Home screens - why so many?

heeemz

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Dumb question :)
I am confused as to why one would need more than 1 home screen, I see almost 5 home screens by default. My guess is that one wud use home screen for ease and frequent access of select apps. Any thing beyond that is any available in apps section, isn't it

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tflash

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Dumb question :)
I am confused as to why one would need more than 1 home screen, I see almost 5 home screens by default. My guess is that one wud use home screen for ease and frequent access of select apps. Any thing beyond that is any available in apps section, isn't it

Sent from my Nexus 7 using AC Forums mobile app

I use them to organize my apps in categories. One for productivity apps. One for media consumption apps. One for tools and utility apps. And one for games.
 

mchockeyvette27

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Dumb question :)
I am confused as to why one would need more than 1 home screen, I see almost 5 home screens by default. My guess is that one wud use home screen for ease and frequent access of select apps. Any thing beyond that is any available in apps section, isn't it

Sent from my Nexus 7 using AC Forums mobile app

And then there are the multitude of widgets. Play around with the home screens, it can be pretty cool if you get a nice setup.

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anon(5719825)

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I only use a couple of them and keep most of the apps in folders. Don't really use widgets much but I have one that displays the moon in it's current phase on my home screen.
 

hoosiermama2799

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If you don't need or want so many home screens, you can also use a different launcher like Apex or Nova. That way you can customize the number of screens. I use Nova and love it.

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BrandonEnr7

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I use Nova Launcher and have dropped the amount of home screens to 3. I didn't need 5. On the main screen, I have a large clock and important apps I used. The other screens are widgets and additional apps I may use more frequently than others. As other members have mentioned, it's up to personal preference. For me since these home screens are about twice the space of a phone's I don't need so many.
 

Joe Joejoe

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I personally don't find multiple home screen useful at all. I don't use widgets because they don't offer anything I need, or not in the way I'd like. all I need is the date, time, battery and weather.....all of which are easily located at the top. my weather automatically is listed in the notification bar at all times, and I can tap it for more detailed info if needed.

as for apps, if I want to use them I either keep them on one desktop with icons, or click the apps button to browse through them and pick the one I want.

this to me, is far more efficient than multiple home screens.

just count the number of actions it takes to do something.

for example, you have to swipe between desktops, 1-2 swipes on either side. 4 swipes from one side to the other, and possibly add a tap or two to access applications on those other screens.

now count the number of actions it takes with just one home screen with icons or accessing the apps listing. it takes LESS actions to do what you need in general this way.

so ultimately, multiple home screens take more physical actions to access something than just using one home screen.

most widgets to me are useless, I'd just rather open the whole app. for example, pulse news app's widget is tiny and not very informative and limited. I'd rather just open the whole app and browse.

what we really need is the ability to assign an app to take up an entire home screen, or be more customizable than they are. there are very few app widgets that match the size of even the stock magazine widget, which is probably the only acceptable minimal size for most apps, functionally speaking.
 

physioprof

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I, too, only use a single home screen on both my phone and tablet. As far as having widgets that fill the entire screen, with Nova (and probably other launchers?) you can resize any widget and make it fill an entire homescreen.
 

zkSharks

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I use Nova Launcher and have dropped the amount of home screens to 3. I didn't need 5. On the main screen, I have a large clock and important apps I used. The other screens are widgets and additional apps I may use more frequently than others. As other members have mentioned, it's up to personal preference. For me since these home screens are about twice the space of a phone's I don't need so many.

This. Exactly what I did.
 

anon(394005)

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What really aggravates me is that you can't natively remove any of the home screens. The most you can do is remove any app shortcuts or widgets on them. In comparison, with Touchwiz (on my Note 2 and Note 10.1), I can remove home screens as I see fit. Not sure why that simple function hasn't been incorporated into vanilla Android yet.
 

CarbonOak

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On my tablet, I only use one homestretch. There's so much real estate that I can organize my apps in a few folders and the bottom bar with plenty of room to spare.

