I think facebook are onto something saying that the home screen is the heart of the phone and that it currently presents the information the wrong way round.

The home screen at the moment is very similar to how the first facebook app worked. It presented you with a grid of icons to choose from before you could interact with content. The switch to news feed first worked well there and I don't see why the same logic shouldn't work with the entire phone just as well.

Though seeing as facebook is only a small subset of my sources of interesting information, I could see this bringing to the table competing home screen 'apps' that incorporate more from your world than just the apps that facebook own.

I believe windows phone does this.

This is a brilliant way to seize underutilized screen space on your smartphone. Definitely the kind of innovation that makes you think "why didn't that occur to me?" Though I bet a lot of us that are iphone users take for granted that Apple controls the home screen.

I'm already thinking about switching to Android after years of being an iphone user, not for this app specifically but for what its functionality tells me about the Android OS.

Am I the only one who doesn't mind going to get the content I want? I enjoy having it easily available, but I don't get the obsession with making it effortlessly consumable. Not only is my friend's social network activity low on my list of priorities, but I don't need it spoonfed to me when I do want it.

This potentially also marks way for facebook to further become the centre point for how you get connect - alongside their hidden ability to be the world's biggest phone operator (free voice calls form facebook messenger from smartphones!)

(That's a neat idea... their news page images link to a page with a higher res version and the usage restrictions and alternate art sizes.)