>Now, Google is no Samsung, but they're a long way from Apple or even Microsoft on the UX front.
Not sure I agree with this. I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.
Honestly, in terms of staff UI design cred Android is in better place than iOS right now.
With the Sidekick, PalmOS, and then Material Design, Matías Duarte has been consistently at the forefront of mobile UI design.
Jony Ive is probably the most brilliant consumer electronics hardware designer in the world, but I have yet to see any indication that he has any idea how to lead a platform UI design project. I had issues with Scott Forstall's style, but he was at least leading the charge somewhere.
In my opinion, force click, Siri, 3D wallpapers, etc, have not been major coups in terms of UI finesse. At best Apple is in a holding pattern right now, I haven't seen any indication that they're pushing the state of the art outside of the hardware. The animations keep getting flashier and smoother, but that's not really UI design.
I thought Ive's strong understanding of design methodology would be enough, but I think maybe software design requires a different way of thinking. I don't know.
I think it is a matter of personal taste. I personally don't like the material design. I enjoy the thin typography and design of iOS, and finding myself enjoying the experience of "Messages" in iOS at the moment. The "tapback" feature letting me heart/thumbs up some message is elegantly done IMO. And the knowledge that the receiver is also getting it the way I intended is great.
Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis. You're talking about style, which is about expression more than outcomes, and is received in a very personal way.
When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there. The purpose of the design work is to make it usable.
>Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis.
No it cannot. First, because nobody cares about the goals of the designer -- it's all about the goals and satisfaction of the users.
(E.g. if the designer is in love with themselves and find everything they do great, then any crap design they've made that they're fine with, can be said to "satisfy their goals" and by this logic is "objectively good").
If you meant "satisfies the designer's stated goals when it comes to actual use" (e.g. make the UI intuitive, convenient, powerful, etc") then notice how all those words are still subjective, and the various hard objective design laws (Fitts law, etc) are not enough to cover the entirety of a design.
And of course all those are about the UX. A design can have great UX but still look like crap in the aesthetics department -- and this is also quite subjective.
>When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there.
That's (someone's rejection) is the definition of subjective though.
So much for "design success is objective". If you meant "refusal to use can be objectively measured" sure, but that doesn't say much about the design.
Said person could be a bizarro outlier that prefers some way worse design for example.
"Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. "
But, what if I like/dislike the designers goals? In other words, if the designer painstakingly crafts a detail I don't care about, does it mean it is a good design?
Not trying to prove any point. Just trying to understand your perspective.
> In other words, if the designer painstakingly crafts a detail I don't care about, does it mean it is a good design?
If that detail helps them achieve their desired business outcomes, then yes. You might not like the product, but the design work is good. If you are trying to weed your garden, a Tesla is not useful to you. That doesn't mean it's a bad design, it just wasn't designed for that particular need.
All design comes from a specific set of values, and can only be evaluated within the context of those values. The notion of universal design is a fiction. It's the remnant of the colonialist mindset, where there is a presumption of universal values.
>Sounds like you're describing Art more than Design.
And even at that, parent goes for a controversial, "if it fits the goals of the artist it is fine" view of art, which is hardly some universally accepted standard for art.
Dictionaries usually lag consensus among practitioners about what a field is really about. What is software engineering? We update our answer year after year, but Oxford English only does every decade at best.
Matías Duarte has been consistently at the forefront of mobile UI design.
This is a pretty subjective statement. It seems that a lot of Duarte's designs are somewhat derivative. Material extends MS's Flat design. I'm also not sure how much of that is Duarte, its a pretty open secret that Google makes use of some pretty high end digital agencies who aren't allowed to let folks know what they're working on.
WebOS was pretty tacky though an interesting OS design - actually implemented better by LG on their SmartTVs.
The Sidekick may have been his most interesting product but it was completely broadsided by the release of the iPhone and was n't anywhere near competitive to the Blackberry so I'm not sure how innovative it was.
If anything Duarte's had pretty good record for working on products with innovative features but never necessarily ground breaking on UI/UX
> WebOS was pretty tacky though an interesting OS design - actually implemented better by LG on their SmartTVs.
I've got to stop you there. WebOS was far ahead of its time, and especially considered in the context of a small startup going against established players, was brilliant.
It offered in some ways better and more intuitive usability than iOS, along with a great app development ecosystem and philosophy.
Palm's WebOS devices were a pleasure to use, in a time when that was a very rare thing for a mobile device.
Agreed. WebOS was the only other OS other than iOS that offered the singular upgrade experience.
It was clunky under the hood and never received enough love. It would have been interesting to see where WebOS (phone) would be today had Palm survived.
Preware was one of the most amazing pieces of software I've ever seen on mobile (I remember going out at lunch multiple times to hang around a fast public wifi spot to try and download an LDXE-based chroot that was too large for my home connection).
Stuff like Xposed is interesting, but I haven't seen any software for mobile that managed to match the kind of community driven tweaking that Preware fostered.
I see this any time WebOS is mentioned but this makes WebOS sound a lot more innovative than it was. WebOS is widely lauded for two things: (1) the card application interface and (2) the accompanying physics/gestures, especially swipe from edge. Now these are great and appropriately lauded but that is a short list that really pales compared to a similar list of things the iPhone OS had introduced at that time. Other than that WebOS is basically a nicely polished clone of the iPhone OS. Even the cards metaphor itself, the hallmark of WebOS, was used two years earlier in the original iPhone in Mobile Safari and Cover Flow.
My wife had a Palm Pre with WebOS when I had an iPhone 3G. The Pre was pure crap, but the OS was very interesting and intuitive. I rarely had to help her with it. She's had iPhones since then, which can frustrate her due to how it handles settings, and she hates changes -- this week it's the removal of swipe to unlock :)
Apps that follow it will all have a similar look and feel on a platform... however, you can still make both good and bad UIs within that (or any other) framework. It doesn't alleviate the need to work with a UI designer.
There are certainly a fair number of developers who will just download a Material-styled template. But please don't assume that you can't do much more.
