Ahead of Apple’s (AAPL) recent iPhone 5 launch, BGR ran a piece about some of the most annoying things that the new iPhone 5 and iOS 6 would not fix. One of the biggest items we covered was likely iOS’ lack of widget support. A comprehensive widget solution like the one found in Android might be too hard on the iPhone’s battery, but there are dozens of solutions that Apple could use to compromise — like it did with third-party background APIs — and provide users with real-time information on iOS home screens.
Theme and user interface designer Max Rudberg on Thursday put together a concept video showing what widget support on iOS might look like. His concept is based on the new resizable live tiles found in Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform, but we think the basic concept could easily be expanded in a different direction to create a unique solution that provides simple widget support without being too hard on battery life.
In Rudberg’s video, a long tap on a home screen icon allows a user to increase its size by four times, opening up a plethora of options to the user. In the first example, the Settings icon opens to reveal a widget that gives the user control over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and screen brightness. Apparently Rudberg is as annoyed as we are that users still have to dig through the Settings app to adjust those settings. The widget size can then be doubled to reveal additional options.
Similarly, enlarging the Clock icon gives users access to alarms and opening up the Mail icon displays previews of the three most recent emails in the user’s inbox.
Apple will almost certainly introduce some kind of widget support in iOS in the future, and the sooner the better. In the meantime, hopefully some talented developers see Rudberg’s video and get to work on a similar solution for jailbroken devices. The full concept video follows below.
