Aviate, the Android app that caters your home screen to the time of day and where you are, is finally opening its doors to the world. After several months in beta and being acquired by Yahoo, the app is formally launching today with a revamped look, several new features, and a new name: Yahoo Aviate.
KEY FEATURES:
★ Simple, beautiful navigation — Transforms your phone into four, easy-to-navigate screens to make every interaction faster and more efficient.
★ Adapts to you — Shows you different apps based on your current context and time of day.
★ Stay organized — Automatically categorizes your apps into Collections based on function.
★ App recommendations — Recommends apps based on what you have installed and the latest ratings in Google Play.
★ Stay in touch — Contact your Favorite People with one swipe up instead of digging through your contacts.
★ Customizations for simplicity — Edit the apps in your Collections, choose between two Themes, create Shortcuts, install Icon Packs, add Widgets and change your Home Image to make Aviate you own.
It shows music apps when you’re driving, news and weather apps in the morning, productivity apps while you’re at work, and maybe even a Reddit app right before bed. But with the company’s acquisition came a new focus on daily habits, and on showing actual content instead of apps. Where the Aviate beta showed news apps when you first turned on your phone in the morning, Yahoo Aviate shows snippets from Yahoo’s News Digest app. And where the Aviate beta showed calendar apps while you were at work, Yahoo Aviate shows actual calendar entries with one-touch access to dialing a conference call number or getting directions to your next appointment. Lastly, instead of showing calendar apps, Yahoo Aviate now shows forecasts from Yahoo Weather.
Yahoo Aviate also includes a new way to text or call your close friends and family. Swiping up on your home screen now brings up icons for people you talk to frequently on the phone or via text message.
As Yahoo Aviate grows, Montoy-Wilson and co-founder Mark Daiss say that they will choose to integrate content that’s best for users, and not just content created by Yahoo.
“We knew at Yahoo there would be content we could use from within Yahoo, but Aviate will still put in front of you whatever the best content is for that specific context is,” Daiss says. “We will remain very agnostic.” The co-founders also say that the cards inside each Aviate context will be customizable. Fortunately, Yahoo News Digest is one of the best ways to read bite-sized chunks of news in the morning, so nobody will argue that choice — for now.
Aviate is one of the best dynamic home screen apps for Android. Today’s update brings the app to Android 4.0 devices and above, but expect lots more changes and compatibility updates soon. The company realizes that being as dynamic as its home screens is a must.
“When you work on a home screen, the engagement is so good,” Daiss says. “Users touch it 50 times per day; there’s no interface you touch more in your life.”
Source: Yahoo Tech