I don't agree with this. It is the same as iOS: design an app with the barebones, you will have a soulless app. The OS doesn't matter. What it matters it's what devs do with the visual kit. There is few innovation in app design in Android and this will be like this until the Android market turns out more profitable.
It's kinda like reference hardware. It's the baseline, with nothing special or unique. It takes a talented designer to take the toolkit and design language, and extend those to inject their own style and character into the finished product so that it both solves the specific needs of the product being designed by clarifying the interface to the user - and hopefully delights the user in some way to make the experience of using the app not just tolerable but delightful.
So, in a sense material design is too restrictive to let designers think outside of the box.
I get that opinion. But allow me to play the devil's advocate:
Mobile interfaces are small and restrictive. Touch screens and gestures have zero discoverability. Interfaces must scale to a multitude of different screen sizes and resolutions. Flare hurts usability in these situations. When designers break convention it is far more likely to result in confusion or frustration by end users. Well defined standards can enable me to use your app without even looking at the screen and drastically improve accessibility for things like screen readers.
I think the tendency toward flare stems from design education that emphasizes print media and tries to make a direct translation into Web/UX Design. Print media, and advertisements are meant to grab your attention, establish unique brand design language and brand identity. But If I'm already on your website or using your app you already have my attention. You've already sold me. Now simply help me accomplish the task I am here for in the least painful way possilbe. Branching out beyond common guidelines and creating new interface conventions may scratch your creative itch but it is rarely more efficient or easy to use that established conventions.
Coming from someone who WANTS to love android for philosophical reasons and bought the google nexus, google nexus 5x. I always went back to iphone. The biggest issue is the device is not very good in comparison to the current gen iphone. It feels 1-2 gen behind in performance.
In a nutshell: Android itself isn't actually any slower, but it _seems_ slower due to garbage collection pauses.
When Android stutters, you can put money on it being down to the garbage collector running at an inopportune moment. This is the downside of most Android apps being built in Java, whereas most iOS apps are written in Objective C, which uses reference counting and so you have more deterministic release of allocated memory. The upside of this is little or no stuttering, but the downside is that you can still end up with pauses, but they can be in places which are hidden from the user. The other downside of GC is that developers can lean on it a bit more than is justifiable to create needless duplicates of objects on the assumption that they'll be garbage collected eventually... which can lead to GC stutter. A lot of Android's 'slowness' issues would go away if devs were a bit more careful with how they allocate their objects.
Another thing that makes Android seem slower than iOS is that Android gives apps a pretty lengthy grace period when they hang for some reason and will alert the user if it thinks the app has hung. iOS, OTOH, is less tolerant of this kind of thing and will just kill the offending app and rely on the app to restore its state when restarted. This hides a lot of issues with apps on iOS that are more obvious on Android. Which choice is better is a matter of debate: the iOS route gives the better user experience 90% of the time, but when you want that 10%, you really want that 10%.
Emulators (and quite a lot of games too) tend to be written in C and C++, which means they do manual memory management or use the conservative Boehm GC, so you end up with little or no GC stutter. OTOH, if the developer isn't careful, you're more likely to end up with memory leaks.
You must have a lot of nightmares then.
My old iphone 4 lasted happily for 4 years and after I gave it to my sister in law. I couldn't force myself to use the awful nexus 5 for even two years.
And I really went close to throw that piece of crap against the wall.
Apparently the "new" nexus 5x is even slower than that for some reason that is beyond human comprehension.
You really have very low performance standard, like my friend that enjoys his Nexus 5x even if it feels like a slo-mo fest compared to my iphone.
Good for you, but please don't even try to convince anyone of the super performance of your favourite phone.
iOS is in a tough position, the road of incremental changes is coming to an end. The icon-based home screen is showing it's age and will need a revolution rather than an evolution. You can kinda see Apple dipping it toes into the widget arena with the notifications area, yet they're probably hesitant to remake the whole home screen and risk alienating their current users. Tech savvy people won't mind a new home screen concept but for the "dad's and mom's out" there it might be a tough sell.
Apple's leadership in UI design the last couple of years has been a little lackluster. While they seem to be able to iterate, with a few missteps, I'm less sure about their capability to get a whole revamp done right.
The talent is surely there but the question is whether the leadership and willing to take the right risks is. It's going to be interesting going forward, I'm guessing they will have to introduce something widget/tile -ish in the next phone
It seems very telling to me that the Standard Windows Desktop is generally considered a wasteland of discarded program and file icons, basically where you throw your digital trash...yet iOS decided that this was the design they wanted for the main start page of their OS.
No wonder there is such a divide among users. I don't think age has anything to do with it though.
The huge difference here is that on iOS you don't have random files lying around your home screen. The springboard is for apps, with a dock for the most common ones to persist between screens.
On Windows (and macOS) the desktop is fundamentally different, used differently, and is often obscured by your windowed content.
If by "single folder on a hidden home page containing unused default apps" you mean "App draw", then you've described Androids (arguably superior) default UX.
Put another way.. You're manually 'fixing' the iOS UX to operate like the Android "default"?
Glanceable information on the home screen is useful so users don't have to open every app, it also changes the home screen from being just "an launcher" to potentially provide useful information that you might need rather then being "just a launcher". It's just "one step less" in some scenarios.
Notifications are great for things that need your attention but the home screen becomes a little more of a seredipious view of app information that can increase the usefulness and engagement with an app
I think right now using the notifications screen for this 'at a glance' info and using the home screen for launching full apps, accomplishes the goal you are seeking.
I would love to see the iPad interface evolve a bit and not look so much like my phone. I don't feel like they are using all that space as elegantly as they could be.
It's getting there, but it's not ideal yet. At a glance means I don't have to do anything but glance. To see the widgets now, you have to wake up the phone and then swipe right.
On recent iPhones, waking up the phone just means picking it up. The swipe right is still an issue, though; it'd be nice if they could get rid of that. (Maybe default to the widgets view if there are no notifications?)
You are spot on. IIRC correctly there are built in hacks to make at least the clock and calendar icons show correct information, but for example the weather icon never tells you it rains. IMHO the Microsoft Live Tiles on Windows phone do make iOS look dated. Luckily for Apple, no one is buying those phones.
