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You wouldn’t know just by looking at it, but my phone is running Android, a newcomer to the world of operating systems. My home screen however, has been changed from the stock Android 2.0.1 home to a home replacement called SlideScreen.
I prefer Android to other phones because of its nearly endless customizability. And while people generally customize the phones using widgets or home replacement applications like Home++ or GDE, I’ve gone with SlideScreen’s interpretation of what the home screen should be, which is an entirely different vision.
Instead of having updatable widgets and commonly used applications, SlideScreen puts all of your essential information in one place. Whereas I used to have to click in and out of half a dozen apps to check my e-mails, RSS feeds, text messages, missed calls, and the like, now I just glance at my home screen and see everything I need.
This theory of using the home screen as an information aggregator is actually the entire basis of the newly announced Windows Phone Series 7’s user interface (UI). While WinPho7 takes it one step further, integrating different apps into information “hubs” which dynamically update. The basic design premise is the same: present the most vital information in a clean and graphic way, giving instant access instead of having to bounce in and out of different apps.
Apps aren’t really a big thing for me. I mostly use the core communication apps on my phone, such as messaging, e-mail, calendar and the browser. As such, SlideScreen fills my needs perfectly. I don’t need to bounce around the Web looking for news, I don’t need to flip through home screens to see my different weather/calendar/e-mail widgets and ... it’s beautiful.
Yes, aesthetics matter a great deal to me, especially in a phone’s core UI. I almost bought a Palm Pre, as shaky as the hardware is, and as small as the app catalog is, simply because it has the most beautiful interface. Frankly, stock Android isn’t very pretty. HTC’s Sense UI spices it up, but it wasn’t available on the phone that I wanted, so I had to go with the “Google Experience.” Sure, Android 2.1 spices things up visually, but I don’t think I’m going to be abandoning SlideScreen when the update finally (and reportedly soon) comes over the air. I like my smartphone experience to be fast, efficient and pretty.
However, I admit that this is not your normal Android home screen. So check back in in a couple of weeks to see in an upcoming article how the regular Android home screen can be made even better.
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