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I love Windows Phone 7′s start screen: neatly organised square tiles that clearly show information in real time — from emails to photos to weather to travel progress — without having to click on applications. With Windows Phone 8 Microsoft has solved my only criticism: not enough information density. And they have done it without destroying its simplicity and elegance.
As WP8 chief Joe Belfiore said on stage, this is going to be the feature that users will love the most.
The new Windows Phone 8 Start screen allows for the same level of customisation than the tablet and desktop versions of Windows 8. It would let you move tiles around in any way you want and resize the tiles to small, medium and large sizes:
• The medium size is the square one that Windows Phone 7 has now.
• The small size is one quarter of that size.
• The large size takes over two of the square tiles.
The tiles’ content is highly customisable too. Apart from specific apps’ live tiles, the system would allow you to create specific contact or group tiles, with all the information associated — emails, Facebook updates, new images, etc. — showing in real time within the tile.
It will also let you add as many apps as you want to the home screen as icons. By keeping these at the small size, you can create a grid of apps as dense as the one in the iPhone. Except that here you can combine the apps with live tiles of any size too.
The new sizes are also compatible with current Windows Phone 7 apps’ live tiles, so no change on the part of the developer is needed.
Microsoft is also adding more colors and now you can assign individual colours to tiles, which is something that users were demanding.
Resizable custom tiles is precisely what the Windows Phone’s start screen needed to be pretty much perfect from a user experience point of view. Much better and elegant than the static grid of badge-peppered tiny icons of iOS. Or the painful and ugly clusterf*ck of widgets that you can see in most user-customised Android screens.
Unlike the competition, resizable tiles user the ability to increase information density to the maximum allowed on a phone screen but keeping it clean and comprehensive. The start screen will provide with as much data as they want, no matter if you are a beginner who likes thing simple or an advanced user who wants an information overload.
By maintaining a permanent organisational grid, it’s avoiding user-induced information mayhem. No matter what the user does, there’s no way that the start screen would look ugly or confusing.
Users whose life revolve around sports would be able to create a screen in which their favourite teams and athletes’ Twitter accounts or Facebook pages combined with real time scoring apps. Those who love social networks would be able to have their favourite friends always on screen. It’s really up to the user to decide what they want their phone to be without making it look horrible.
Grab That Fancy Windows 8 Start Screen For Your iPhone
LG Has Started Production on Super Thin Screens That Are Supposedly for the iPhone 5
This Is What the Awesome New Windows Phone 8 Start Screen Will Look Like on a Nokia
Yeah…
I’m getting quite sourly tempted to jump ship to WP now
Only problem is that I’m already HEAVILY integrated into the Apple ecosystem; I have a shit ton of apps for my iPhone, and the WP simply wouldn’t work as well together with my iPad and MacBook Pro. Its kind of sad, I really like what Windows is doing now, being the innovative guys in the industry all of a sudden (and having a dream-team with Nokia doesn’t hurt either), but jumping ship would mean a HUGE amount of hassle in terms of apps, synchronisation with other devices, etc.
I wish someone in the industry would find a way to make it easier to change products easier in this day and age where so many devices are synchronised to one another so easily, but specifically with devices made by the same company.
You do realise that the exact reason different operating systems exist is to increase the cost to you of jumping ship and thus encourage you to stay with one company, right?
I mean I wish other companies that I’m not ‘with’ would counter that to make it easier for me to jump ship to them
Microsoft is already on top of this: http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/05/17/patent.finds.comparable.apps.for.migrating.from.android/
with the surface for windows 8 and this sharing code im definitely considering the jump from android when these become available, im happy to mix and match and love android but if this all works well together then im definitely interested
It’s a pain, but sooner or later you’ve just got to jump. Once you’ve done it you’ll feel a whole let better, almost like being released from jail.
What puts me off moving is having to re-buy all the apps. If I could move from IOS knowing I would be able to replace things like tomtom, soundhound, tunein radio, etc from the publisher at no charge, or maybe a discounted fee as I have already purchased it, then I would be more inclined to move.
1 – buy a nokia, you get nokia drive. Drive 3 > TomTom
but i’m sure the other ones are nowhere near as expensive? And there are probs other alternatives for free or 79p
Won’t get a Nokia, I just can’t get on with them. Don’t know why, but there’s just something about them
SoundHound is free on WP7, as is TuneIn Radio. And as @daniejam said, you get Nokia Drive for free on the Nokia phones.
But aren’t they just ‘lite’ versions same as you can get for free on IOS that bombard you with adverts or only let you have five searches a month?
Often windows phones (in uk at least) are better deals than iPhone. I’m in the same boat (and I’ll wait for iPhone 5 before deciding) but I have to say I’m tempted to jump. I don’t use that many paid apps now anyway. The hardware saving and ‘cashback’ options alone mean I’ll probably be better off. Windows will win if they bundle apps.
Im waiting for that too, but if I jump ship it will probably be to the Galaxy Note 2. That’s the only other phone I think I have an interest in at the moment.
wholeheartedly agree.
I’m in love with MS right now due to the metro stuff, it feels very minimalistic without removing information.
It’s beautiful. My god Microsoft, please don’t mess this up, because thsi and Surface show so much promise.
hmmmp. Am I the only one that thinks it look extremely messy and harsh on the eyes??? I really don’t get this whole Metro thing. The look to me just screams Active Desktop 2.0 and the channel bar. My friend has a Windows Phone and I spent ages on it trying to get it but I just couldn’t. It is very quick and helpful but the interface just seem’s very messy and I would even say ugly. I really don’t get it. I just don’t get it. :\
I agree. I used WP7 for a while and got sick of the design.
I dont like the way they have arranged some of the tiles, thats for sure, but if you do it right i think it will look good.
I think you shouldnt mix small and normal sized tiles on the same row, makes it look silly, same with a row of normal then a row of small and another row of normal.
Should have 3 rows, top or bottom small, other 2 normal and then i will probably have my pictures live tile showing from the bottom.
The only other way i have seen that makes the small tiles look decent is when it was the bottom left of the screenshot, but with the addition of another row of small tiles, so 1 normal tile, surrounded by 12 small tiles, then either 2 normal tiles or a large one.
Some of them do look messy, but has the ability to look nice and be very productive.
Hurry up and give this to my Titan!
It’s barely related, but in the vein of this website always just being about me, if you look at the BA tile on the TV advert, it shows 8 April and that’s Spatchmos Birthday. See. ALL ABOUT ME.