Home Screen top part is a waste of space

[eortizr]

is anybody annoyed by the waste of space at the top of the HomeScreen? you can fit a complete row of small tiles in there but MS decide to leave that area empty.

 

[baandoptager]

Nope. It keep the vertical balance of the general row of tiles. You act as if they did it by mistake, but you should rather try and focus the purpose of said space in terms of not having, first of all too much clutter. You must also remember that 8.1 enables you name each cluster of tiles, if you choose not to name you clusters then the gap is obviously bigger. I personally think they've struck a great balance in refining gaps and placements of tiles and infos.

 

[manicottiK]

Typically, former Android and WM6 users complain about "wasted" space because those platforms let users cram lots of stuff onto a single screen. WP is taking a different approach. I hate to say that it's quality over quantity, but it's at least close to that. It is worth noting that the switch to 1920x1080 will give you another row of small tiles, just like the HTC 8x and newer Samsung devices have; that's because the aspect ratio is taller than the 1280x768 used on the higher-end Lumias.

It took me a fairly long time to stop resenting that my main screen on WP7 didn't have the 38 touch targets that I did on Windows Mobile 6, but I now prefer the less cluttered look. Before WP, I spent more time scanning the main screen than was needed because there was just too much stuff visible at once, presented in different styles and sizes. Consistency and judicious use of space solves this, albeit at the expense of information density. It's a trade-off that I'm willing to make.

Further, my top tiles are both medium-sized so that I don't have to reach my thumb all the way to the top to start those apps when using the phone one-handed. While I do have a mix of sizes, I keep the small ones farther down the screen to prevent overload.

 

[mnashp]

yes, it bothers me that there is a lot of space on top, and the bottom row of my tiles are cut in half. It looks shoddy and there isn't a darn thing i can do about it. Nevermind that we have to live with the often garishly colored tiles others thought to design for us, but we can't even have them symmetrically arranged on the start screen.

aesthetics are important. There is NO excuse for ugly.

 

[HeyCori]

There's no reason to bump this thread