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Microsoft's Arrow brings pane to Androids
You too can suffer the Windows phone experience, as an app
For reasons El Reg doesn't quite understand, Microsoft has decided that the one thing missing from the Android user's life is the Windows phone app launcher experience.
Seeking to save Android users from themselves, Redmond has accordingly posted this “garage” project (ie, after-hours coding or "get your staff to create test-market software for free) as a private (mercifully) beta.
According to Microsoft News, which spotted the beta, the launcher splits an Android screen into three panes.
The panes offer “recent apps” as the centre pane; “people” on a left swipe brings up your favourite contacts (not written by Tinder users, then), while to the right of the centre pane there's “notes and reminders”.
As Microsoft News notes, you can join a Google+ community to ask for an invitation to use the app, or there's a OneDrive download here if you're happy to wrangle APKs outside of an app store. ®