Age is not a sign that's something is broken. Apples main lead is they need much less hardware to get good preformance which means smaller and longer lasting battery's and better profit margins. Giving that up for a useless status screen is a terrace idea that would cost them 10's if not 100's of billions of dollars.
Nothing wrong with the age of an UI per se, but I think the notion of App's as silos which need to be individually opened get its information is rather old fashioned, and not ideal from an UX POV. Being able to quickly glance information from weather, email, social media does do quite a lot to lessen unnecessary UI excise.
I don't think it has anything to do with hardware, they can be engineered in such a way they don't needlessly drain the battery, nor do I think most people would feel it was useless. Then again, people sometimes don't miss something before they have it :)
This kind of thinking is the one of them forces that drive initially good-enough designs into complete bullshit by spiral "aging" and "revolution" of even simple things. Thanks for all software that I dumped because of that.
The problems I have with the iPhone are 1) lack of a back button, so I have to learn every single screen of every single application and 2) the app store.
I had to help a friend to find a qrcode app on Sunday. Look for qrcode in the store, 842 found. Wow... None of them has a review or stars. How do you trust them? We kept scrolling for a while, nothing. Compare that with the Google store. It doesn't tell me how many qrcode apps are there but it gives me a rating for every single one. Then it's the usual hunt for the app with no ads and least permissions, but that's the same on the iPhone.
A back button would make no sense to me. There are situations in apps when you can't "go back" -- wait, do you mean some physical back button?! Otherwise, there's the "Return to..." feature, the fact that the back button in most iOS apps is always the top left button of the navigation bar, and there's always the left edge swipe. If you can't figure out how to go back in an app, then it's the app's fault, not the phone's. "I have to learn every single screen of every single app" -- come on, bro, that's a bit much.
As for the store, well, the App Store actually has standards and minimums for apps and reviews. I would think a google search for "best qrcode app ios" would yield better results than your strange method, but, hey, to each his own.
Samsung phones have physical back buttons. Other Androids have them on screen, which I find very annoying. In my limited experience not every iOS app has a way to go back to the previous screen. Maybe it doesn't make sense there but Android apps and web pages are built around that concept of history. I couldn't find a way to go back from an app detail page to the search results page in the App Store. My friend, which uses iOS since a long time, couldn't too. I guess she's not very expert at navigating iOS apps. Maybe that left edge swype would do, I'm learning it now, she seemed not to know it.
She was as clueless as me about the lack of stars. We looked for qrcode in the App store. This is what I would have done on my Android. She didn't suggest an alternative. A very basic iOS user?
> The icon-based home screen is showing it's age and will need a revolution rather than an evolution.
Well, perhaps they can license Live Tiles from Microsoft. There are definitely things to like there, and Microsoft's certainly not using them on phones anymore - at least not as far as real-world usage can show.
Well, they're half way there with the "force"-push shortcut actions on icons. It's a good idea even if discovery is a little bad. That was easier to add however since it really doesn't interfere with existing users. Changing how the home screen looks for everyone might be perceived as risky.
> In my opinion, force click, Siri, 3D wallpapers, etc, have not been major coups in terms of UI finesse.
I wouldn't say force click is a coup... it's like Android's menu button in the way it hides functionality and non-standard UX. Heaven knows what's going to happen if I trigger it random app. Google was wise enough to drop the Menu button in Android
It's hard to buy that argument. It doesn't appear Material ever attempted to be better than iOS, just different. And now Google Design is quietly backtracking (dialogs are transitioning to iOS action sheets, hamburger button is being phased out for bottom tab navigation). And now the phone even looks even more like an iPhone. Let's be honest, there are only two rules for design at Google: "Not Apple" and "good enough".
Honestly I notice more Android on my iPad than I notice iOS on my phone. iOS finally got custom keyboards so I can use a proper mobile keyboard like Swype, the notification panel isn't as useless as it was and is a lot richer like on Android. Its really only a matter of time until iOS introduces widgets on the home screen. I've convinced more than a couple people to switch to Android for their phone simply because you can have your calendar and todo list right where you can always see it.
Were hamburger buttons an Android thing? I noticed them everywhere, including on the web.
I had also thought that it was more of an Android thing. But apparently it's been the rat in the walls of computer UI since the 1980s on the Xerox Star and DOS, now blown up by Twitter and Facebook.
https://blog.placeit.net/history-of-the-hamburger-icon/
I second this.Gmail is something that I use regularly on iOS and the interface is so ancient compared to gmail on Android.
This is true for a lot of applications except maybe google photos.
I'm already regretting giving Google so much of my personal data, no way in Hell am I going to give a copy of it to MS. But I agree about the interface since I use Outlook for work emails.
> I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.
You can get AOSP on a lot of phones, you just have to be comfortable flashing a custom ROM.
I don't understand why anyone would pay iPhone prices for an Android phone. Even if the hardware quality is similar (which it won't be, because Apple SoCs are at least a generation ahead of everyone else) Android app quality is much worse.
I'm saying this as someone who has only ever used Android.
I just can't see the justification to spending this much money on a phone Google will drop support for after 2 years, in addition to never fixing some issues that are present at launch (look up the Nexus 4 camera reset issue, which Google never fixed).
I'm using a Xiaomi Redmi 2 I picked up new from AliExpress for $125 USD with free shipping to Europe, and I'm running Marshmallow via CM. Works perfectly, in fact most of the time it's better than $300-400 phones thanks to not being loaded to the gills with Google Apps crapware (seriously I have no use for Google Play Music, Books, News, etc)
Edit: for people down voting this, could you explain why? I've left my opinion here and if you disagree with it, I'd love to hear why. I don't believe I've stated anything factually incorrect.
> I just can't see the justification to spending this much money on a phone Google will drop support for after 2 years, in addition to never fixing some issues that are present at launch (look up the Nexus 4 camera reset issue, which Google never fixed).
Plus, you can't just walk into a local Google Store and use the accidental damage insurance to replace your phone on the spot (or repair it within an hour or so) if you dropped it and cracked the screen.
