[Galaxy S II General] theatog:
First of all, how awesome is this forum !!!

I consider myself a pretty "upright" forum user as in I usually read the pinned, "read this first", Q&A, and search before I make new posts. Whenever I come upon people who don't do that, I kinda frown to my computer screen but beyond that seems like nothing much can be done? The "Here are the similar threads we found:" section is just pure brilliance.

Sorry about the rambling but I will start with a tiny background story first.

So once upon a time, I got warned thru my gmail that my account apparently was "compromised". After I did some preliminary verification to make sure they are not spams, I decided to try the google "2-step verification" process. And I bet most of you knew what comes next: I keep getting bad password popups. After some hours of frustrating struggle, I fixed my gmail on my phone. But Gtalk would not let me do that 1-time psasword verification thing, and thus my play store won't work. (God really who designed them to be linked!? I did not launch Gtalk once in my life.) Before this happened, I was happy with my stock launcher from Samsung and always have the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" motto. In the end, I decided it is "certified broken" and I thought this might be a good time to look into upgrading to Jelly Bean.

hm.. i think i'm making this post unnecessary long so I will just cut through the chase. I never thought "stock" stuff would come in any quality. But amazingly in my first day experience of CM10, I am already missing a bunch of features that I used to take for granted. I have no desire to go back to the last launcher (as this in theory should be a step up overall, i believe). So if anyone have tips for me to how to get these features back, I would very much like some pointers! Thanks in advance.

Just some clarification in case this matter: I bought my phone unlocked in Hong Kong. So there is no service-provider-associated stuff that came with the stock launcher I got.

EDIT: I used the 11-02 nightly build of CM10 and its corresponding Gapp package.

1) Contact list

+ Improved: To my amaze, my chinese contacts got sorted by their pronunciation in english! The original stock launcher lumped all of them in the end of the list.

- What I missed: Slide left on names will message the contact and slide right will call them.

# What I tried: Of course my first solution is to search on App store to find a replacement. For some reasons, only two (with good rating) showed up. Did the search got dumber? Or it got smarter but just not doing what I want?

Go Contacts: I think i remember trying it and personally not a big fan of the GO packages. I didn't give it a second try.

Contants+ with a penguin icon: There's a function that lets you "Hold" on a contact to call them. This is very much inferior to the slidings : ( I need recommendations for contact list app.

2) App drawer

+ I like how the widgets got attached to the horizontal pages. Much nicer option than Homescreen-> menu and keep scrolling through the 1x4 area LOL. I love widgets and I have a lot of them. Yes it was painful.

- You can't custom organize the drawer. You can sort by Name or Install Date and that's it. I used to organize them by functionality. I have over 160 apps on my phone. I don't use all of them all the time but I would say I use close to 70% of them at least once in a while. So while my homescreen is really reserved for Widgets, App drawer is where I launch my less-used apps. I really like the "menu -> edit" function in my old launcher. I can create new page, move the apps around and even uninstall the app right there (with a minus sign on the top right corner of the app icon. Yes I didn't use to understand why one would even need uninstaller app from the store). Please don't hate me if you really just rather sort by Name.

# Funny the problem this time is not about how I can't find a suitable app from the play store to do a better job with the drawer. It's that I CAN'T move the original app drawer icon of the launcher from the bottom middle area. I imagine there's probably a way to replace it but it's obviously not a readily available option or I am missing something.

3) Task manager?

+ I think it's just recent launched apps (or apps in the background) now. It's in a way good that it goes beyond the last 6. Not that I find that old limit bothering really.

- Where's my task manager? I'm a bit OCD when it comes to ram usage and processes/services. Oh how i missed the Hold home button -> recent app screen with a task manager button -> Kill all task. LOL It's not much but it shows just enough: total ram usage, running apps, processes, and even storage space. Scratch that, it's actually very much.

# Right now I am resort to Auto Memory Manager with a blue fish icon. It's sufficient. But I can't access it anywhere.

4) Misc. stuff that I missed and would like help to find them. Note: these have nothing to do with the launcher.

- I used to have this "Windy Weather" live wall paper (or what i believed it was called). There were some wind turbines running on a grass field. It reflects the current weather. I scour the store and I couldn't find anything remotely like that besides having to go back to the GO family or you have to pay. I know it's not recommended but I tried titanium back up to restore it from my old system - no luck.

- Ap news widget. The widget was 2x4. It does not refreshes on its own and only do so with a tiny refresh button on the bottom right corner. It cycles through headlines with pictures that fully stretches the whole 2x4 window (beautifully). Can't find it in the store.

- Pinch on the home screen zooms out and gives you a quick view of all 7(now 5, but I can live with that) pages of home screen.

- That's all for now. I think I am still missing a few things I wanted to mention but I forgot what they are at the moment :eek:

anyway, sorry about some of the ranting. Here are some features i like:

+ File Manager is awesome.

+ Camera is great as well. And I love the quick browse gallery. It's weird that the actual gallery don't even have to pinch function while they put it here.

+ The pull down menu is clean. I kinda missed the "auto-rotation" quick set. But it's minor. I usually don't allow auto rotation anyway. I also like the setting button in there. But I used it so much I have to put a short cut on the home screen anyway.

+ The animation when you turn off the screen is COOL :)

+ The lock screen which gives you direct access to the camera is very convenient as well.