Tech Life

My Homescreen

It's ridiculous how much time I spend on organizing my homescreen, lol. But hey, the smartphone is the most personal computer we'll ever have. So it's only right that this much attention is spent on personalizing it.

Last night I got an invite for Homescreen.me and it's nice to see a community of iPhone users that believe in the same thing. Here's my first post on there:

General Rules

  • Always keep one row empty to keep the screen uncluttered and give me a natural spot to swipe there when switching homescreens.

  • No bright wallpapers for the homescreen and especially not the lock screen. iOS keeps the lock screen at full brightness, regardless of your brightness settings. This takes a toll on the battery when push notifications come in throughout the day.

Apps

  • Calendar app is at the top-left and requires farthest reach for my right thumb. Its my least-used app on the homescreen, but I need it there to quickly see today's date.

  • Maps and Music at the top-right because I need them easily accessible while I'm driving. (Looking forward to the upcoming turn-by-turn feature in iOS6!)

  • Foursquare, Facebook, PostMate and Tweetbot are my most-used, most-accessible apps, placed strategically where my right thumb feels most comfortable tapping.

  • **PostMate is an app I designed. I use it to quickly draft & post to my Twitter accounts, Facebook Profile/Pages, and Foursquare all in one shot.

  • ProCamera is on the dock because I take a lot of photos (of my food, lol). Its image stabilization mode is my favorite over all of the other camera apps out there.

  • Voxer is docked, keeping it handy for communicating with friends while I'm driving.

What's Missing?

  • Phone — moved off-screen because I use Siri to initiate 95% of my outgoing calls and the lock screen for calling back missed calls.

  • Weather — moved off-screen, thanks to Siri and the Weather widget in Notification Center.

  • Mail, Facebook Messenger — I hardly initiate conversations on the iPhone so I just use Notification Center and the lock screen to stay up-to-date of new messages.

  • Google Voice — I have GV text messages forwarded to the Messages app; this saves me a LOT of battery compared to using the official GV app for text conversations.

  • Reminders - I use Siri to create tasks and location-based notifications to stay on top of them.