Amazon gave it their own interface so the typical Android
homescreen with widgets and app icons is out.
Not exact matches
Indeed, the Xoom leverages Google's fresh approach in Honeycomb, which includes lively
widgets that users can drag and drop
with their fingers to any one of 5 customizable
homescreens.
Courtesy of Ice Cream Sandwich you can now add
widgets that you can interact
with on the
homescreen and can be re-sized to give you more flexibility for your workspace.
It's not setup the same as it would be
with a tablet — there are a limited amount of settings, a custom
homescreen, no
widgets and no Google Play access.
We found a calendar
widget on another
homescreen along
with icons for AT&T Messages, Contacts, Qik Lite and Google Talk.
The
homescreen and app icons are totally different, along
with the continue reading
widget.
While the tablets will offer the standard Android
homescreen functionality of adding multiple screens and filling them
with shortcuts and
widgets, at least one Magazine UX screen will be permanently present at all times.
Like HP's WebOS, you don't have
homescreens filled
with widgets and apps, but instead the
homescreen is reserved for showing the apps you have running.
There are the familiar five
homescreens waiting to be filled
with various apps and
widgets.
The Sense UI
homescreen comes pre-loaded
with the HTC Weather
widget at the top of the primary
homescreen pane.
The tablet version of the OS brings
with it snazzy new
homescreen customization options, tablet - optimized app «fragments» (we know them as «panes»), better multi-tasking implementation, a new context - aware «Action Bar», scrollable
widgets, integrated video chat, and on - screen navigation buttons that do away
with physical navigation buttons.
It's comprised of the Live Panel
homescreen, complete
with custom
widgets, plus an interesting app switcher that provides BlackBerry PlayBook - like app switching
with live previews of the apps that are open in the background.
As we've seen before, Android 3.0 Honeycomb will let you customize your
homescreen with apps, wallpapers, new
widgets and more.
If you are bored
with your Nook Color Firmware then Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.1 will make your device more alive and colorful
with this cool ICS Features like Refined Evolved UI, new
homescreen folders and favorite tray, resizable
widgets, new lockscreen action and many more.
In addition to the
widgets, customizable
homescreens, and multitasking, it comes
with all of Google's apps for eBooks, video and voice chat, 3D maps, email, calendar, and a lot more via the Android Market.
I frequently go back to a blank
widget,
with the ink rendering on the
widget a few seconds later or after I swipe to another
homescreen and back again.
There's screenshots around where the
homescreen is plastered
with widgets and stuff too.
One of those is the OnePlus 5T's «Shelf», a toggleable left-most
homescreen with your contacts, recent apps, weather, notes, and optional
widgets and a dashboard of the phone's battery, remaining storage, and mobile data usage in the last cycle.
At first, there is a lockscreen
with a giant clock
widget and a camera shortcut and once it unlocked, there are by default two
homescreens with app icons,
widgets and folders.
The app, which is much like other
widgets like My Magazine on older Galaxy devices or Blinkfeed on HTC's One, takes up one whole panel of your
homescreen with quick access to LG Health, calendar, music controls, the IR remote and so on.
Google says that Android has been leading the way
with customisation since day one (
homescreen widgets, anyone?)
There's a contact shortcut
widget on the
homescreen, which you can use to email or video chat
with someone.
You get the same rigid two -
homescreen layout,
with the first dedicated to
widget - like Live Tiles that provide you
with key information at a glance (such as freshly taken photos, or news headlines), and the second showing you a simple list of installed applications.
Shelf allows you to swipe from the right on the
homescreen to open up a panel
with two
widgets giving you access to the most used apps and favorite contacts.
Once unlocked, there is by default a single
homescreen with app icons, folders and
widgets support.
Swiping through
homescreens and opening folders is snappy - just be careful not to overload the pages
with too many
widgets, as things start to slow rather quickly.
To cater for the pages of app icons you'll accumulate, Huawei has bumped the number of available
homescreens from five up to nine, though I wouldn't be particularly optimistic that the UI would remain smooth
with nine full pages of
widgets, folders and icons.
The
homescreen has been enlarged to a 6x5 grid
with five apps in the dock, and many of the
widgets included have only been slightly modified for a tablet interface.
The app grid, for instance, could easily be 7x7 or 8x8 without losing much usability, and that would allow pretty much every app I want to use, along
with some
widgets, to occupy a single
homescreen panel.
Sony's very stylized take on Android 4.4 KitKat retains the rather simple
homescreen experience,
with the app drawer accessible from the top right corner of the screen, leaving a large canvas that you can fill
with icons and
widgets galore.
The
homescreen looks familiar too,
with resizable tiles and
widgets strongly reminiscent of Windows Phone's Live Tiles.
It's the same old boring TouchWiz
homescreen,
with the only thing different being the weather
widget which is now transparent.
Just as they can
with homescreen widgets, third - party developers will be able to create lock screen
widgets for their apps.