Windows Phone feature equivilant on Android Nougat

[carl alexander]

Galaxy S7
Android 7.0 (Nougat)

This may be more approiate for an Samsung forum rather than an Android forum but i will give it a shot.

I have had my S7 for 2 days and am quite happy with it. I am not* a total newbie with Android as i have a tablet running Android.* My wife and i both had Windows phones and were very happy with them because of the seamless syncing with our Windows OS office computers. I was becoming somewhat unhappy as Microsoft was no longer focusing on their phones and many of my apps such as, banking, airlines, fitness trackers no longer worked so when I dropped it and the screen broke i took it as karma. I will be pestering this site for a while!

I am progressing OK with the change, contacts, photos are loaded and some apps replaced and havent had any particular difficulty in streaming news, texting, email and calling.

Windows phones had a feture that i really liked. A contact could have their own tile on the home screen so instead of going to the contact directory and selecting someone, you could tap that tile and the contacts info would pop up and I could then choose call, text, emal. This was very nice, i had wife, children, boss on the home screen.

This also worked with other things, for example: using the TuneIn Radio app one could select a station and make a tile for that station on the home screen, eleminatiing the need to go to the app and select and start that station.

Does any member or moderators of this group know if this can be done? I am sure it would be an Android feture rather than a Samsung propitory feature.

Thanks for any help,
Carl

 

[N4Newbie]

Not sure if Samsung supports this, but in "stock" Android (such as on a Nexus or Pixel device), you can long-press a blank area of any home screen, then tap Widgets, scroll to Contacts, log-press one of the choices and drag it to a home screen. You will then be asked to choose a contact.

 

[bmhillegass87]

Hi @carl alexander!

Sorry to hear about your windows misfortunes. I am a huge fan of the platform, but unfortunately, it lacks the support to be truly great!

Here is an older thread from our forums section that answers your question. For what you are trying to accomplish it will most definitely be a widget item. Widgets accomplish things equivalent that screen pinning did. Basically, if an app supports a widget (like contacts for example), it will allow you to place shortcuts on empty space on your home screens.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s7/653590-s7-contacts-home-screen.html

 

[cpaight]

Not sure about TuneIn specifically but most apps like this offer a widget you can place on your homescreen....I have Pandora and the widget is tuned to whatever the last station was I used from within the full app.

For contacts (based on the Google contacts app, not sure if Samsung is different), open the app, select the contact you want, open the menu (three dots icon) and select "create shortcut" and it will be added to your homescreen.

 

[carl alexander]

This works. I must brag that I figured it out but that is the way it can be done. A little more convoluted that the Windows Pin to Start feature but it works.
Thanks a lot.

 

[carl alexander]

It does work with Tune In but the short cut would bring up the last station used so instead of shortcuts for the two stations I wanted, I have a short cut to TuneIn which has these two on top. Not perfect but still a bit quicker and a lot easier.
Thanks for your help'

 

[Laura Knotek]

Tune In does have a widget.