Lumiappaday #68: New Group* demoed on the Nokia Lumia 800
I recorded this vid nearly three weeks ago, I forgot it was there. I only remembered it as I got a few messages asking how my homescreen was arranged to have a games section.
Well, it’s a little free app called ‘New Group*’, yes the asterisk is meant to be there. It just allows you to put a tile with a title as a tile and so you can group your apps to however you want them. I’ve got group tiles like:
- Office
- Navigation
- Games
- Media
- News
- Social
I wish the tile was double. That does allow me though to put a tile that’s black already next to it.
I saw this last year from JonChoo who had organized his homescreen like this for his Lumia. This might not be for everyone, folks might prefer the more fluid all together approach with just any of the popular tiles bubbling to the top as opposed to breaking them into groups.
I’m not the usual consumer, I’ve got about 400+ apps installed now and so a few homescreen tiles. If you do have quite a few apps and tiles this app might come in handy.
In this instance, I really wish WindowsPhone would have a N9/iPhone style instant scroll bar (I want to put together a new list of things we don’t like/could be improved in WP after exams). Maybe grouped tiles could have a ‘bookmark’ on that scroll bar (only appears if you put your finger on the side) so you know exactly what points to jump to as opposed to excessive scrolling. I’ve not seen that any users yet with as excessive in the amount of apps or tiles as me.
There’s news of possible Folder tiles in a coming update. Not sure what that would be like.
#68) New Group*
Price: Free
Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/93ad2492-42b1-4a9d-9999-d67ea86f2abe
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU2g11Ews6o
Developer Blurb:
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PLEASE NOTE:
1) THIS APPLICATION DOES NOT ACTUALLY CREATE FOLDERS ON YOUR START SCREEN. THE NOTION OF GROUPS IS SIMULATED BY THE USE OF TILE HEADINGS FOR SECTIONS OF YOUR HOMESCREEN THAT YOU WANT TO CATEGORIZE.
2) AFTER A THEME CHANGE, YOU NEED TO OPEN THE APPLICATION ONCE FOR THE TILES YOU CREATED TO UPDATE TO THE NEW COLORS
If you are looking for folder like functionality do not get this product as it does not do that. It uses live tiles to organize your home screen. Period!
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newgroup* provides you with an intuitive way of organizing your start screen live tiles using group headings. As the Live Tile feature begins to grow among applications and more and more apps make it into the Windows Phone Marketplace, being able to organize the apps that you want to see on your home screen metro experience becomes much harder.
newgroup* features the ability to:
1) Create and update categories headings
2) Rearrange categories headings on the home screen by drag and drop
3) Synchronize category tiles with theme changes (requires application to be started at least once)
New in v2.0
- Various stability bug fixes
- Manage all categories any category edit screen
- Create new categories from any category edit screen
- Color coded marker added to the category heading tiles
- 40 character long headings (still 1 tile)
- Preview functionality
- french, german, and spanish languuage support
- special character support
get newgroup* today and start enjoying the full power of mango on your start screen without worry!
Rating:
Design: 7
Usability: 8
Performance: 9
Price: 10
Category: Applications, Lumiappaday, Nokia, Video, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
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.comSubscribe
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Couldnt u just search content on your phone ? i have gotten used to that in Belle
Yes, you can search and they are categorized by alphabet as well. You can either do voice commands such as “open Monster Up” or you can seach by pressing the seach icon in the app list.
Voice commands actually are the easiest because they search the entire phone where the contextual search is seperate for apps and games, I do not like that. It is’t a bid deal but wish searching the app list showed games.
Apps are also seperated by hubs. If you go to the Pictures Hub you will see photo apps and if you open a photo it will give you an extras option where you can see all the apps that can open that photo. Same thing for the Music Hub which will not only show you Entertainment Apps but also the last media items you opened with those apps.
Personally I really like the Hubs approach to organizing apps by task, but they need to expand it and make it so you can make your own Hubs.
User interface of Windows Phone 7 is real pain in the ass. I hope Microsoft at least pays You a lot, Jay, for such a suffocation.
I disagree. Jay did say he had 400+ apps. That is insanely high. Folder support would be nice (which has been rumored to come). For the normal user who doesn’t have as many apps, WP is actually easier to use than, say, Symbian (in my opinion, anyway).
With folders it will be easier (only if user will be given option to move folders wherever he want), but one long scrolling screen with tiles is also hard to use comparing to six parallel home screens on symbian.
+100 I was starting to warm to WP7 with its panoramic canvas menues <3 but those are infrequent – of what I think, along with smoothness, is all WP7 has going for it. It is rightly so, a pain in the ass, a bane to the stunner that is the Lumia, and total eyesore to the Nokia brand
How and why you have 400+ apps amazes me..
Your opinion.
How and Why I have 400+ apps? Because I can
There’s a good range of quality apps at the store for Lumia. Also, obviously I’m running a blog and looking for apps to share. It’s not a normal user case which I point out in the post that you hopefully read.
Admittedly I only skim-read this one. The other 67 I read in more detail. I’m all for the progress made so far, but honestly I want more!
Nokia used to be limitless, even when the N9 arrived I still had hope, but now that’s old news and the Lumia is in, and desirable, BUT there’s still alot I’d be missing.. coming from Nokia 3310 right through to the E71, to GS2, to the Lumia 800? The change is good, its quality that is being questioned. If you’ve got 400+ apps on 1 WP7 device, with more than 80 quality apps that require New Group* then theres hope once again.
There are many more quality apps that what I’ll ever demo. I already pinned an extra 30 apps as a todo and those were already ones I found ages ago, but i just did not have enough time to record them.
I like the fact that after all this time having Nokias that had apps, I am up to my eyes on great apps I wanted to share with my readers. Apps that look good and decent and were on par/better than the competition at times.