Nokia lately introduced the Z Launcher for the Android operating system, which the company said will help it easier for users to find the app or contact that they need in their smartphones.
The announcement is the first post for Nokia's official blog for the Z Launcher, posted by Z Launcher lead product manager Brook Eaton.
The product shows Nokia moving away from mobile phone production and into software development, as its mobile division was sold to Microsoft.
Nokia said that users have 48 apps on their smartphones on average, which is a number that keeps rising. When you throw in the contacts, Internet activity, tasks and whatever else is on a user's phone, it becomes needlessly difficult to navigate to what the user needs to access. It would take several swipes and taps for a user to go through screens and folders to finally get to that app that they need.
Nokia is looking to remedy this with the Z Launcher, for which a pre-beta version has been released.
Users that install the Z Launcher will see a revamped home screen with a clean interface and a list of apps. However, the changes in the looks are just the beginning of what the Z Launcher offers.
Once installed, the Z Launcher is actually able to learn the apps that the user opens and the people that the user contacts throughout each day. The Z Launcher will eventually be able to put certain apps and contacts at the top of the list of the phone's home screen at specific times of the day, according to what it thinks that the user needs at the time.
Does the user usually call his wife after lunch? The contact will float to the top of the list at the time. Does the user usually play a game while on the subway on the way home? The game will appear at the top of the list during that time.
With the Z Launcher also comes the Scribble feature, which looks to reduce even more the times that users spend tapping and swiping on their smartphone screens to get to what they need. With Scribble, users can just draw the first letter of the app or contact that they need on the smartphone's screen. The Z Launcher will then bring you a shorter list of apps and contacts that will be much easier to go through than having to access different screens and folders.
The more that the users uses their smartphone with the Z Launcher, the better the launcher gets in predicting the user's needs at certain points of the day.
"This way your smartphone becomes more than a constantly shuffling myriad of stuff - it's truly your device," Nokia said.
Nokia also said that the Z Launcher's first version will have initially have a limited release, with updates on new versions, availability and features to be posted in the next few months.
