Windows Phone 7 Apollo (Fan Concept)
Jay: A couple of weeks Ago, Jozef was working on a Windows Phone concept for Apollo. Did you hear that there’d be a separate update gain before Apollo called Tango? Here’s Jozef’s concept for Apollo.
This time I’m not going break any Metro Rule. I realized that following rules in my real life makes everything easier, so why do not apply the same thing in my work…
Today I’m going to show you 2 changes for Windows Phone. I believe that both of them would have a big effect on Windows Phone 7’s reputation. Maybe they may be the “wow” effect that WP7 is missing.
Change # 1
Few months ago, I showed my Aero Integration for WP7….But folks from Redmond don’t like it. The purpose of Aero was to make WP7 more attractive and make it look more colorful. We all know that WP7 home screen looks really boring (sometimes). I tried to find a solution, something with minimum of fashion effects, but something still looking colorful and fresh. As the result, I copied the style of Windows 8, and this is what I created:
Basically, you have colorful tiles, colors would be generated automatically. But what if you don’t like a color of color? Just shake a phone many times and all colors will be changed. If you want to change only one color, just tap/ hold the tile and shake your phone.
This would be one of the options to customize your WP7, old styles would be still available.
I know this may look a little messy but this is the way to make your home screen looking fresh without using transparent tiles.
Change #2
I already showed the change #2 but it didn’t get much popularity. Yes, it’s multitasking concept, the concept that I call “SmartView”. Personally, I believe this is one of the best things I created. Maybe I didn’t show it in the best way but I still believe this is the best way to make multitasking on the phones/tablets. I can imagine using this concept on other platforms such as Android or iOS.
But again, what is SmartView? SmartView is the most interactive multitasking concept ever, something really simple with the big effect on user’s work, something you have never seen before.
This is SmartView.
SmartView combines widgets with the multitasking cars. And the result is simply, fresh, and interactive. For example, you have a Zune Card. Card would show you music information and buttons. Now look at an Internet Explorer Card. You see all opened tabs and buttons/thumbnails that switch you to a particular part of that app or interact with a part of the app.
To launch Multitasking Menu you would simply swipe in from both edges with 2 fingers, or press home button twice.
You would also use SmartView’s card like a widget. How? Just pin an application to the SmartView (pinned apps would be always showed in the first positions, even if they are not running). For example, Settings’s card may show toggles, Music’s card Now Playing/History etc.
SmartView for Windows 8.
That’s it for now. If you like this concept please share it with others…and follow me on Twitter.
Also check out my older Windows Phone Concept.
Category: Windows, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
18 years old student studying Multimedia Design. User Interface Design as a hobby.Subscribe
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the reason microsoft used so much “Black” in the design is to save energy on the AMOLED screens. Makes wp7 look boring but has much more benefit.
They also have the white theme and devices that don’t use AMOLED screens.
It’s why N9 uses black backgrounds. As mentioned by demonstrators, it optimizes on the efficiency of AMOLED displays. I think it looks nice in some places how the black AMOLED parts melt with the device. But I would enjoy some backgrounds too (as Peter and Jozef have shown in previous concepts)
Nice stuff, Josef. You should definitely keep doing these.
Regarding SmartView:
I like it as an idea, but I’m not quite sure what it could be used for, except with the music player, of course.
What would those buttons do with the IE9 card, for example?
This is absolutely brilliant. I really like the individual tile colours – it makes it easier to identify which tile you’re dealing with, as opposed to all the same colour with a white icon. The SmartView is also sweet, being able to go straight to a tab in IE, or control the media player before going to something else. I’d love to just see side swiping for multitasking rather than a long press of the back button. PlayBook does it. N9 does it. Windows 8 as demoed does something pretty similar.
I’ve always pondered why the Tile that has some notification inside them, like missed calls or new messages could not change color so that it would be easier to spot. After the user has looked the missed calls or seen what the new message was the color would change back to original.
Yes Windows Phone desperately needs some more colours and the ones from Windows 8 are perfect, yes the black is there to save battery life on AMOLED devices but the black backgrounds and the other options currently arent good enough to attract customers.
MeeGo is nice and colourful. For Windows Phone to succeed I think Microsof need to introduce more colours especially to differentiate the tiles
This is pretty much my dream for a Nokia Windows Phone
I like the first concept in which different tiles have different colours. Now, after seeing this concept I think Microsoft should apply this concept immediately. I even think that this concept should have been implemented from the beginning. It is more interesting than the option to change the colour of all the tiles by changing the theme colour, which make the ui look boring and uninteresting.
