Apex Launcher Pro vs LAUNCHER 8 PRO

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.

Like Windows Phone 8, the design of Launcher 8 consists of brightly colored tiles on either a black or white background. The result is a simple and appealing design. Although simply changing the tile color is not as personal as wallpaper in conventional launchers. Fortunately though any color is possible on Launcher 8 not just the preselected colors on Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone 8 was never designed to work with Android widgets but that doesn't mean you can't use them with Launcher 8. The developers of Launcher 8 have finally found the right solution to using widgets on the tile interface with new separate pages. In the previous version of the launcher, Launcher 7, the widgets would be squeezed into tiles and the result was rarely good. The new separate widget pages accessible with a swipe to the right are a big improvement.

Launcher 8 uses the same transition effects when opening apps and returning to the home screen as the Windows Phone 8. Not only is this appealing but apps seem to load quicker. The transition to open an app takes a few hundred milliseconds which gives apps extra time to load. The result is an interface that seems quicker than it actually is.

This feature may seem counterproductive at first but it provides a minimalistic appearance that stays true to the original Windows Phone 8. The notification bar will still appear everywhere else on your Android but Launcher 8 will be just tiles.

Launcher 8 supports basic unread counts like phone calls and text messages in the free version.