Open Radar

 
Summary: The new folders feature in iPhone OS is great for organizing items (I've gone from 10 screens down to 2). 

Currently, when putting multiple items in a folder, the icon for the folder shows very tiny thumbnails. The trouble is that once you have a number of these folders, it's impossible to distinguish them from one another unless you stop to read the label on each folder. There's very little visual distinction between them and one is forced to stop and either try to decipher the pattern of small 'mosaics' or read to read each label before deciding which folder to use.

A far better solution may be to allow the user to select one of the items in the folder as the representative icon for the whole group and then 'badge' the icon to show it's actually a folder. 

For example I might choose the Camera app to signify the whole class of Photography apps, but the extra overlay bit (maybe something like the 'alias' overlay on MacOS icons) could tell me quickly that this is a folder not the app itself. The current thin border around the folder icon is a good start, but obviously it wouldn't work if it was applied to say, the Calendar icon.

I've attached a sample screenshot from my phone. To me it looks very visually cluttered and hard to tell the folders apart in a glance, unless you stop and read each label.