Microsoft's New Approach to the Home Screen

Windows Phone takes a markedly different approach to homescreen management. Both Apple’s and Android use basically the same old the app icon grid. However Microsoft relies on Live Tiles. Both approaches come with their fair share of frustrations, but after my experience with a Windows 8 phone I must say I think the Windows model is far superior in many ways.



Apps can take one of three sizes on the Windows Phone home screen: small squares, large squares, or wide rectangles. And not every app needs to be on your home screen. You can arrange only the apps that you use the most frequently on the homescreen. All of your apps are discoverable from a second screen, accessed by swiping across the main homescreen, where they’re alphabetized and searchable. Apple & Android can do the searchable part, but the surprisingly handy alphabetical list feels like an obvious omission now that I have been using it.

Windows Phone’s Live Tiles add a degree of intelligence that the Apple home screen simply does not have. Instead of simply badging app icons, many app icons (tiles) can instead show actual data pulled from the apps in question: For example your Facebook & Twitter tiles can cycle through recent messages while a weather app’s tile can show the forecast and current conditions, and the calendar tile can show upcoming appointments. Though limited by space constraints, the feature is clever, and it works well.

While you can choose various themed colors for your Windows Phone as well. The Windows phone, with it's 3 sizes of tiles and endless ways in which to organize your home screen is fun and can really make your phone stand out from your friends, family and work mates.

Try this as an experiment if you have the time. If you have an iPhone and look around probably several others will have one as well. If you then find a couple of people with the same model (4, 4S or 5), mix them up and throw them on the floor (lightly). It will take a few minutes of looking at each one to figure out who's is who's. However if you have a couple Windows 8 phones (not a good bet just yet), and even if they were the same model and color, the same experiment will no doubt demonstrate that immediately each phone's owner will have no problem knowing which is his or hers.