#FF00AA

Marketplace on the Windows Phone features one application with an icon, title, and one-line description. One touch gesture (drag/flick) later, there’s a menu consisting of six items. Tapping on “applications” takes you to another featured application. One more drag/flick and you are finally seeing three applications you can download. Contrast the amount of information present on this screen (the fourth in the process) with the amount shown on the iPhone’s initial App Store display.

While the Marketplace example is a little extreme (and Apple is helped by the fact that the App Store is a different application from the iTunes Store, which I hate — don’t know about you, but I keep launching one when I wanted the other), the question is: how much does this matter with a tactile interface? When you’re physically manipulating content, tapping this and dragging that, do you need as much of the information to be available at a glance?

Ever since I’ve started using the iPhone, I’ve thought the answer was no. Just flick to scroll. (Which is why, among other things, I wish the iPhone’s home screen let you scroll vertically in addition to paging horizontally.)

By the way, that will be illustrated further when I release the iPhone app I’m currently working on.