I don't want to mail my phone in to a repair center and be without a phone for a few days. I want it fixed or exchanged in a short time while I wait, and I won't pay iPhone prices for a Pixel phone if I can't get that level of service.
Purchases of high-end items are not motivated merely the items themselves. They are also motivated by the level of service the buyer gets if something goes wrong. For example, if you bring your Toyota to the dealership for service, you'll be lucky to get a loaner car. If you bring your Lexus to the dealership for service, you'll almost certainly get a loaner car that's even nicer than the car you brought in.
If you buy an Apple product, you get a pretty big network of retail stores with free support and fast service turnaround. If you buy a Pixel, what do you get other than the phone itself?
> I don't want to mail my phone in to a repair center and be without a phone for a few days.
FYI: I've been a long time Android user and can tell you that the process works different. And is actually not as bad as you think.
1) You call the hotline, they send you a link via mail
2) Clicking this link will place you in their shop with a promo-code
3) You buy the replacement phone
4) Once you've got the replacement you send in the broken one (or if you feel like it earlier)
5) Once they recieved the broken one, you get a refund on you purchase
Knowing this process so well is the reason I've bought me an iphone 7 now ;-)
I had an HTC One with a defective camera and HTC had no process like this. I would have had to send them the phone and wait.
Verizon helped me out and sent a refurb phone without me having to return my phone first. The refurb camera was even worse.
After that I went iPhone. No reason to pay the same price for Android and get crappy service, especially when the iPhone has resale value. A used Android has no resale value whatsoever.
However, if the Pixel is like other Androids the list price is a joke and carriers will be discounting it shortly.
I wonder if the Pixel will have good resale value. It seems just as well-built as an iPhone, but unless Google changes its update policy, the Pixel won't be able to run new versions of Android after two years. That is a huge drag on resale value.
I don't know about you, but if I was in the market for a used phone, I'd go for one that could run the latest OS.
The Pixel seems to me to be a vindication of the Apple model: controlling both the hardware and software can get you a pretty good product, and in the case of upgrades, you only have to support the hardware that you yourself have released. There is no technical reason Google can't support the Pixel phones for years, like Apple does, but I doubt they will do that.
Indeed, google on promises 2 years. But are typically much more generous. For instance the nexus 5 came out in Oct, 2013. It got marshmallow, but not nougat. I suspect it would have (it has plenty of ram/cpu), but for whatever reason qualcom didn't update the video driver for the snapdragon 800.
If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat.
> If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat.
Or I can buy an iPhone and run the latest software with zero effort.
That is a big difference, especially when you consider that the vast majority of consumers would have to look up the terms "AOSP" and "bootloader" after reading your comment, and even after looking them up, would have no idea what to do.
I should have added that I had this process with multiple nexus devices, thus my "shop" was google. I would expect them to handle the pixel phones the same way.
Yup, get a OnePlus, get a Xiaomi, but what's the gain in going from one of those devices to a Pixel or the latest Samsung or even an iPhone? Pretty much nothing, a different UI, maybe a slightly better camera. It still does almost everything the exact same.
Specs are very often on par (this Pixel is pretty damn close to a OP3, less RAM and less ) and the phones are 40% or more cheaper! It's just plain stupid.
I picked up a used Nexus 6 (in excellent condition) recently, and it is an incredible device. I'm also on the bleeding edge OS-wise, as I get Android Beta/Preview releases.
My primary device is an iPhone 6 Plus, and I have to say, Nexus 6 and Android N is really impressive from both a hardware and software perspective.
That being, I wish Google decoupled device drivers from the Android image.
If they adopted the Windows on PC device driver model, it would be so great for users, especially those with older and less supported phones.
>If they adopted the Windows on PC device driver model, it would be so great for users...
I seriously doubt it. I just changed my broadband provider at home. Our Macs, mobile devices and WDTV connected to the new wifi router immediately, but it took 2 hours to get the Windows laptop to connect to the internet. It found the wifi network fine, but no internet. This has happened before. Googling found dozens of hits for this issue, all with different solutions that worked for different people and each time it's happened to me on the same laptop different solutions have worked, such as: Delete the device in device manager and then scan for new hardware; ipconfig /renew; fiddling with Advanced driver settings.
This time I fixed it by reverting from the Microsoft driver to the vendor provided driver. The last thing we need on our phones is hardware, drivers and OS developed by different companies that don't talk to each other and don't do proper whole-system integration testing on all builds and upgrades.
The battery-conserving mechanisms of Android are not particularly hardware-specific on most devices.
Ideally, Android (or their patched version of the Linux kernel) would expose an API for each different kind of device. An general API for cameras, an API for audio, etc. The manufacturers would then write device drivers that implement / fulfill the functionality of these open/generic APIs. (This is how things are done on PCs.)
Some phones have two CPUs or SoCs, one being energy-efficient and the other highly-performant, and the system switches between them based on the workload. But an update of the OS could simply add & expose an additional new API for dual-SoC systems.
Decoupling device drivers and OS releases would be a huge win for everyone. We'd get the security update swith newer OSes, and even driver updates would be simpler.
PC peripheral manufacturers often release updates to their device drivers, and for a Linux and Windows users its relatively straightforward to update a device driver. E.g., I just updated my Nvidia graphics driver on Linux to the latest version two days ago. I have several kernel modules installed, and apt-get handled everything seamlessly, and built a new kernel image in a jiffy.
How often do you see device drivers updated on Android? Especially if there's a bug, how long before it's fixed? All of the drivers on Android are baked into this giant system image, and the system image contains so many disparate components, that shouldn't all be locked together. The Android system image release process is so broken. The Google -> Manufacturer -> Carrier approval & release is slow and dysfunctional.
The best way to go would be to adopt standard Linux distro practices, use a good package manager (like NixOS) that'll manage and assemble all the disparate system components, instead of shipping one giant frozen-in-time system image.
> The manufacturers would then write device drivers that implement / fulfill the functionality of these open/generic APIs. (This is how things are done on PCs.)
