Apex Launcher Pro vs Z Launcher Beta

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.

Users use their finger or a stylus to write the first letter of an app they are looking for in order to find it and launch it. It allows for a fast way to find and launch apps.

By gesture writing the name of a contact or website on the home screen the launcher will show results for the user to click on to go to the corresponding contact or webpage.

The launcher learns what the users most used apps are and adapts what it shows on the home-screen to that usage.

Z Launcher is a very minimal launcher where the home screen is 4 shortcuts at the bottom, 6 of the most used apps and phone numbers on the home screen and a clock at top.

A clean and minimal designed widget that contains info from multiple apps, letting the user scroll between them intuitively.

Having apps like Hangouts or the Phone Dialer in the docked apps will allow for unread counts on the icons.