SmartPad Launcher Review w/ Video

[mikef1182]

From The Developers:

SmartPad is the ultimate All-in-One launcher for Android. Pick your favorite contacts, applications, system toggles and websites and conveniently have them all in one spot for fast and easy access.

Key Features:

Status-bar shortcut allows you to open SmartPad virtually from anywhere.

Non-intrusive launcher allows you to open SmartPad without interrupting any activity in the background. You can fire the launcher while running any other app and resume your activity after closing it.

Slick and intuitive design for an effortless user experience.

Developer's Site

Review:

SmartPad for Android is a great little app that will launch just about anything you need and do it quickly. With SmartPad you can launch apps, system settings, web bookmarks, and contacts. SmartPad's launcher can be activated two ways, one is your standard app button, the other is through the notification bar. Either way brings up the same great looking interface where you see shortcuts to all your items. From the launcher screen you can scroll from right to left in order to view more items. Your launcher will display contacts, apps, toggles, and websites. With the lite version of SmartPad you can only have 3 items for each category. The full version of the app, which is only $0.99, lets you have as many items per category as you would like.

I realy like this app as it can help cut the clutter of your homescreen down quite a bit. Unless you are using a homescreen alternative app, android only gives you three screens for apps, widgets, and any other shortcuts. It is very easy to fill those up especially with all the new widgets coming out for Android 1.5. SmartPad enables you to just drag down the notification bar and have access to all the apps without the clutter. Another way this app helps out is that it can replace a lot of other apps and help you save internal memory. There are a lot of apps that do the same "toggles", but not many that are all in one like SmartPad. Just install SmartPad and you can uninstall all of the other toggle or launcher apps to save some extra space. The launcher screen looks great and scrolling between items is smooth and fast with no signs of lag.

My only issue with SmartPad was the amount of time to open the launcher was very inconsistent. Sometimes it would pop up rather quickly, while other times it would take a few seconds and lag a bit. This, I am sure, would be due to how much free memory the phone has and what is already running in the background. Either way, it is not a huge issue at all. SmartPad is very responsive and launches quickly enough for me even when it takes its time. I had another issue, but that was pretty much user error. In the launcher if you click a contact it brings you to the dial screen with the your contact's default number ready to call. I didn't like this an wanted to have a tap pull up the contact card in case I wanted to call another number, text, email, or IM them. Well you can do this just by holding down the picture of the contact. It will bring up a nice context menu of all of those options. So when your watching the video below, just ignore that part.

I would like to see the developers add some more options to it in the future, like access to battery info, more system settings, and I would like to see web clip icons instead of the generic "stars" on the website launcher. These are all very small gripes and for an app that is this powerful and useful to only cost pennies, there is no reason you should not give it a try!

Check out the video to see SmartPad in action:


Pros:
- Easy to use
- Launch almost anything
- Great looking interface
- Can launch from notifications bar
- Only $0.99!!!

Cons:
- Launcher sometimes lags

Pics:

[JohnnyLicious]

very nice review mike =D

great job!!

[mikef1182]

Thanks Johnny! Appreicate it!

[*susan*]

Awesome review, Mike!!!