This is not a full picture how things work on PCs. There are also dependencies - i.e. you cannot power down the bus, while the device on the other end is not powered down. Things get more interesting, when you have SoC that implements multiple functions and there are interdependecies, where you would not expect them. The entire problem with Skylake mobile chips is, that nobody knows how to properly change the power states and Intel isn't telling anyone.
Even linux distros are on their way to manage the system in image-like way. See project atomic, or this video: https://youtu.be/XNLPkMDf9LI
Where are you basing this on? Out of some social media apps (Facebook and Snapchat) I have found that Android apps are on-par with their iOS counterparts.
Not the grandparent, but having used Android for years I would argue that's true too. Consider that Android apps are generally even made second for a lot of startups, so in a lot of cases Android forfeits by not even having an app in their ecosystem. Most YC companies are in that boat too--companies that make the iOS version first.
I use both. Currently I have an ipad and an android phone.
Android apps are neglected next to ios. Examples:
* spotify is shit on android. They broke audio playback during system announcements (like google maps directions) and just didn't give a damn for two months. It's not like anybody uses spotify and maps in a car or anything.
* most bank apps on android still don't take advantage of fingerprint auth to avoid typing long bank passwords. Four word passwords with punctuation are super fun to type on mobile.
* fitbit: Until about 6 months ago, pushing back from various subscreens would take you out of the app instead of navigating back to the main screen. There's clearly no-one who matters at fitbit that cares about android. It also doesn't particularly reliably connect to the device. Graphs and data desync from each other. I have not seen this on ios.
* there really isn't any reader on android as nice as GoodReader
* games come second, if ever -- eg kingdom rush frontiers
At the time I bought it, Good Reader's advantages where:
* a full file manager, with folders;
* various ways to get files on and off: a built in web server to upload files, good dropbox integration;
* the ability to crop pdf pages to just the text to get rid of margins so your ipad isn't displaying an inch of whitespace next to the text. Also the ability to set different crop sizes/locations for even and odd pages.
* bookmarks, plus the ability to email them to yourself
* tabbed files, including the ability to open a single file more than once so you can easily switch back and forth between different locations
I haven't kept up with Adobe's Reader, but it has 3 stars while goodreader costs more and continues to get glowing reviews.
I agree with this as an Android user. The lack of device support from Google is appalling. And all my nexus devices (4, 7) have had major hardware flaws that never get fixed - once you're past the warranty, you're SOL. The 7 had many touch screen problems, and a very flimsy charger port (which broke under warranty, then broke again after - so I can't charge it anymore :|).
If you want decent hardware on Android, you have to go with Samsung. But their support for devices is even worse than Google - my Tab S just got Marshmallow. And touchwiz really hurts the Android experience.
Compare to Apple - I still have a first generation iPad that my kids use, and it's still going strong. It's a bit dented, but that thing is a tank.
I match your 1st gen iPad and raise you an iPhone 3GS. My youngest just upgraded to a hand-me-down iPhone 4 a few weeks ago, but my old 3GS is still working fine and even still works with the App Store. I can still download apps on to it that I bought back in 2009 and don't even show up in the store on modern devices, but they're still there for the 3GS. She used it for Whatsapp a lot. Gobsmacked.
I match your iPhone 3GS and raise an 3G. That thing had last iOS release 4.x, which made it unusable and I was scrambling to return it to 3.x. It wasn't capable to download anything from Apple Store for years. It still works as a phone though, also most of the built-in apps work, (except for syncing with Google account, since Google disabled ActiveSync support).
What a difference one year of device age can make.
I had a 3G as well. We got maybe 3 years of useful work out of it, but that's all. It ended up with my wife's sister in China. The 3GS looked the same and seemed like an incremental update, but the improvements made a massive difference. Then the year after they came out with the iPhone 4. Wow! Those 2 years look like 5 years or more worth of advances in retrospect.
>(which it won't be, because Apple SoCs are at least a generation ahead of everyone else)
Can anyone confirm if this is true? I thought the general advantage for i[a-zA-Z0-9]\+ is a well defined small N number of targets, which allow great optimization. Generally, the parts on apple things are a bit older than the competition but they pull off more (at least in user's eyes) compared with Android due to that optimization.
> the parts on apple things are a bit older than the competition
Not sure where you got that impression, maybe you're thinking about Apple's laptops? Apple get the best and the latest from TSMC, which at the moment is 16nm finfet and next year expected to be 10nm finfet. Intel is the only company with a better process, and they don't make smartphone SoCs. And Apple has hired all the best Austin-based talent for their design team, poaching AMD and others heavily.
Recently, Apple has been about a year ahead. Compare the A9 (which shipped in the 6s in fall 2015) with the Snapdragon 810 (which shipped in the Nexus 6p at the same time).
Especially since there's not much effort from Apple needed to keep the Mac lineup modernized. Intel does much of the work for them.
Apple could just drop new Intel chips into their existing MacBooks as they get released, and easily be getting improved speed + efficiency each year. The new Kaby Lake chips even do hardware 4K video and VP9. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/intel-unveils-kaby-la...
They have a lot more control over the mobile processors. The laptop processors have to maintain compatibility with all the software that people run on their laptops; effectively, that means they're stuck with other people's processors.
That's not really true. x86 emulation is a solved problem at this point, and Apple has shown willingness to use emulation to bridge an ISA transition in the past.
I think the real reason is some combination of (a) ARM isn't competitive (or only recently became competitive) at the high power/high performance point that Intel CPUs excel at; (b) the Mac line generates so much less revenue and operates at so much smaller of a scale than iOS devices that it isn't worth developing CPUs in-house for them, not to mention the fixed costs associated with undergoing a transition.
I guess Apple could 'survive' releasing a new generation of laptops which run slower than the previous ones to facilitate a user-invisible component sourcing decision, but it seems like a bad move.
It'd be temporary and only for third-party apps, not Apple-supplied ones. But yes, I do agree that it's not worth it for them--this is part of what I mean by high fixed costs of switching.
I would - only because of the investment required. Over the past few years, Apple's been very involved in its iOS ecosystem, while investing comparatively little in its Mac lineup.
