The great thing about Android is that you can pretty much customise any aspect of your phone. One such feature is the Sony Ericsson home screen (i.e. the desktop) that can be replaced by third-party solutions such as HelixLauncher and Zeam. As will as the benefit of additional home screens, these third-party solutions are optimised for performance.
This is certainly what Xperia X10 users are finding, with one of the main benefits being a significant improvement in battery life, over 30 percent better in many cases. If you are suffering from battery issues, downloading one of these suggested launchers is well worth a try, you can always revert back to the original if you need to. Check out the tutorial to install HelixLauncher after the break.
Installing HelixLauncher on your Xperia X10
1) Go to this web page and download the ‘HelixLauncherDonut 1.2’ file that is 360KB in size. Alternatively you can download it directly here.
2) Move the .apk file onto your SD card (anywhere will do although remember the location).
3) If you haven’t already done so, download a program to install .apk files. I use Astro.
4) Open Astro (or alternative file manager), locate the HelixLauncher .apk file and install it.
5) Pressing the Home button should give you a list of options, select HelixLauncher. Click the tick box at the bottom to make HelixLauncher the default.
6) Restart your phone (this is a crucial step as you may find your phone won’t work properly unless you do this).
7) Hopefully you should now have a new launcher along with an improvement in battery life!
Thanks McKebapp!
43 responses to “Helix Launcher brings significant battery boost to Xperia X10”
Using Zeam does improve it a little bit. The really big improvements, though you can get from two settings: don’t allow background syncing, and set the screen light level manually low. The screenlight, especially, was surprisingly effective. I’ve set my brightness to the lowest level – that’s still plenty even for outdoor use – and I’ve seen a substantial improvement.
Not so strange when you think about it; even on a laptop, where the screen ought to be a much smaller part of the energy budget, what with harddrives and all, you make a serious difference to battery life by turning down the screen.
One of the reasons I want to be able to install a custom rom. One that does not suck… the life out of the phone. Battery and performance wise.
Installed it. Crashed my phone completely. had to reinstall the firmware
installed Helix….works for now…verry useful, thx
i cant able to install. it says “Application not installed HelixLauncher could not be installed on this phone”. help me
@shaj
look for and download “HelixLauncherDonut 1.2” with “Donut” next to it.
HelixLauncherDonut 1.2 fucked up my system time and the only way to solve this problem was the factory reset. I’m not the only one with this problem.. look here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=692907
I’m trying Zeam instead of Helix.. we will see..
Thanks for the tip X10. I installed it and haven’t had any really major issues yet.
– A few widgets wouldn’t appear until I changed the wallpaper, now everything is sweet.
– Loving the double tap and landscape orientation.
– Have noticed the HelixLauncherDonut process crash once after resuming from the lock screen. (one off maybe??? I hope so)
– Speed wise I don’t notice any reduction.
I installed this, but now my battery doesn’t go to sleep. It lasted only 10 hours, compared to the full day it lasted before installing Helix launcher. Any ideas why this is?
Why is it that my x10 says: ‘There are no supported files’ when I open up the map named ‘Helix Launcher’ ?
Installed it without any problems. It works good but I don’t see any difference in my battery performance!
I can confirm that it does provide a significant battery advantage.
Before, my phone would ALWAYS, sure as clockwork, have the 3G bars showing and going on/off at 1-2 sec intervals.
This has yet to occur after installing HelixLauncher. Lead me to believe my 3G signal was broken, but it wasn’t xD
Thus far, I’ve had the phone on overnight (11 hours) and checked my email twice / some light WiFi browsing, the battery is at 92%. It was at 99% when I went to bed.
Very pleased with this so far, and I’m also really liking the 4 shortcuts / landscape mode.
Thanks to the OP and McKebapp for alerting me about this 🙂
Installed Helix without any problem. Restarted and recharched the battery. Now 40 houres later, still at 57%. I pull my mails every 15 minutes from 07am to 7pm, somes surfing about 40 minutes an my provider has only UMTS/3G. Talke over phone for 1 hour.
From my point of view full success!!!!!!!
timescape wont load face book after installed helix 🙁
I installed the HelixLauncher without troubles, but don´t like. For my is useles some shortcuts that the program put in the main page and don´t let you remove it. There are some other apps that replace the home screen for SE. Are these others app (like Home++) bring me more life to the battery??
[…] http://www.xperiax10.net/2010/06/03/…to-xperia-x10/ […]
I found an app called ADW Launcher and for my is much pretty than the Helix. It´s very customized and easy to use. Is free and you can donate some money to the creator. Until now the battery life is much better.
@Kantu70
ADW Launcher is excellent. The feel is like Android 2.1 with 5 homescreens. Its quite fluid as well. Will see if there is any improvement in the battery. Are there any settings to be done for better battery performance. Thanks for sharing this app with us. Much appreciated.
I got helix and the improvement on the battery life was amazing, now I m testing ADW as Kantu70 shared the info. So far looks great, waiting on the impact on the battery.
