definatly seems faster, been using it for a couple days now. but it just seems like helix. the only aspect it seems faster on is starting off from a reboot. the widgets all still take a second to load no faster than any other home app. the screen transitioning is nice and smooth, but not really faster. over all i dont feel this home app is really faster than the other good ones. i rebooted my phone and went one by one through the home apps i currently have installed. GDE and helix, i tried the stock one too. from the time i opened the app to the time it responded to me moving screens it had maybe a second on the rest, and i think tied with GDE. ill give it a few more days but as it seems right now ill probably go back to GDE. i only keep helix on my phone so when i new home app comes around i have more to compare it to, i will probably keep this around too and see if the next update makes me like it more. i like having 4 shortcuts on the bottom vs GDE's 2, but helix letting you set whatever you want wins on the front. app sorting in the drawer is also somthing i like about GDE, plus its themes, i am using the blue carbon theme with a tron theme background.
All good points. I, too, have been using GDE and Helix1 for several months and I gave LauncherPro a try for several hours the other day. Careful stopwatch timing suggests that there is hardly any consistent difference among the options with a similar number of screens, widgets, etc.
However, having designed UI's for a lot of years I do notice some familiar differences.
() Consistency is more important than speed. Users tend to believe a UI is "faster" if it consistently operates at the same pace. Comparing UI's with exactly the same "average" will yield a higher subjective perception of speed for the UI with the smaller variance.
() Starting quickly is more important than finishing quickly. Put users in front of two otherwise identical UI's, one of which starts displaying results faster than the other and users will consistently believe it is "faster" even if the competitor that remains blank until it can fill an entire screen is actually "faster."
The human brain is not very good at estimating either very small or very large time segments. Tenths of a second or how long a minute lasts is very difficult to estimate. Thus, we use other cues to determine performance. But consistency and visible results are critical cues.