Yandex.Shell 3D launcher made free for everyone
If you’ve always liked the look of Yandex.Shell, the beautiful home-screen launcher that that doesn’t quite look like anything else on the market, you’ll be happy to know that the app is now free to download. This is pretty huge news considering these guys used to charge folks $10-15 for this thing in the Google Play Store.
It sounds like the B2B side of the business is going well for Yandex, a venture where OEMs can contract the team to customize the launcher for use on their phones as the default home-screen experience. That side of things will stay in tact, but if you have a phone from the likes of HTC or Samsung and aren’t a fan of those guys’ custom user interfaces, this is aimed at you.
Despite the launcher being so expensive, users seem to be justifying that price through a bevy of 5-star reviews in the Play Store. To date, the app has been downloaded over one million times, and has been able to manage an average star rating of 4.5.
Along with news that it’s going free, the dialer has also been upgraded to add a whole host of new features and changes. You can expect a new widget panel, new home-screen indicators for apps and widgets, an instant search tool, a new dialer, skins, more wallpapers, improved localization, an experimental hardware acceleration option for widgets, and more.
There’s no reason not to at least try Yandex.Shell out now that you won’t have to spend anything but a bit of bandwidth and time to get it. Head to the Google Play Store and check it out, and see if it’s something you wouldn’t mind having replace your default home-screen experience.