You need an app that can creates blank tiles.
Yup, check out those start screen customization apps like Start Perfect.
Is laggy? Only releases updates for a minority of phone models? Drains battery crazy fast? Has app crashes?
Laggy? No. Maybe if the UX was bloated like Samsung you can get stutters even on top-end hardware or there's less-than-decent hardware in it.
Updates? It ranges from almost none from BLU to the Nexus phones which are quite good update wise.
Also there are custom ROMs depending on the phone so that goes beyond official support.
Battery? Like Windows Phone it depends on the model. It probably isn't as good by default but they can often have larger batteries. There's many battery saving tweaks and mods you can do as well. (e.g. Greenify)
App crashes? I use unofficial CyanogenMod 13 and there's maybe one minor crash a day or two. (for some reason Clock doesn't like me and "stops" maybe once a day - still figuring out if there's a pattern to it.)