Dumping Intel chips would take a ton of effort and resources, in an area where Apple isn't interested in making an effort or investing resources.
You're right, it would take a huge investment in effort and resources. You will know they are doing this when you see the Mac lineup sit unchanged for a long time...
Single core performance is still the single most important metric for most users, especially since things like web browsers tend bottleneck on single thread performance and browsing is one of the most common things people use phones for, especially given how commonly native apps use embedded web views.
Measuring browser performance is hard because there's a lot of different functionality but notice how routinely we see reviews where the device the Android flagship phones are trying to beat is the iPhone 6 or even 2013's 5S:
Some of that reflects the considerable amount of work which Apple has put into Mobile Safari but a lot of that is going to come down to single thread performance.
That's why I mentioned embedded web views: a lot of time recorded as native apps involves embedded web-views and these days that means things like JavaScript or layout performance matter more than might be immediately obvious. On iOS, the least involved way to see this is in things like news apps where Safari content blockers also block advertisements in the app.
The other side of this is that we're not really talking about which app has the most time in the foreground so much as which app causes the user to wait the most. Much of that time will be network I/O which is a real challenge but also not relevant to this discussion about CPU performance.
Fundamentally, all I'm trying to say is that Amdahl's law still applies until we're at the point where the user is never waiting on computation. Developers have been getting better at multithreading but uneven CPU usage is still common enough that I'd favor fewer faster cores over more slower cores.
Part of that is not so much just that Apple is "way ahead" as it is that Qualcomm is falling far behind -- and Qualcomm's roadmap is effectively Android's roadmap, for many OEMs.
That Xiaomi Redmi 2 seems to be exactly what I've been looking for. Maybe a little big but I'll take it if it means CM support, replaceable battery and swappable SD card. Any idea if it works on Project Fi? I can't seem to find a definitive answer.
If you aren't aware (I wasn't), xiaomi phones run miui which is somewhat different than stock android. Google miui before you buy. Or you have to be comfortable installing an android distribution.
Really? That's sad to hear, back in the Android 2.4 days I used to love MIUI and would flash it on my devices intentionally as it had so many features that weren't yet in Android. Quick settings, dial by letters, just generally nicer look and feel. I guess a lot of this has been integrated now, but damn, it used to be nice.
Careful what you wish for. I have an Ubuntu phone which is mainly web app based, and while its fine for most things, traveling abroad without a roaming plan renders the phone pretty useless.
I didn't mean that they could do it literally today. Offline capability is already present in some browsers though and producing a polished web app allows universal deployment. It wouldn't have the same look and feel as native apps though and performance is an issue for some things, but not most things.
Agreed, and I personally like Cyanogenmod and OxygenOS a lot, too. In fact, I think Touchwiz is the only (major) Android iteration that I haven't enjoyed using.
Frankly, I don't get all the hype about iOS' user experience - every time I've had to use an Apple device, I've found just about every task much more cumbersome.
Having used both extensively (but Android more so), I find them both pretty straightforward to use for most common tasks. Both still have their more granular settings hidden behind menus but that seems to be the tradeoff for surface simplicity and aesthetics.
That said, every so often there's something I need to do or want to do that's a little bit outside of the default setup. Little things that matter to me nonetheless. Things like keyboard layout, default apps, home screen layout, icon spacing, etc.
On iOS the keyboard thing seems to be solved now with addon keyboards but even those other minor preferences or layout tweaks are often limited or impossible on iOS (unless you manage to jailbreak your device). On Android they're usually just a setting change, app install, or (rarely) an APK install from an independent developer away.
This isn't meant so much as a critique of the Apple way of doing things. I'm well aware that my needs and wants aren't necessarily the norm or in line with the majority. Spending efforts addressing every possible use can cause just as much harm as good in a final product.
That said, once I have multiple options that both "succeed" well, I start to choose based on which one "fails" better (ie: which one makes it easier for me to change or fix the rare thing that doesn't just work the way I want it to).
Frankly a lot of people don't get the hype about having to install custom ROMs to make their phones behave in a tolerable way.
People are always going to find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use, yet to you this is proof Android is better?
THANK YOU! We are mostly techy folks here, and I don't understand how anyone could say to the average user "just install a ROM and it's a big improvement on the software that ships with it." As correct as that is in my experience, you seriously expect grandma or even just your average non-techie user to even give a shit? My wife can't be bothered to turn wifi on when she gets home because she doesn't even think about it, and you want me to have her unlock her bootloader and flash something? hah. Perspective folks.
I'm a technophile myself albeit one that has spent the better part of a lifetime interacting with non-technical users. Such experience has left me with impression that expecting end-users to do anything I would consider bothersome, or requiring even a modicum of effort, is a no sale proposition. This is true when it comes to actually improving one's experience, to say nothing of achieving a reasonable baseline. If people have to jump through hoops to achieve usability, it seems a fair bet that they won't be a repeat customer.
This is a crux isn't it? Do you want an information appliance that simply works and happens to have pre-approved software choices (albeit a huge number), or a pocket general purpose computing device (with less accessory/software support, but hey you can always install custom software)?
I like a happy medium myself. For whatever it is worth, I've found that despite an appliance-like nature, I can extend iOS with third-party and custom software to my satisfaction. The key point here is that I don't have to resort to such in order to have a good experience as an end-user.
I'd argue that iOS falls between the extremes you've highlighted. It isn't really a general purpose computing platform as evident in the differences between say how multitasking and filesystems are implemented and what they expose to the end-user. On the other hand, the core OS has always supported preemptive multitasking and has always had a real filesystem to boot. The limitations of the presentation are inconveniences to be sure, but still I can slap together an app in Objective-C or Swift and slap it on the phone with ease.
That said I'm sure there are some tasks more easily achieved on traditional systems. That noted, if memory serves this was also the case with the PC/desktop transition. Desktops couldn't do everything big iron could do, but they did enough, it would seem.
Well, given that most Android users don't do that, and that iOS users do their share of custom ROM installation, 'a lot of people' seem to be 'setting up straw men' as opposed to 'getting the hype'.
