Overnight, a new homescreen replacement app has appeared called Aviate – it’s a new take on your homescreen using the Google Now style as a basis for one of the most simple, yet informative homescreens you’ll use.
Aviate is released by ThumbsUp Labs – who have two ex-Googlers on the team: Will Choi, who worked on Google’s front end search, and Paul Montoy-Wilson a project manager at Google Play when it was still the Android Marketplace – so they’ve got experience with Android usability as well as app discovery. The team at Aviate say they have two goals with Aviate ‘to both simplify your phone, and make it more contextually proactive to deliver the information and apps you need, when you need it’.
Aviate divides your screens by swiping around the interface to access different applications. Aviate also builds contextually aware homescreens or more accurately ‘Spaces’ to give you access to the Apps you need based on your location, time of day etc. – Heading to the Gym? Here’s your podcast and fitness tracking Apps. Headed to work? Here’s your Email, Calendar and more. It’s quite intuitive at first glance and Aviate will learn your routine and adjust your homescreens accordingly.
Aviate was released as an Alpha several months ago, but received over 70 thousand testers and today those users were given 5 invites for the Beta to share with their friends, so access is growing, but it’s still in Beta. The Beta was updated today with more features :
- New easy-access Spaces navigation – simply swipe down from your home screen.
- Better “top bar” design for designating Spaces.
- Improved “edit mode” accessed by long-pressing any card.
- Improved context detection for Spaces.
- Cleaner design for spaces with more fluid navigation and allowing users to rearrange pieces of content, add widgets, etc.
- Improved battery performance (Aviate uses less battery than Twitter or many other popular apps by comparison).
- General improved stability of the product.
It’s really quite a beautiful homescreen replacement, the Ausdroid team are checking Aviate out in further detail as part of the Beta test program and we’ll be reporting back as we see more from this intriguing homescreen.
Do you like the look of Aviate?
