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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I would agree that I don't prefer Material design. It feels, to me, too much of a lowest-common-denominator.
While I wouldn't use it, if I feel frustrated or find usage unpalatable, that to me is an indicator of inferior 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Like what?
Don't see much credit for that original work being passed around, but I haven't dug up the facts.
I liked the WindowsPhone 8 instance, pity that's being flushed away. Hope it will be stolen and resold to the public.
All UX/UI design on major platforms is "derivative". None is ground breaking.
I find it funny how you back up your claim by showing an equally derivative work (LG Smart TV)
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.
Take a look at some of the showcase designs on the Material Design Lite site for examples: https://getmdl.io/showcase/index.html
What does that mean?
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.
I still use a first generation Nexus 5. SNES/N64/PSP emulators run like a dream. Apps open/transition instantly.
What performance metric are you even using?
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.
> Good for you, but please don't even try to convince anyone of the super performance of your favourite phone
...maybe take your own advice?
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
Why? It is easy, intuitive, and used by millions of people.
Change for changes sake?
No wonder there is such a divide among users. I don't think age has anything to do with it though.
On Windows (and macOS) the desktop is fundamentally different, used differently, and is often obscured by your windowed content.
Luckly they managed to at least let users hide that in iOS10, but it's still a cesspool of rarely used apps.
Put another way.. You're manually 'fixing' the iOS UX to operate like the Android "default"?
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 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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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 top result for me has over 800 reviews and ratings. The vast majority of them have at least some reviews.
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.
Right. Anything can be accessed so quickly a home screen should be more contextual than static app icons.
Agreed, but with a slight nitpick - Duarte was hired to lead development on Palm's webOS designs. PalmOS was the aging predecessor.
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
Were hamburger buttons an Android thing? I noticed them everywhere, including on the web.
More of a Twitter Bootstrap thing, I think.
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.
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?
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 ;-)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Any particular lacunae in Adobe's Reader?
* 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.
What a difference one year of device age can make.
But it is limited to iOS 5, and can't run anything but really ancient apps.
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.
That may be my mistake. Thanks for the links and information.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9837/snapdragon-820-preview/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-i....
Heck, in many cases the A9 leaves the Snapdragon 820 behind, and that hasn't even shipped in a Nexus phone yet (the Pixel will probably have the 821).
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...
sigh
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.
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.
http://macdailynews.com/2016/09/30/macos-sierra-code-suggest...
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:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/iPhon... https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/iPhon...
(from https://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/iphone-7-and-7-plus-re...)
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.
This is an empty statement backed by no data. The only evidence you provide to the superiority of single core perf is browser performance. Except,
1) browser usage is now a mostly insignificant part of time spent on mobile (http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/127638842745/seven-years... )
and
2) The bottleneck in mobile apps which depend on the network (including browsing the web) is rarely the CPU, it's the network.
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.
But just look at the benchmarks. Apple SoCs slaughter Qualcomm and Samsung chips in mobile benchmarks.
Yes, they're highly optimised for their workload, but the point is that Apple is much better at doing this than everyone else making mobile SoCs.
I am not in the US, so I don't know, sorry.
I have the 2014813 model, which supports the same LTE bands used in Europe. I also had 4G service in Japan, Korea, and China on a recent trip to Asia.
Overall I would definitely recommend the phone as a solid mid-range handset. The only thing that sometimes annoys me is lack of 5GHz WiFi.
2) Some Xiaomi phones do not even come with unlocked LTE bands, depending on your region; try to confirm what bands are available before you buy.
That being said, it takes about 5 minutes to flash a custom recovery and the latest CM, so in the end it's a non-issue.
Good thing that offline web apps will start making most native apps obsolete in a few years.
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.
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).
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'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.
>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.
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.
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".
with whatsapp you can have better search that on the desktop:
https://web.whatsapp.com/ - allows you to setup the client for the web; here it is easier to search for messages.
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.
Sadly, they only support Nexus (now Pixel devices), and this new iteration is very expensive.
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.
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.
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...
Thanks for the Davdroid recommendation!
I believe many of the other third-party Exchange-connecting apps have the same type of options.
Nine had neither of these issues.
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.
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.
How surprising is it really that Android sucks if you refuse to use Google services? Where have you been the last 3-5 years?
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.
None of which is helpful when the battery is dead. The iPhone still wins on battery life. Maybe the new gen Androids will fix that. I hope so.
Edit: I added some data for battery tests in a comment below. Looks like my Android experience is out of date.
HTC10: 1859 LG G5: 1579 S7: 1492 iPhone 7: 712
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.
1: https://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/smartphones/iphone-7-fi...
HTC10: 145.9 x 71.9
iPhone7: 138.3 x 67.1 (-7.6, -4.7 vs HTC10)
iPhone7+: 158.2 x 77.9 (+12.7, +6 vs HTC10)
What about the difference between ridiculously bulky and fat and normal size?
My wife has had two iphones (5, 6). Both die much faster than my androids (many many hours). We use them about the same.
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-ph...
http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3
https://www.statista.com/statistics/280508/smartphone-batter...
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.
Believe me, batteries and power management on Android has improved since 2013.
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?
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.
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).
Is this strictly true if google bakes their apps in (play music etc.)