On my phone, I use three screens: leftmost for calendar and toggle widgets, center primarily as a bare screen with Beautiful Widget, and the rightmost for a variety of apps in folders.

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RichBrown68

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I personally don't find multiple home screen useful at all. I don't use widgets because they don't offer anything I need, or not in the way I'd like. all I need is the date, time, battery and weather.....all of which are easily located at the top. my weather automatically is listed in the notification bar at all times, and I can tap it for more detailed info if needed.

as for apps, if I want to use them I either keep them on one desktop with icons, or click the apps button to browse through them and pick the one I want.

this to me, is far more efficient than multiple home screens.

just count the number of actions it takes to do something.

for example, you have to swipe between desktops, 1-2 swipes on either side. 4 swipes from one side to the other, and possibly add a tap or two to access applications on those other screens.

now count the number of actions it takes with just one home screen with icons or accessing the apps listing. it takes LESS actions to do what you need in general this way.

so ultimately, multiple home screens take more physical actions to access something than just using one home screen.

most widgets to me are useless, I'd just rather open the whole app. for example, pulse news app's widget is tiny and not very informative and limited. I'd rather just open the whole app and browse.

what we really need is the ability to assign an app to take up an entire home screen, or be more customizable than they are. there are very few app widgets that match the size of even the stock magazine widget, which is probably the only acceptable minimal size for most apps, functionally speaking.


On my smartphone I have one screen simply for the Falcon widget for Twitter. So for me, reading Twitter is one swipe away. For you, it's at least two button taps and a wait of a few seconds and another press to get out of the app.
 

jerrykur

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I use a number of widgets that eat up space so I really like have multiple home screen. Having to click an icon and launch an application to see mail, my calendars, check the weather, etc. feels archaic and is one of the reasons I left IOS.
 

heeemz

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I use them to organize my apps in categories. One for productivity apps. One for media consumption apps. One for tools and utility apps. And one for games.

Liked the idea of segregating home screens based on app type

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heeemz

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I use a number of widgets that eat up space so I really like have multiple home screen. Having to click an icon and launch an application to see mail, my calendars, check the weather, etc. feels archaic and is one of the reasons I left IOS.

You mean clicking widgets instead of apps?

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Rich215

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I use a mix of widgets and apps in folders....with single apps on 3 home screens. I found I will never use the 4th and 5th windows. I used them in the past.....but found I never needed them after using the tablet for several months.

Having the option to set home screens to only 3 would be a good thing for the next android version.......ummmmm chocolate ........yummy!
 

chadthebuilder

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Liked the idea of segregating home screens based on app type

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I used to do that until I figured out how to create tabs in the Nova app drawer. Now I have tabs for games, media, and such in the app drawer. Its one more tap to do, but I think it looks pretty cool.

Posted from the incredible new Nexus 7
 

tflash

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I personally don't find multiple home screen useful at all. I don't use widgets because they don't offer anything I need, or not in the way I'd like. all I need is the date, time, battery and weather.....all of which are easily located at the top. my weather automatically is listed in the notification bar at all times, and I can tap it for more detailed info if needed.



as for apps, if I want to use them I either keep them on one desktop with icons, or click the apps button to browse through them and pick the one I want.

this to me, is far more efficient than multiple home screens.

just count the number of actions it takes to do something.

for example, you have to swipe between desktops, 1-2 swipes on either side. 4 swipes from one side to the other, and possibly add a tap or two to access applications on those other screens.

now count the number of actions it takes with just one home screen with icons or accessing the apps listing. it takes LESS actions to do what you need in general this way.

so ultimately, multiple home screens take more physical actions to access something than just using one home screen.

most widgets to me are useless, I'd just rather open the whole app. for example, pulse news app's widget is tiny and not very informative and limited. I'd rather just open the whole app and browse.

what we really need is the ability to assign an app to take up an entire home screen, or be more customizable than they are. there are very few app widgets that match the size of even the stock magazine widget, which is probably the only acceptable minimal size for most apps, functionally speaking.

I think the goog. calendar widget is useful for showing the date and your appointments for that day without opening an app., but you did say most, not all are useless.