A basic usability test on ten phones
quirksmode.org
quirksmode.org
I have really never been so disappointed in my life. This thing is supposed to compete the iPhone? The movement is not smooth, the interface flickers, buttons don't react immediately, the keyboard is laggy and the entire thing feels so unpolished.
I instantly hated it. I still have it - I use it for development, but Android 1.6 is not even close to the iPhone in 'goodness'. Maybe 2.0 will be better.
On the other hand, I wrote my first program for it. Programming for Android is MUCH easier, a lot more intuitive and there are so many widgets that you can very quickly get things sown together. Android programming reminds me of programming in Basic, while iPhone programming is like normal C++ programming.
I know java somewhat and C++ very well, and it took me like a month to really feel I understood iPhone programming. It took me 2 or 3 days to feel comfortable programming for Android.
I have not yet sold anything on the Android market, but when I do I'll be sure to post a comparison of the two platforms with the exact same app. In a week or two I will have my first Android app up.
It's been a year and three months since then. Each new phone on the market has bumped things up a bit, and now the top of the line has roughly doubled every hardware spec on the original G1. And there are still issues with speed and responsiveness, and the standard reply is still "wait until the next phone comes out with better hardware, then Android will really shine!"
Reason? Because asynchronous, multithreaded programming, which is required for smoothness, ain't trivial with abstractions that current programming languages and platform libraries provide.
Consider the enormous amount of instantly responsive software on 1 to 4mhz 6502s (Atari 2600, NES, C64, Apple II, Atari 8-bits, etc).. Every current platform, even the phones, can emulate those at multiple times real-time speed, so the hardware is certainly capable of it.
In the 2600s case, it didn't even have video memory and a video chip to help the CPU. The programs had to be timed to output straight to the TV at the exact speed and time the TV needed data. No threads or asynchronous events to help there.
The Droid also has no IME, and rotating the device when in the web browser seemed to have no effect whatsoever, and a CDMA-only phone is, to me, as a communications device, marginally less useful than a brick.
That said, I don't think it's a bad phone, and Motorola seems to be selling a hell of a lot of them. The hardware feels to be very good quality, and when Google works out the Android UI quirks, it'll be one hell of a platform, especially because there's no App Store Nazi sitting between the developer and the customer.
So, the Droid is not in the same area code as the iPhone, but unlike a lot of other phones on the market, it's at least on the same planet, in terms of usability.
However, I found myself going back to the Google browser: on a double-tap, it switches between a website overview and a zoomed view which intelligently sizes itself to the width of the text column you're reading. I've found it much easier than manually zooming to find a comfortable reading magnification.
In my experience, when held between a 45 degree angle and exactly upright, the screen re-orients itself on rotation faster than an iPhone. When overtilted (so the screen points downward), it does not respond -- which is nice when you're lying in bed holding the phone up above your face.
I got my Droid on launch day, so it's definitely one of the same phones that have given people negative impressions. Maybe there are differences in manufacturing quality? I'm open to the possibility.
I have a Windows Mobile phone with Opera and, as the other commenter also said about Andriod, it has the double-tap to zoom and reflow the page. There is a dedicated zoom area on my phone (I just have a swirl around the center hardware button like an older iPod) but I never have the need to use it. I find I really only the two levels of zoom -- the full page zoomed out and the reformatted in-zoom.
A more basic test I'd like to see is how well do these 10 phones stack up wrt to the task at hand. AS PHONES.
I have a smart phone, and my biggest annoyance? The simple task of "I have a phone number and I need to call it" is far more complex than it needs to be. Calling contacts already in the phonebook? Easy. Punching in a phone number has far too many buttons to get back main screen, go to phone mode and bring up the actual dialer. Once there, either it's a touchscreen without real buttons, or it's a sub-qwerty tiny keypad that may as well be annoying touchscreen at that size (The kind that RIM is quite fond of). (Connection services like Google Voice are up to the should-be-trivial task though).
Then again, I suppose the smartphone route would be to print up QR codes on everything and allow dialing of a cellphone camera picture.
It works brilliantly, for me, as a phone. I've not found another smart phone as good so far.
1. Hit home or lock key 2. Swipe lock slider 3. Touch phone icon 4. Touch dialpad icon 5. Dial number
Vs. a featurephone or keyboarded smartphone
1. Hit unlock key or open clamshell 2. Dial number
What I'd actually like to see is a second slider on the iPhone's lock screen that goes straight to the phone without stopping by the springboard. That would pretty much bring it to parity with featurephone keypads.
I found it terrible. Unintuitive, and hard to use even when you understand what it's doing.
I was thinking, personally, more about it's general usability. Like the easy tabs on the phone app (contacts,history,voicemail,dialer etc), the text messages layout, how accesible the contacts db is (and syncable with Google) and all the other bits.
It's not something specific I can place my finger on but lots of little neat bits that make it a really usable phone.
(edit: if you think about getting into contacts and dialing a number the swipe scroll and touch makes that probably faster/easier than a standard phone)
1) Press middle of the three hardware buttons on the lower part of the phone. Home screen appears. 2) Press icon in lower left part of the home screen, numpad appears. 3) Input the number. 4) Press call button on touch screen or the leftmost of the hardware buttons. Overall, one more action than a non-smart.
Please note that it is not my intention, however, to present 5800 as overall good phone. Most of it is usability nightmare.
In fact, Apple's iPhone integration spans so far that I rarely even enter contacts on my phone anymore:
1. Someone emails me their phone number.
2. I mouse over it in Mail.app, click 'Create New Contact'.
3. I click 'Add to Address Book'
...
4. That's it. There's nothing else. Their name and email address get filled in automagically from the email, and within a few minutes the contact gets synced over the air to my phone.
I wonder if B's opinion would have changed had he spent a few hours with each phone trying to do some other tasks.
http://lifehacker.com/5412625/make-any-pair-of-gloves-work-w...
I was looking forward to the Google phone but sw kb is a turn off.
The G1 does have its downpoints - the scroll wheel jumps from link to link which means more thumb movement if you need to scroll with the screen. And the battery life. Oh that's the killer, great if you're not using it but spend an evening doing a bit of browsing and showing people youtube vids when you wake up in the morning you can't call a cab. Carrying a mini usb cable is required.