Chameleon Launcher Beta Updated To v0.8, Brings New Widgets, Bug Fixes, And Performance Enhancements

Chameleon Launcher received what I would call its first "major" update today, bringing the launcher up to version 0.8.0. Naturally, you can expect performance improvements and bug fixes, but the update also brings something that users have been asking for since the beta launched: more widgets.

The new offerings in the widget department include Facebook, time, and a "switches" widgets that brings power control options to the launcher. Unfortunately, the switches aren't yet customizable, so you're stuck with a stock set of options that includes airplane mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, brightness, GPS, and sync. Hopefully the Chameleon team will bring the ability to customize these in a future update.

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After spending a few minutes playing with this new version, the performance enhancements are pretty obvious - everything just feels lighter and more fluid.

Full Changelog:

• Added Facebook, Time and Switches widgets.
• Reduced application pause and resume time.
• Additional crash/freeze fixes.
• Launcher and App Tray improvements.
• Widget backgrounds now extend to the bottom of the screen.
• Overhauled Widget SDK OAuth APIs and added more Widget APIs.
• Several minor tweaks, fixes and improvements to general usability.

While these are all welcome enhancements and improvements, the Chameleon team is aware that there are still some quirks, and even took the time to detail things they're still working on:

• GMail widget sometimes not working as expected.
• T here arent enough widgets (we just added 3, and more are on their way).
• Widgets appearing blank (widget is still there, but no content is displayed).
• Widgets being drawn twice in the same area (text doubling).
• Chameleon can take a long time to start (this has been improved, and will get better with subsequent updates).
• Chameleon restarts when connecting/disconnecting from dock.
• Chameleon not working with ROM X (our current focus is on maximizing compatibility with official Android versions and tablets).

It's clear that they're working hard to deliver a stable product to the market before exiting the beta stage.

The update is available now in the Play Store to all beta testers.

[Chameleon Blog]