> Don't get me wrong, I love Android. I've used it for the last 5 years. It's just that I've never understood why people use widgets. They're too clunky to be useful even for the most basic of things.

I use widgets consistently on my phone. My to-do list, calendar, notes, and weather are all shown as widgets to the left and right screens of my primary homescreen. I don't necessarily have these apps running in app history all the time, so it is much easier to do 1 tap on the home button for the home screen followed by a left or right swipe to view the content I'm after.

They also are really useful if the app you have a widget for is slow to load or you have a slower device. Since you can view the partial information faster than loading the entire app, you can avoid the delay in getting information.

If you have your most important widget(s) on your homescreen along with your most useful apps, you're probably doing 1-3 anyway most times you use your phone.

For me, it's very similar to the badges on iOS (which is something I miss when I use my Android work phone). I'm often not actively looking for the info, but it's a nice little prompt about it being there.

As for your alternatives

- Google Now is (at least for me) only useful when it's displayed as a widget

- the lock screen is fine for some things but less good for sensitive stuff - and with the fingerprint scanner on the 5S I rarely see my iPhone's lock screen these days

-persistent notifications on the notification bar quickly get cluttered and tell you nothing more than there is a notification of some description for that app

- the recent app menu still involves you going to a separate screen

Clearly they work for you, but also clearly they don't work as well for many others.