Thanks for sharing
There is a hidden “Testing” menu on the x10 and most other Android devices that can be accessed by typing *#*#info#*#* (*#*#4636#*#*) from the phone’s keypad.It will bring up 4 categories: Phone Information, Battery Information, Battery History, and Usage Statistics
hope this helps and dont change anything unless you know what your doing.
Though I’d give it a try, but when I tried to install it, I got the message:
HelixLauncher could not be installed on this phone.
WOW!!! Helix Launcher is CRAZY!!! so I charged my phone overnight and unplugged the phone at 6:55am, and went nuts with my phone. 2+ hours of surfing using 3G, 45 Minutes of surfing using Wi-Fi, sent at least 150 txt messages, took about 25 photos, and 30Minutes talking on the phone. Not to mention, pushing Facebook, and Twitter every 30minutes, and E-mail every Hour, weather widget refreshing every hour. it is now 9:10PM and my battery is at 50%. Before installing Helix Launcher, and if i were to perform the same tasks my battery should have been at 15% around 4:30PM. I know this for a fact cause my usage is the same everyday. HELIX LAUNCHER IS GREAT! oh yes, btw.. I find the phone more responsive and less laggy with Helix Launcher.
Hope SE brings the same battery performance, if not better!!!
I installed helix, seemed to work great for a bit then funny things started happening. it was lagging up and force closing some also, not to mention the screen orientation would lock. uninstalled. anyone else have these problems?
Hi,
Had my X10 a week now and sussed out how to get good battery usage.
My question is; when charing on USB @ my desk is there away of leaving the screen on?
(when charing display on)
Hope you lot can help 🙂
thanks,
Nicolas
i’ve just installed it on my x10 and everything seems right till now
Is it possible to remove Helix if i want to “reset” my phone?
Ok, installed. Sooo simple. 🙂 Looks good so far.
Im not able to get yr.no weather app to work, not timescape either and so on… hmm. You?
Just a quick note to say disable the rotate mode and this will work like a dream
i had very poor battery and had to charge my phone at least twice a day. 2 friends at work also had the same issue.
I re-installed the firmware downloaded from the Sony site and now i get over a days worth of battery.
Thats with using different apps all day long too.
By using Helix Launcher and following the ‘battery life tips’ I was able to increase my phone’s battery life from 1 day to approx 3 days (with frequent usage of sms, voice, browsing, etc…). However I didn’t like the look/ functionality of Helix Launcher much so I decided to give ADW Launcher a try (as suggested by kantu70). I still get approximately 3days out of my battery with ADW (so no negative impact on battery performance.. whooo). ADW Launcher is a must have, it looks great, fast and more customizable.
Works a treat on my X10 mini really happy with the battery improvement,top show would recomend.
Hi! tried to install helixlauncher on my x10 mini pro just now. After I extract the files trying both androzip and astro, nothing more happens… Try to restart my phone, but everything stays as before. I also do not get a message to activate the helix… What have i done wrong?? Have also checked wether I have the right file, and allowed 3rd party apps, so this is not where the problem is. Is extracting enough, or is there more to it to install it?
Thanks for helping me out in advance 🙂
Greats from Norway!
hi! as recomended by kantu07 i installed adw laucnher, but then i couldn’t open the file, or find it in my folders.
i then installed the helix launcher, after restarting my x10 mini pro it said “complete action using-adw launcher, helix launcher, home screen”.
i chose adw laucher which got rid of my main page with the time and date, and the layout changed. i then swapped to helix, which also did the same. i finally selected my home screen which changed it to the original layout, but will helix launcher or adw be running in the background, or not? thanks!
Simple too install and really good for my xperia.
To everyone out there wondering how to start Helix, just press the home button (the one in the middle with a square shape on top) and choose Helix launcher. Check the “always use this application for this action” box -or something like that-. Then restart your phone.
Just installed the launcher, so I don’t know if it’ll help my battery. However I found the UI much more responsive and customizable. Nice hack.
it crashed my whole system! pls do not download
T.T it ruined my phone.i changed the homescreen number and all of a sudden i kept telling me to ‘force stop’.how can i fix this? im on constant force stop error.only the camera is working. help!! A.S.A.P!
Fucked my x10 mini pro totally. Uninstalled. (yes i had the latest update 2.1)
“Ahome/Ahome-mini” are perhaps 2 other versions that works better??
– -、我了个去 ……………………………..
i downloaded it, installed it, selected helix launcher and got an error msg stating that helix had crashed, selected force close and the msg kept appearing over and over :s just about managed a restart and selected home screen. from there i uninstalled helix. now data transfer doesn’t work. i can’t connect to anything unless wi-fi is turned on 🙁
PuLease help 😀 i’d be exponentially grateful for any advice
Pls how can I download the ADW in my phone. Am useing x10 min pro and hope is working well….. Also how can i send
Picture or music with my bluethoot. Thankssss.