The sheer variety of Live Tiles available for your Nokia Lumia’s Start Screen is staggering, and it’s easy to customise your phone so it looks like no other.

Here are some of our favourite Live Tiles, bringing colour, detail and real-time information to your Start Screen.

Chronos calendar
Thanks to a huge number of different settings and options, Chronos Calendar stands out on even the most busy Start Screen. It’s possible to select a different number of calendar entries for upcoming days, with details showing up on the Live Tile, and you can even change the background photograph to use a snap from your image gallery.  

Accuweather
Accuweather is a great Live Tile for your Start Screen, providing real-time weather updates and information. Along with the location and temperature, the Live Tile also gives an indication of actual weather conditions – changing when it’s sunny, raining or dark.

Photos

Adding your Photos to the Start Screen is a great way to liven things up, with the Live Tile flicking through your collection to show different previews. It’s a particularly nice inclusion if you have hundreds or thousands of snaps, bringing up photographs you’d forgotten about or may not have seen for months.

Email

Your Nokia Lumia’s email Live Tile offers a different amount of information depending on the size of the tile. Set it to the smallest or medium size, and the tile tells you how many new unread emails you have. Set the Live Tile to the biggest size, and you’ll then get to preview the latest email information, such as who sent the message and the subject, along with the number of new messages.

Website shortcuts

It’s easy to add a lot of colour and detail to your Start Screen by adding website Live Tiles. Instead of using an Internet Explorer icon when you add a shortcut, the Live Tiles appear as mini versions of the webpage you’ve selected, so you’ll know at a glance which site you’re opening. It works incredibly well, and it also looks fantastic – irrespective of the size of Live Tile you choose.

Zinio
As the world’s largest newsstand app, Zinio makes a great addition for your Nokia Lumia anyway, with some compelling reading available. It’s the Zinio Live Tile that makes it a worthy addition to this list, however, with the tile showing off the latest magazine covers and content that may be of interest to you.

Battery Pro+
If you’re sick of relying on the tiny battery icon at the top right corner of your Nokia Lumia’s screen to know how much power you have left, Wunderman’s Battery Pro+ is the ideal solution. The Live Tile on this app tells you exactly how much battery life you have remaining, in big numbers, so you’ll never get caught unaware.

What are the Live Tiles that you rely upon? Share your recommendations in the comments below.