This is part 6 of my series where I document going from an iPhone to Android 2.3, running on the Samsung Galaxy Gio.
Android and iOS both have home screens, but they really have a different purpose. In iOS, the home screen contains all apps. In Android, your apps are stored in the app drawer (usually the icon in the lower right corner). The Android home screen is much more flexible. It can contain a number of items, of which the most important are: widgets and shortcuts. Widgets are little apps that run on your home screen, showing the date/time, the weather or what have you. A shortcut is just a way of starting up an app via the home screen.
Thus on Android, you could easily have an empty home screen, if you don't mind starting apps with two taps (first go to the app drawer, then tap the app itself).
At first, the Android home screen is a bit confusing since there are so many possibilities compared to iOS. But there are many cool things here, such as the display of upcoming events in your calendar, right on the home screen:
CalWidget.