>People are always going to find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use, yet to you this is proof Android is better?
I use an iPhone 6S daily at work, so I'm not one of those people and I don't deign to speak for them or anyone else. As far as my experience is concerned, yes, Android is better.
> Well, given that most Android users don't do that, and that iOS users do their share of custom ROM installation ...
I never named any specifics on the matter of platform preferences as regards installation of custom roms.
You seem a bit defensive.
> I use an iPhone 6S daily at work, so I'm not one of those people [who ... find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use]
You're employing a different and less expansive standard of normal use than I. Using a tool for work is using a tool in only a single context.
Unless you have a lot of time to burn playing around on your phone at work, or develop for the phone you use at work, you're not likely to get to know how to use the device very well outside of the specific tasks entailed in your job duties.
> and I don't deign to speak for them or anyone else.
Reference my comment to r00fus above and note the terminology I used when speaking of my opinions.
"I like a happy medium myself.", "I've found", "I can", "to my satisfaction", "I don't have to"
I made no less than five references to myself in a single paragraph where I rendered an opinion on personal preferences. And even then I didn't resort to suggesting experiences that forged my personal preferences dictates what is best for others.
> As far as my experience is concerned ...
"The plural of data is not anecdote."
> yes, Android is better
This is the kind of generalization I have a hard time with. Android is better for some tasks, and iOS for others. Just as Windows is better for some tasks, and macOS for others, and Linux others still. One should always use the right tool for the job. You won't see me making any sweeping claims about which platforms are better.
Also it's worth noting how many comments' worth of debates there are in this thread over specific processors, phones they come in, and software configurations, when the competitor's answer is "we put out a phone once a year, just get the latest whenever you feel like upgrading and it'll be the fastest one out there".
Agreed. I tried iOS for six months this summer, and I found the overall UX very disappointing compared to modern Android at this point.
Some things are still better - unified music controls, backups, and night shift especially. And the hardware/firmware is undeniably fantastic.
But Apple's emphasis on poor contrast and lack of differentiation within the UI really hurts usability, and there's still a lot of unexpected behaviors, such as links opening with a web page telling me to install an app I already have.
Going to back to only having two real notification modes - noisy or silent - felt like a major step backwards as well.
But worst of all was the lack of consistency between apps. I get that some people think MD on Android leads to apps feeling too similar, but I prefer that. My phone isn't a piece of art, it's a functional communication device. I want my apps to use the same, practical design language that gets to the point and doesn't get in the way by trying to be "different".
I have both a nexus 5 and an iPad. I greatly prefer stock Android. Just yesterday my girlfriend was trying to figure out how to turn her ringer off at night while still being able to hear her alarm. Little tasks like that are trivial on Android but difficult on iOS.
How is it not easy to discover? You flip the switch, the phone buzzes and shows you what happened. It's one of the few buttons on the phone, it's not like it's hard to find. Not to mention contextually it's right next to the volume buttons which is where it should be.
When you do that it has a big crossed out bell, which worries you the alarm isn't going to go. I never sleep well if I have an early flight as I'm never 100% sure I haven't silenced the alarm!
I'm pretty sure it's literally impossible to silence the alarm from the built-in Clock app on iOS. Third party apps are subject to the usual notification settings, though.
I was a windows phone user for a long time currently switched to android.I checked quite few android devices and I think Windows phone has better feel and usability for apps like messages, dialer,recent call list,app list etc.I have never used a nexus device though.how is stock Android's basic apps like messages, dialer etc? Do we need to install apps to get basic features like nice threaded views, message search,recent call list which shows duration or simple call history search(instead of searching entire address book) etc?
No message search in hangouts makes me angry to no end. I had message search on my old Windows Phone and got so used to it I don't ever want to go without it again, especially when my girlfriend and I talk about something and then want to refresh my memory later (We discuss ideas we have, preferences, etc. and I used to be able to search for them again, now I can't).
I find the search capabilities in most messenger apps appalling. I have to remember to copy/paste important things to somewhere else because a week later I cannot find them anymore. Whatsapp seems a good exception.
Just got the moto g4 and for under $250. I have a really good looking color customized phone with stock android, that feels good in the hand, unlocked that I can take to any carrier. That is a killer.
I've had the worst time since switching to the OnePlus 3 and from what I've read the OS on this phone is very close to stock Android.
The only way to have a good experience with email, calendars and contacts is to use Google Apps – which I refuse to migrate to. The stock apps have no support for IMAP IDLE, CardDAV, or CalDAV. You have to resort to 3rd party apps for these and they are without fail either slow, buggy, very unappealing visually, or all three.
Have you tried using third party apps on the iPhone? You can't change the default browser, mail client, maps app, etc. on iOS. At least it's possible to switch the defaults to 3rd party apps on Android.
But it sounds like the core apps on iOS work the way they want them to, whereas the alternatives on Android are all lacking. So being able to change is a nice option, but if you don't use it, doesn't really add much.
> But it sounds like the core apps on iOS work the way they want them to, whereas the alternatives on Android are all lacking.
It doesn't make sense to compare the core apps on iOS to the alternatives on Android. The core apps on Android are just as good as (I would say better than) the core apps on iOS.
This is absolutely true -- I'm on a nexus 5/android 6.
There's no native caldav. I use a paid client called caldav-sync which is mediocre. For a while on android 5/lollipop, you had to install a second app (free from the same author) to prevent settings being wiped during OS upgrades/patches. When I upgraded to android 6 I couldn't figure out why calendars weren't syncing until I discovered caldav-sync decided to sync every 6 hours instead of every 5 minutes. The whole thing feels and works like a hack.
Using the gmail app as an imap client for fastmail is crap, particularly if you access the email account from a desktop. The Gmail app regularly desyncs from the state of your email. It has recently decided to announce old emails as new. If you move/delete an email in fastmail from the web client on your desktop, you have to manually tell gmail to sync or it won't notice, even hours after the fact.
I was hoping for a cheap nexus replacement and was also looking at the OnePlus 3. Dual sims are nice too. That's too bad that you don't like it...
