How do I Make Android Tolerable with Square Home Live Tiles ?

I have been stalling on making the miserable transition from the superior Windows Mobile Live Tile User Experience to Android.  Since I really cannot contemplate using the very dated ten year old icon(widget) centric default experience. The Microsoft Launcher is rather half baked. So I have been looking at the Square Home Launcher. So far it is looking to be a really really pretty and a highly customisable Tile based experience. The Core UI customisation options are much better than on Windows Mobile and the Photo Live Tile is simply awesome.

However I am having problems getting a personalised Live Tiles experience, and in particular synchronising from a Microsoft Applications/ Services, to provide a seamless Android (Square Home) ó Windows 10 PC experience.  In particular the following Live Tiles are not supported (or at least I haven’t found a way to set these up, if anyone has any suggestions):

a)     The Calendar App, is obviously synched to Google Calendar.  [ I have been unable to sync, or ingest Microsoft Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar, and hence this Live Tile.

b)     Similarly I have not found a way to sync the email Live Tile notifications to Outlook, instead of Gmail (Or to get Gmail to read my Outlook/Hotmail accounts.)

c)      Surprisingly there is no News Live Tile. I would be happy enough with Google News Notifications.

d)     There is no Google Assist Live Tile [Notifications]. (As an obvious replacement to Cortana Live Tile)

e)     There is no Weather Live Tile.

f)      It would be highly desirable for a partially animated peoples/ Contacts Live Tile against Microsoft Accounts, or Google.

g)     It would be highly desirable for a Music Live Tile, as per the Original Zune Player Live Tile, inviting music play, with scrolling Album art images  (Configured to Google Music Player, or Groove, another, Album Art etc)  

h)     It would be highly desirable for a health Live Tile. Synchronised Step, Calorie counts against mainstream health Apps.

Apart from that its sort of OK as a pretty launcher, but does not yet provide that ‘One Glance’ animated Windows Phone experience.

Square Home developers should support a wider range of Live Tiles, to recover the True Windows Phone Experience. If Microsoft wants to remain relevant in Mobile, it should really partner and support Square Home, in recovering the Windows Phone Live Tile Experience, and ensuring its Own Applications are supported in Square One Live Tiles. That would promote a Microsoft User experience, use of its services and coherence with Windows Desktop.

Failure to engage, will see most of drift more into Google Services. (e.g. I have configured my  Square Home Swipe Left to Invoke the stunning Google Assist.)    

Conversation 1 comments

  • robincapper

    20 January, 2019 - 4:06 pm

    <p>Interested to hear your experience as although happy with my current launcher it won't survive a phone reset should I need.</p><p><br></p><p>The launcher I have &amp; like most, Nokia's Z Launcher, has been removed from the store. It didn't have tiles but did have intelligence allowing you to pin 4 most used apps to bottom of screen, a dynamic list of frequently used apps.</p><p>I<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">t learns what apps you use when, so Tunein appears in the morning for the dog walk, pocketcasts later in the day for the commute etc. </span></p><p>You can browse a full app list or use an 'ink' finger letter draw to call up any other content. e.g ink "THU" on the screen would pull this web link, any contact I have with "thu" (like Thurrott) and common google searches with "thu" filling out the dynamic list if there is spare room.</p><p><br></p><p>Real joy is you never need to decide which apps are 'important', just the 4 to pin, and never have to deal with the whole icon/folder/screen organisation pain. Of all the ones I tried (Samsung, google, Microsoft) it was the best and stuck. I think it died when Nokia went more stock Android on their phones, probably understandable.</p><p><br></p><p>Its the kind of Intelligent Launcher I hoped Microsoft would be, but find their one a complicated muddled mess in comparison.</p>

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