Comment by thanatropism
8 years ago
My wife had several Windows Phones in succession.
Her use of a phone is very practical: contacts, texting, weather information. All of this was available at a glance in a much much better way than either Android or the iPhone have. It was a better business UI.
It was harder to use if you had many apps. But seriously, having a phone open to the equivalent of Windows 3.1's Program Manager (which is what Android and iPhone deliver) is not great!
The iPhone opens to something like the Program Manager (but with little numbers showing which apps have active notifications).
Android opens to something like a Desktop, with some combination of Widget apps and/or app shortcuts. Mine is configured to show a clock, mini calendar, and weather. Incoming e-mails, SMSes, or other messages are visible in the notification bar. I could configure it to show me little previews of messages, but I chose not to.
Android has supported home screen widgets and activity shortcuts since forever. Live tiles are hardly better, they're just a very Metro-y approach to the same feature.
There used to be a homescreen replacement app for Android called SlideScreen [0] (homepage is active, but the app is abandoned) that would try to give you as much information at-a-glance as possible.
[0] http://slidescreenhome.com