I used Aquamail & Davdroid (paid on Play,free on F-droid) for that combo (before my hosting got ActiveSync, for which I another excellent client app called Nine), was working without issues you write about.
The problem with ActiveSync -- which you may be aware of? -- is it gives the server the rights to remote wipe your phone! Great if you control the server and are really (really really really) sure it will never be hacked...
Nine allows you to specify a variety of security-related options including local passcodes, internal app data encryption, and whether the security policy (remote wipe capability) is applied at the application level or at the device level.
I believe many of the other third-party Exchange-connecting apps have the same type of options.
Actually, when I was doing my research, Nine was the only app that allowed you to limit the Exchange policies to app-only level, not device-wide. That's the reason why I ended up using it.
TouchDown, one of the oldest (which does not automatically imply best) should also allow this, though their description isn't quite as clear: "Corporate Data Separation: TouchDown keeps your corporate data separate from your personal data. Without TouchDown, your employer can actually flatten your phone to factory defaults. With TouchDown, they can only remove corporate data belonging to them, leaving behind your personal information."
I might have skipped TouchDown at the time, because 1) it does not integrate with the native calendar and contacts (or at least the screenshots imply that it is a built-in functionality), 2) it looks like from Gingerbread era, 3) has separate versions for phone and tablet.
I had similar problems to those described above and aquamail did alleviate it but at the cost of major battery life. I ended up going back to Gmail since that worked so much better.
I was very surprised to see Android lacking support for CalDav out-of-the-box. Seemed like an obvious feature for a calendar app, yet no provider. So while it might not be much; there are CardDav/CalDav-adapters on f-droid.org, they are free software and work very good in my experience. It integrates so it allows you to use the stock calendar app.
In the end, though, I think the idea with phones like these is that they work "best" if you use the services that the manufacturer supplies, be it Apple or Google. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, Google everything, it's got a lot to offer.
it is quite close to stock android and i think it is quite unfortunate that it is not actually stock android. your critique, while somewhat valid, is not of the oneplus3 but of google's applications.
Try getting an IMAP PUSH on iOS or staying logged in to XMPP or SSH all day and you'll take that back pretty damn quick. How about not wanting to use their phone app and use SIP instead?
These are things I find necessary for day-to-day stuff, but which are simply impossible on iOS. If you want good 3rd party integration, Android is your only option in many cases. You just have to find the good apps.
I guess I should have know. It's just that out of the two I would have expected Apple to be the one forcing you into their ecosystem, yet on iOS I had no trouble having a great experience in respect to email, contacts and calendars without signing into iCloud.
They're both all about forcing you into their ecosystem. The difference is that Apple's business is (mostly) about their hardware ecosystem, while Google's is (mostly) about their online services ecosystem.
This is part of the problem though. Everyone's experience is different. You are on stock, not everyone is. Android market is fragmented whereas with Apple you and your Mom and neighbor are all on the same iOS. Its not hype its real. You showing off your stock android running smooth as butter doesn't help convince someone running a phone preloaded with bloatware and a different UI.
I don't know what the right answer is but Apple has one phone and one OS, android has many phones and many looks to their OS. This could be part of why there will never be an iPhone killer aside from Apple themselves.
The results would be closer on pretty much any other test, but it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison on anything other than talk time. Most review sites still find that this generation of Android flagships have longer web browsing times than the iPhone 7.
Unlike the other dimensions, the difference between ridiculously thin and absurdly thin isn't terribly user-visible, especially given that many people will increase the thickness of their phones by more than that simply through their choice of protective case.
Does not matter, original point was that you should compare apples to apples, and comparing HTC 10 to iPhone 7 plus seems more fair than to iPhone 7 due to their dimensions.
Looks like Apple is middle of the pack among premium phones these days. My experience was with NEXUS 4 and 5, which would often be out of juice when I needed them.
FWIW: I think it's pretty sad that almost all of these phones are certainly collecting this data (even if only in internal dogfood populations, etc), but then the stats we get are based on random things like "talk time" or ...
I wonder if anyone started a public app project that auto-tracks and uploads battery stats that folks can participate in.
> Not sure I agree with this. I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.
This is the go-to line for every Android fan. How many devices out there run stock Android? Is it possible to buy a device with stock Android? How much comp-sci experience are you going to need to make your device run stock Android?
What difference does it make how good the OS is if Google gives it's OEM's free license to ruin it?
I use the Nexus, which runs stock android by default. This new pixel phone will probably also do so, being a direct (ish) google phone. I think its because if the cruft 3rd party OEMs have been adding that google has been making these phones.
So, yes, you can buy a device with stock android. It just has to be a google phone, not a 3rd party for the most part.
Except now, two issues:
1) More a quibble, but I'd say that people around here pushing AOSP makes the term "stock Android" a bit less clear.
2) Article claims the new Pixels will have some other variant of Android, based on current stock Nougat but with additional support baked in for things like their new VR headset and Google Assistant.
Which strengthens FuzzyZeus' point: determining which version of Android a given phone comes with (and which it can support, both now and in the future) is an extremely muddled game, with the OEMs and now Google itself not doing anyone any favors.
Unless google has changed paths recently, I'd imagine that the additional support is just hardware+apps. I don't think they modified the OS in any way exclusive to the Pixel. The same OS software will likely be available to any other OEM shipping that version of nougat.
You can choose any android you want, even if its not a Nexus/Pixel.
It just might not be as good, because its not controlled by google. But, I do think that argument died a long a time ago because of the cruft OEM's have been adding to android and the common refusal to upgrade phones (though that has been getting better lately).
Other than Nexus/Pixel phones there are plenty of manufacturers that use flavours of Android that are very similar to stock. It's unfortunate that for many people the go-to alternative to the iPhone are Galaxy phones which only helps to tarnish the experience and overall impression most people have for Android.
I have second gen Nexus 7 tablet and Sony Z2. One is stock, one isn't, but both are pretty much the same. Great and unobtrusive. Love both devices. Manufacturer that keeps it cool on crapware can go a long way these days.
Not sure I agree with this. I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.