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Lumiappaday #22: Mega Tile demoed on the Nokia Lumia 800

| December 8, 2011 | 14 Replies
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This app was suggested by Richard – it allows you to customise your homescreen with photos/images of your choice. These aren’t then just static images – they can be a shortcut to a whole host of things.

#22) Mega Tile

Price: £0.79

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/99257287-1047-451d-a519-c2eabe45385d

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ6ewWNuQ-c

 

Developer Blurb:

MegaTile allows you to use a picture to create multiple action tiles on your Start screen.

After choosing the size and shape for your MegaTile (the supported sizes are: 1×1, 1×2, 2×2, 2×3, 2×4), you can select a picture from any of your albums (including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google etc.) or camera roll.

The application creates a MegaTile by dividing your picture into a number of action tiles that will be displayed on your Start Screen. Actions, such as phone calls, email, texting, web searching and browsing, can be assigned to each tile.

Rating: 8.75

Design: 8

It’s pretty simplistic as it’s mostly bare bones of settings to put towards your colourful, lively tiles. It uses the panoramic metro thing but a little ineffectively as the other side is just an “about” product thing to review the app, contact the developer or see other products.

I would have preferred another panel, perhaps to the left to create new tiles. However, instead you get a plus icon which is just as usable.

It would have been nice if the tiles could flip to reveal possibly a different image? Not a fault, just a suggestion.

Once you’re done creating your tiles, they do look great. I think there might be an issue if you chose a picture with people or faces as it will introduce a slight gap. It would be nice perhaps if it could somehow compensate for that. Not sure how difficult that would be (possibly where it cuts the picture, just cut x amount of pixels so your brain fills in the gap, as without it, some faces look odd and stretched).

Usabiliy: 8

To create new sets of tiles, press the + icon. You can choose from:

  • 1×1
  • 1×2
  • 2×2
  • 3×2
  • 4×2

You can see how they would appear above.

The tiles are all separate – it would have been nice if it was possible to create a solid 1×2 but the mosaic effect it produces at the end is still very nice.

Once you choose your set size, choose the image. This as usual is very easy, and if you’ve connected up facebook, you have so many more pictures to choose from (and it behaves as if it it’s already on the phone).

You can choose whether you want:
  • Stretch tile
  • Center tile (with option to change the colour of the tile edge. It’s kinda nice to leave it black as then your tile isn’t square.
  • Stretch
Each tile can do something, they aren’t just static. You can send SMS to someone (define a contact), make a phone call to someone, compose an email, take a photo, post a status to social network – or most useful for me, set it to launch a bookmark/browser page. That’s cool because before although you could set what part of the page to become your tile if you pin it to homescreen, it’s even nicer to set an image of your own choosing.
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The fiddly bit now is pinning to homescreen. Well, my tip is to make sure there are two filled tiles at the bottom, then it gets easy.
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You have to add each tile individually. Press the pin, and then press the back button, press the next pin and back button again. It’s pretty quick – no action necessary to multitask and then press the app and then pin as you have a quick back button. I’m not sure if it would ever be possible to automatically pin everything at once in position?
After that, you’re done. You can manage these tiles later again if you want to change what shortcuts they could be.
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I think opening up an application or a shortcut to the image or album itself might be nice (for a single tile, e.g. family pictures)
Performance: 9
Quick to start up, fast, fluid etc. However it did lock up when I tried to do a 1×2 tile.
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Price: 10
The app is 79 pence/0.79GBP. You can try before you buy in market place (press try) it has limited functionality (I think less tile sizes and less shortcuts). I think it’s pretty decently priced – low enough to be a whim purchase but the app is well made enough that it’s useful. I was gonna mark it down because it crashed on the 1×2 tile but the app is already as cheap as can be.
Conclusion:
There are a growing number of apps for customizing homescreen tiles. In fact there’s another one to be reviewed soon and we’ve had a few suggestions already (though I’ve forgotten the names of those).
As one of many of those that I have used, this one is a great little app if you want to customise your tiles with images that also act as shortcuts, adding bursts of colours to your start screen.
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Category: Applications, Lumiappaday, Nokia

About the Author ()

Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and  Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.com
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