TealOS Review Part 2

As I have written on the previous post, I have been a long time user of Zlauncher and tried TealOS due to its interesting skin that mimics the Palm Pre’s webOS and its touch heavy interface.

The previous post covered what I have noticed as a new user and my first impressions. I talked about its performance whether it is slow or not and found out that it actually slowed the launch of applications if from the launcher but from other programs, the TealOS didn’t affect it. The card based interface was also covered which could be the first thing that people will try which I found out to be nice actually.

In this post, I will cover its performance as a launcher, other features and my conclusion.

Three - Launcher

Of course, even though that majority of people who tried TealOS was primarily interested with its flashy skin that came from webOS, it should not be forgotten that TealOS is a launcher. As you press the lower right button in the card interface, the main application launcher pops up. It has a nice sliding up animation which looks really nice and is in a transparent windows making it look like a pop up window instead of opening a new application. It can categorize applications that are installed both in the phone memory and card memory. The launcher suggests the use of fingers since flicking it up/down makes it slide to see other applications which was very smooth. Sliding it left/right making it change categories. The implementation of this sliding mechanism was nicely done though you might see some slowdowns when operating too fast. One cool thing also is that every application that you open has a sliding up transition which I like.

Four - Other features

One of the main difference that I have noticed coming from Zlauncher is the lack of other features. I don’t know maybe its just me but the things that I have used that are built-in Zlauncher like file manager and tabs aren’t present in the TealOS.

For example, in Zlauncher, if I want to change from one category from another, I just have to press on that catefory present in the tab to go there. On the TealOS, I have to continue on swiping until I reach that specific category. This might be a little nuisance to me since I only have 8 categories and most used apps are on one category named “Favorites”, but could be a big problem for people who prefer to distributed applications accross a lot of catgeories - expect a lot of swiping which could have just been a simpless touch on other launchers.

I think this can be solved by allowing a drop down menu to choose a category immediately. But opting for this could defeat the purpose of showing the sliding effect of category transiitons.

The plus factor though is that the wave launcher is like a five application quick launcher which you can summon everywhere like while in ptunes, messaging, calendar or whatever.

Conclusion

Currently, I use TealOS as my default launcher and have only ran Zlauncher during the first few hours when I haven’t yet organized the categories. And until now, I can say that TealOS can the my long time default launcher. Even with its shortcomings, the webOS interface is really interesting. As a launcher, it also did its job. So my final verdict? The TealOS is a keeper! People who has a Treo or a Centro and haven’t yet tried TealOS, now is the time to do so.