When comparing Lightning Launcher eXtreme vs Z Launcher Beta, the Slant community recommends Z Launcher Beta for most people. In the question“What are the best launchers for Android?” Z Launcher Beta is ranked 7th while Lightning Launcher eXtreme is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Z Launcher Beta is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Highly customisable
You can choose a grid of any size or drop the grid completely and arrange everything freely on the canvas. It even comes with its own scripting language if you want to completely customise any aspect of the launcher.
Pro Supports icon packs
specify per item - icons from packs can be set as foreground or background icons and can be scaled independently.
Pro Great themes available
Pro Small Memory Footprint
Depending on how how in-depth you customize, a bare-bones launcher experience uses very little memory.
Pro Practically unlimited number of desktops
By utilizing folders users can create what are essentially mini desktops with each one.
Pro Desktops can be greater then the visible area, allows for panning around
Pro How-to videos available
The developer, Pierre Hébert, provides YouTube video guides.
Pro Apps can be searched for by scribbling letters
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.
Pro Allows searching contacts and websites directly from the launcher
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.
Pro Keeps your most used apps at the forefront
The launcher learns what the users most used apps are and adapts what it shows on the home-screen to that usage.
Pro Simplifies your homescreen
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.
Pro Nicely designed context-aware multi-app widget on homescreen
A clean and minimal designed widget that contains info from multiple apps, letting the user scroll between them intuitively.
Pro Unread Counters for docked Apps
Having apps like Hangouts or the Phone Dialer in the docked apps will allow for unread counts on the icons.
Cons
Con High learning curve to fully customise
It will take a lot of time and patience to perfect your screens to exactly what you want. You can, however, download and build off of other users' models. The dev provides several YouTube how-to guides as well.
Con A severe lack of customization options
Being that this is meant as a minimal style launcher, there is not many customization options. It is of course still in beta, so more options may wind up in the app over time.
Con Scribble feature is inconsistent
Just as with writing recognition for keyboards it is not always exact, especially depending on the users own handwriting.