I really want Android live tiles. Widgets just aren't comparable.
Live Tiles are consistent, with only three square (rectangular) sizes to pick from. The fluid scrolling through them (rather than page by page) makes it feel more spacious. I have an entire home page dedicated to Facebook, for example, because the Facebook widget that shows me updates (and only one update at a time) takes up fully half the screen. The weather widget I use takes an entire line of icons, and the calendar widget takes up two columns by three rows. It's like playing a jigsaw puzzle trying to arrange a useful "live" home screen. Live Tiles are also visually consistent, which Android widgets are not (my Android home screen looks hideous).
A Live Tile is a app shortcut that also acts as a widget by displaying useful information. An Android widget is a widget that can also link to the application. That tiny difference is a huge gap in comparison.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pierrox.li...
With Lightning Launcher, you can also skip the grid altogether and freely align, scale and even rotate your widgets and zoom in and out in the launcher, if you want. It's very customizable.
There is a single "People" tile that shows me all the news from facebook and twitter in a single stream. There is another "Me" tile that shows my notifications about mentions or tags.
I think the most important thing is that tapping these doesn't feel like launching an app. I don't have to "go check facebook" and wait for it to load, and then "go look at twitter," etc. I just tap a tile, and in 4 seconds I have everything in one native-looking interface - it even honors the color scheme I picked for the phone :)
I'm curios, I haven't used Windows Phone, what's not comparable?
Do you think that's an accurate assessment?
Your assessment is not too far off. Live Tiles is a more elegant way of handling widgets.
But most widgets are not very interactive, they are more like app preview snapshots, with a tap to launch the app.
Live tiles are "free", they are the same icon that you would use to start the app and the look and feel is more uniform and rearrange between them in a more convenient way.
Also you can pin a lot of app specific items. For instance, from the people hub I can pin a tile of the whole app and/or pin specific people, and when you do that the tile itself seems like a different app. In my wife's tile I can see whatever she posted on Facebook or twitter, and also it serves as a shortcut to publish something on the wall, or to call or text her, it's just very convenient!