In an idealized world, and on a device of sufficiently low complexity, sure.
But when you have multiple services that all cover the same basic thing, your icon needs to transcend its very basic function. Yelp, for example, needs to look different than Urbanspoon. Twitter needs to be distinct from Facebook. Flickr separate from Photobucket.
The notion that the icon should be immediately communicative of the app's purpose is a nice one that just doesn't scale. Sure, you see envelope you think email, you see telephone you see phone. What happens when you see a TV? Is that your HBO app? Your ABC app? Hulu?
Any app of sufficient complexity would be better represented via branding rather than a pictograph of its basic function.
FWIW, I still disagree with pictograms replacing labels. I'm a fan of the idea conceptually, but in every instance I've seen it done it simply hasn't been intuitive enough for me to consider it a working solution.
Maybe someday someone will get it right - but I'm not holding my breath. Purely pictographic iconography is like the cold fusion of UI design.
Take Win8 for example, which I've been using for the past two weeks - the UI is very deliberately minimalist, and drops almost all labels from icons. This has proven to be very frustrating.
Some buttons are very self-evident and work - the back button in Metro apps, the WiFi icon, etc, have fairly self-evident functions.
Others (and there are many) are just terribly confusing, especially for novice users. In the Email app the "send" icon is completely non-obvious, and it's confusing in a situation that disallows trial and error (you just spent 10 minutes typing an email, do you really want to play a game of "wonder what this does"?)
So there are a tiny subset of functions where there exists a universal enough, and popular enough icon that the functionality would be recognizable. Apps, however, go well beyond the dead obvious and implement complex functionality that cannot be easily summarized in a pictograph - especially in a cross-cultural and cross-language way.
I just don't see this working, though I'm personally interested in seeing this pan out.
> FWIW, I still disagree with pictograms replacing labels. I'm a fan of the idea conceptually, but in every instance I've seen it done it simply hasn't been intuitive enough for me to consider it a working solution.
It is a working solution. Pictograms are used in place of labels everyday, in large scale. Look no further than all traffic signs in the planet earth for an example.
For instance, the "back button" is obvious for you because you understand the metaphor. It isn't so clear for someone used to right-to-left scripts, like arabic.
On the other hand, the "send email" action on that particular software you mention has a confusing icon because there's no clear metaphor for what "sending an email" should look like - it's a relatively new idea and no one agreed on a symbol for it, therefore you don't know what to expect.
This is just lack of vision from whoever designed this interface, not a problem with pictograms. You only use pictograms when you can transmit an idea more concisely. If the most concise explanation you have is a label, then a label it should be.
But when you have multiple services that all cover the same basic thing, your icon needs to transcend its very basic function. Yelp, for example, needs to look different than Urbanspoon. Twitter needs to be distinct from Facebook. Flickr separate from Photobucket.
The notion that the icon should be immediately communicative of the app's purpose is a nice one that just doesn't scale. Sure, you see envelope you think email, you see telephone you see phone. What happens when you see a TV? Is that your HBO app? Your ABC app? Hulu?
Any app of sufficient complexity would be better represented via branding rather than a pictograph of its basic function.