Apex Launcher Pro vs ADW.Launcher

Apex Launcher lets the user customize the app drawer, including its style (Horizontal Paginated, Vertical Paginated, Vertical Continuous or Vertical List), the method of sorting and the background transparency.

Apex Launcher allows the user to change the grid size of their home screens (up to a maximum size of 10 rows and columns) and adjust the margins on the left, right, top and bottom. Icons can be made larger by as much as 150% or reduced to as little as 50% of their original size.

Made to look like stock Android with additional features.

A marketplace where the user can download extra themes is provided. Some of the themes must be purchased via Google Play, but many are free. Paid version allows the use of themes from other launchers.

There is an option in the Apex Launcher drawer to sort apps by the most used, making for a convenient way for users to get back to their most often used apps.

Apex Launcher also allows users to hide unused or unwanted apps from the drawer.

The free version of Apex comes with swipe gesture support.

Unread count notifications create badges for home screen, dock and drawer icons that let the user know how many unread messages they have.

Infinite scrolling allows you to cycle among your home screens without ever changing directions.

Apex, which requires Android 4.0 or later, boasts a dedicated tablet UI mode. Turning this on enables the persistent search bar at the top of the display, and somewhat inexplicably disables the dock at the bottom of the screen.

New themes compatible with ADW Launcher can be downloaded directly from Google Play. The launcher conveniently provides a link from the Themes page in the ADW Settings menu. More impressively, the Themes page provides previews of each theme you've installed on your device, as well as info about whether the theme supports icons, folders, the dock and the wallpaper. However, the best feature, by far, proved to be the ability to mix and match functionalities from a variety of themes to create an entirely custom look. And most of the themes are free.

Infinite scrolling lets you loop through home screens without requiring you to change direction.

ADW.Launcher, despite being old and abandoned does work well on a tablet with the icons and everything else scaling correctly.

The margins, rows and columns of the app drawer also can be modified to fit your preferences. In addition, ADW Launcher supports a variety of visual styles for the app drawer, such as Horizontal Paginated, Vertical New and the standard Ice Cream Sandwich Paginated style.

Adjust the size of the margins or the number of columns and rows on the desktop to a maximum grid size of 10 rows and columns.

Made to look like stock Android with additional features.

ADW Launcher allows you to create your own groups in the app drawer.