just imagine how beautiful it would be to arrange apps along a path, all automatically rotated towards its Center of gravity. An updated version of app arranger perhaps, but it needs just one swipe of hand and all the apps are arranged along one smooth curve. That will be nice. Currently it takes a lot of efforts to place and rotate the apps manually. Then again the placement and rotation is not so correct and the whole effect is lost. What otherwise would have looked good starts looking shabby. All the weaknesses are opportunities actually, but in addition to all of them this one addition will be extremely nice. And at this price it's reasonable to expect this.

Threats - none really other than extremely stable and more reasonably priced launchers, which perform great. As far as 3d launchers are concerned there are no threats.

I hope this helps members here. I have been trying many launchers lately and I will try and keep on posting analysis of other launchers as well.