What is Microsoft Arrow Launcher?
Arrow
Launcher is a new Android launcher made by, of all people, the folks at
Microsoft. Like other launchers it replaces the homescreens and app
draw of your phone to provide a fresh route into the rest of the
handset's features.
Microsoft’s twist is that Arrow Launcher aims
to make your Android-using life easier by bringing to the fore the apps
you use most, and pushing aside the least used features. And rest
assured it doesn’t push any Microsoft apps or features onto you, except
for the wallpaper being provided daily by the Bing search service, if
you so choose.
Arrow Launcher – First Impressions
Upon
launching Arrow Launcher for the first time the app will analyse and
rank your existing apps, picking out up to 16 that it thinks are your
favourites. You can confirm which of these are indeed your favourites
and then the launcher will fill up your homescreen with these apps.
What’s
immediately obvious is that upon doing this you lose all your app
folders. The whole point of the app is that it curates the layout of
your apps for you so using folders is counter to this.
That's all
very well but if you’re like me and you normally have a dozen folders
each containing half a dozen apps, suddenly going back down to a grid of
just 24 is something that, at the very least, will take time to get
used to and at worst will be a deal breaker for this launcher.
The setup process analyses your apps and picks out the top 20 to go on your homescreen
What's
more, although I like the idea behind the curation, the app didn’t seem
to do all that good a job of guessing which are the most used apps on
my phone. While it got a few correct, most were pretty obvious standard
apps anyway – Google Maps, YouTube, Hangouts, etc – and a few were
outright wrong.
For instance I’ve not played Punch Quest in over six months, I very seldom use the Contacts app and have never used OneNote.
What’s
more, as the launcher does learn what you prefer it’s actually really
annoying that it then moves your apps around. That is the core principle
of the launcher but it's also anathema to those that like to keeps
things organised and know exactly where everything should be, which of
course is one of the basic tenets of good app design.
Original layout on the left, after about an hour's use on the right
After
longer use there will likely be fewer changes as apps firmly establish
themselves as favourites, unless a new very popular app is installed.
But, at least initially, apps are moving all over the place and it’s not
to my liking.
The overall layout of the launcher consists of
three pages, with Apps in the centre, People (contacts) on the right and
Recent activity on the left. Underneath all three screens is a fixed
set of four apps and the App Drawer button, all but the latter of which
can be rearranged or made into folders, at least giving some way to
bring some arganisation back into this interface.
Swipe up from
the bottom and you get an iOS-style quick settings area that also houses
an extra five apps (again, these can be made into folders). This makes
it much easier to access quick settings that would otherwise require you
to reach to the top of the screen to swipe down the notifications menu.
A swipe up menu provides really convenient access to common apps and settings
It’s
a great feature and one that I’d encourage other launcher developers to
mimic, though I’d like to see Microsoft let you choose which quick
settings are available.
Both the People and Recent pages have
their uses too. People seems to do a good job of highlighting who you
most often contact and puts them in easy reach. Likewise, the Recent
page I can see being useful as a one-stop solution for things like
jumping straight to that file you just downloaded or the specific photo
you just took, as well as showing you who called and who you just
messaged.
I’m not entirely convinced both features work best as
dedicated pages on a homescreen but the functionality definitely has
potential.
Jump into the Edit Page screen from the swipe up menu
at the bottom of the page and you can also choose to add a further two
pages to the launcher. One is a Notes and Reminders tool that allows you
to type notes right onto the page. It’s actually pretty slicky done and
certainly is more convenient than opening up a notes app.
The other page is called Widgets, and it’s just a blank page which you can place standard Android widgets on.
The
final main feature is the App Drawer itself, which is arranged in an
alphabetical list, with a search box at the top and a recently used
section below. The strict at-least-one-line-per-letter layout doesn’t
feel as efficient as a more conventional continuous list, but the search
function does in part make up for this. I wouldn’t say I’m totally
convinced by the change but neither does it totally put me off.
One
final thing to note about Arrow Launcher is that it’s nice and fast.
One of the topics not discussed enough when it comes to Android phones
is just how transformative a new launcher can be when it comes to phone
performance and sure enough the Arrow Launcher so far feels faster than
the default Galaxy S6 one.
Early Verdict
Arrow Launcher is
a slightly odd venture for Microsoft with there being no clear benefit
to the company. Regardless, it’s an interesting twist on an Android app
launcher that has a few key features I do like and some I'm less keen
on. The iOS style swipe up menu is great and the launcher is fast, but
its headline feature of choosing your app layout for you hasn’t
convinced me yet. However, with an eye-watering price tag of zero pounds
and zero pence, it’s worth giving a try.
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