My start screen
by Volker Weber
Windows Phone lets you bookmark almost anything to the start page. Apps, music, books, etc. Hit a tile for a record and it starts playing immediately. Go back to reading your book? Hit the tile.
Some of those tiles are live. The two weather tiles for instance, the photos tile, the battery indicator (54% after 15 hours). Some will show a count like the phone, messages and email tiles. Calendar shows the next appointment.
And you just flick your start screen up and down to glance at all that information. This gets addictive pretty fast. I expect my screen to get much longer over time.
The screenshot above is only 800 x 150. The original on my Lumia 920 is a whopping 4090 x 768. Very crisp. I like.
Comments
Love your live tiles. The Mondrian layout seems well implemented. It reminds me a lot of portal concepts (multiple sources of information aggregated in one place). Which I take as another proof that Microsoft core strength is to improve on other's concepts.
Smiled on GusGus.
Doensn't it get more and more confusing, the longer the start screen gets?
I see the point and think I might like the concept. But as soon as a certain length is achieved, I expect it to be more confusing than helpful...
Am I wrong?
My spatial memory is quite good. I know where I have put stuff. Pages would be much harder to navigate for me. If it ever gets too tall, I can throw stuff out that I never use. I think I have about 50 items on the page right now, and I don't think I will ever get past 100.
Today I have replaced Amazon with the alarm clock, and swapped a few items around.
Very nice, many familiar icons there. Thanks for sharing and giving insight!
Volker - who is the singer in the tile next to Reacher?
Does it also work in landscape? I mean landscape scrolling?
Win8 can only do landscape scrolling. I'd prefer vertical...
Skip, that is Kylie Minogue.
Volker, vertical. To the right of the screen is an alphabetical list of all apps, with jumpmarks.
Windows Phone 8 makes better use of the space than 7... but even with 7 it's easy to work out your most-used and most valuable applications and pin those. The ones with live tiles are useful to have on show so you get immediate info without opening the app (great for weather, news, football scores, and updates by friends or groups from Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, etc). As Volker says, if you swipe to the right you get a full list of apps and if you have over a certain number you get an alphabetical jump list too.
When I look at my wife's iPhone I'm struck by how static and 'cold' it is... but I would say that, wouldn't I...?
Dang Kyle aged well - thanks.
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