Ha! I had an Android phone for years and never used the search bar.

And yet, it's the most prominent feature in view whenever you see a "glamour shot" of a new Android device. It's a Google OS, so of course it's got to have a prominent search bar! But I never once used it—I suppose reinforcing the findings of this article. The ugliness (both visually and metaphorically) of a big Google search bar on the home screen of my phone is one reason I dropped Android.

It's not the only reason but it's one reason I don't use their launcher. Thankfully, it's dead simple to use a different one and doesn't require any weird hacks or jailbreaking. Nova Launcher is the closest thing I've found to an "ideal" Android launcher. Superficially looks the same by default but you can enable or disable the search bar, the persistent Google Now on the leftmost page (seriously, swiping up has always worked just fine for opening Now), and fixing their odd insistence on having so few rows/columns of icons and widgets when screens keep getting larger and higher-resolution.

I understand that you no longer use an Android device but hopefully this is helpful to anyone else who happens to read the comments and has similar wants. There are other launchers but I haven't kept up with them in a while since finding one that works best for me.

Seriously though, how is this:

http://i.imgur.com/kazES2a.png

supposed to be better than this:

http://i.imgur.com/RIKz2qe.png

(in fairness, I had to throw a bunch of icons onto the Google Launcher desktop because it's not my default and I wanted to show how space is used. Also I put neutral-ish wallpapers on so as not to distract but they're not my usual ones.)

Yeah, exactly this. I find the stock iPhone-like launcher pretty useless. I ended up using Apex Launcher, because it lets me have much smaller icons and a denser grid.

This is how it looks: http://imgur.com/a/ce72A.

Those are fresh shots I just did, no editing or setting things up. That's how it looks on my phone every day.

There are some display bugs, particularly with the system flashlight widget, but I got used to them and I can't live with anything that has bigger / less dense icons. I also find a simple black background to look cooler than a wallpaper (having a screen that displays black well helps).

Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company (but not Google itself any more).

I was a die-hard iPhone supporter since I got my 3G, but switched to Android when I started at Google back in June. One of the things I like best about Android is the search bar on the home screen - I use it constantly. Half the time what I'm looking for isn't a web page per se (directions, apps, email, etc), and having search integrated into the home screen is extremely convenient.

The one thing I really do miss is being able to hold down the home button to activate Siri. Saying "OK, Google" is only successful for me about 50% of the time (and I have a very standard American accent) - when it doesn't work I feel like Scotty in Star Trek IV: The One with the Whales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqiDu1BQXY