As for the smart view concept I think that after watching the multitasking concept of the new N9 it is hard to like any other concept as it is the most efficient and intuitive way to manage all the open applications doing comparatively less swipe work.
Thanks!
You know, following the rules may sometimes be a good idea. I don’t think it is now.
I know all the drill people are going to mention about design etc, but I am going to heavily criticize Microsoft designers now, just because I want to and I would love to see changes, though I’m not really expecting them:
The Metro UI as designed by Microsoft seems awful. Microsoft, please take a look at Josef’s earlier designs for the Windows 8 tablet and Windows Phone 7. They are GORGEOUS. They look awesome. They are everything I ever wanted from a Microsoft Tablet, and would improve a lot the experience on a Windows Phone 7 device.
On tablets: Microsoft, please do keep your neat ideas about keeping some side of the screen for some apps, and the rest for other apps. This is great. But please do this within Josef’s designs! They are simply amazing!
On phones: Ok, I got it, you really love the Metro UI. And I must say I loved it too, but that was before Nokia came up with the N9 and changed everything. Again.
Ok, so, Steve Jobs jokes aside, please do consider improving this. I am not fond of ridiculously and randomly colorful designs, so I like a lot the black on blue design of the Metro UI, but this gets boring really fast, and the animations too! Take a look at the N9. It has all kinds of slick animations you would want on a phone, but this is not the best part: the best part is, it “plays” all these animations FAST. I mean REALLY fast. When you press to open an app, the app comes in AS FAST as it is loaded, with the animation of it coming up drawn as fast as possible.
Now look at WP7. Press a tile on the first screen, and you’ll have to wait for a 3 second animation to get to the next screen, which is probably already loaded on RAM and it makes absolutely no sense taking up so much time to opening up a tile.
Designers may reply to me with “we have consistency between all animations on the phone”. So let me tell you something: the end user (specially average joe) could not care less about consistency in animation time of execution. If you always do it as fast as possible it is consistent! The animations will take only as much time as they actually need to, not more.
Well, I’m off now. I’m tired of “talking to myself” pretending Microsoft is listening. But I’ll tell you: when WP7 Mango goes out, it will have a very hard time competing to Nokia’s N9. And that’s the right time to tell Nokia: DON’T GIVE A CRAP TO THAT. YOU SELL DEVICES. YOU MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT. YOU SHOULD COMPETE WITH OTHER COMPANIES, NOT TO YOURSELF. If two of YOUR devices are competing one to another, that’s NOT a problem! You will still sell both.
The real problem is if people are avoiding the purchase of YOUR own phones (N9) because YOU (Nokia) may not be supporting it as much as you should, fearing that Windows Phone 7 would be endangered because of the MeeGo success. In this case, you will sell neither, and that’s a problem: consumers will go to other companies who actually support their own products.
Josef, sorry about my rant to Microsoft and Nokia.
But about your design, as I mentioned on my previous post, I would rather have the black background with blue (or other customizable colors) tiles than a random mess of colors.
I didn’t like the Windows 8 choice of colors either, so that’s just me.
Your Aero design, on the other hand, is magnific. I was very impressed and I really wanted Microsoft to listen to you on that front! The Metro UI is not as good as they think.
Microsoft patented “Legal Intercept”, a tools for spy communications trough Skype!!
SmartView is awesome. I would use a black background and manly color in my phone, but I definitely like a more colorful UI.
I repeat, SmartView is awesome!
I hate to throw a wet rag, but its called metro for a reason. I believe its on looking at a flight board in an airport. If you guys want to change it so
Much maybe be this OS is not for you.
As great as the designs look they are way to
Cluttered if we start having apps with other apps
In one tile you may as well get an iPhone as that’s
What they and it gets silly after a will because its
Really hard seeing them. The beauty of this OS
Is the simplicity of its overall look.
The reason why redmond rejected it is because right now the ui is following concepts from the swiss school of design applying aesthetic concepts of minimalism in grid format. Graphical single color icons is what sets metro apart from the rest and uses a concept behind it. As soon as they step away from it, they fall into literal icon space, like every other run off the mill ui including eliptic colors on iOS. People go bezerk over shinny colours but its not productive in the long run.