An Android User’s Take On Yesterday’s iPhone News
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
But I expected to walk out of San Francisco’s Moscone
Center yesterday longing for the next iPhone despite my
current allegiance to Android. That didn’t happen.
Really, if you dismiss all the good points as not so important, what's left? Rainbows and ponies?
He prefers Android, that's OK but Apple just cannot satisfy him then, no matter what they do. That's OK too, that's why we have a choice.
Sure it could. I think a lot of people expected Apple to pull a rabbit out of hat (because they've done that time and time again), but instead it's just a relatively minor (compared to the state of the art) upgrade to the iPhone.
(For me, it's a perfect marriage. Apple makes incredible hardware; full-stop. Android is a vastly better operating system and developer ecosystem. The only unfortunate part is AT&T, but at least T-Mobile is available as an option for unlockers.)
A higher density screen that is only slightly better than current Android phones, a lack luster multitasking architechture, video chat that ONLY works with other iPhone 4 users... not "game changing" in my opinion.
Facetime is the one that just bugs me. What is Jobs thinking? Why would you not call it iChat and allow it to work with desktop-iChat? Even then it would still be a joke. With Qik, any Android phone, or more important any phone period has the ability to communicate with other Qik users regardless of their phone. How does he expect Facetime to take off? Apple spearheading an open video chat platform would be ... cool. I still am not sure I would jump to the word "revolutionary".
Or is it just a sale gimmick?
What's lackluster about it? I'm been working with SDK4 for a while now, and it seems remarkable to me. This is the only multitasking architecture out there where the user doesn't have to treat his phone like a device with processing/memory limits.
Built on open formats and which they clearly said they were going to submit as an open protocol.
> Why would you not call it iChat and allow it to work with desktop-iChat?
because it's apparently not an IM application, and Skype will have to take care of that part.
> With Qik, any Android phone, or more important any phone period has the ability to communicate with other Qik users regardless of their phone.
Uh not really, unless they've fixed the 20s lag (each way). And it's not like Qik can't update their iPhone client. You know, the one which already exists.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apples_biggest_news_vid...
Thanks for the heads up.
It's not so different than the PC world, but it increases the complexity of the ecosystem so much that sometimes the tight integration that Apple offers suffers on other platforms.
I think the author is quite wrong in thinking that Android will have hardware parity in 4 months. For one, Apple has probably consumed all available supply for the display hardware. Not to mention the disconnect the author himself pointed out between software and hardware. Vendors are finalizing now the hardware that will be shipping in 4 months. It will be months before comparable hardware is spec'ed out, and 8-12 before it starts shipping. the 900 pixel OLED screens most Android handsets have is nowhere near comparable to the 900 pixel IPS LCD display.
Be disappointed. They built the A4 SoC with 256MB of RAM, and that's what they're delivering.
>I think the author is quite wrong in thinking that Android will have hardware parity in 4 months
I would say that there is already hardware parity. An Evo 4G and a iPhone 4 have middling differences -- is 960 vertical pixels really that much huger than 800? No -- though the former has double the RAM. The Evo doesn't have the DPI, though it's humorous how important that suddenly has become (whereas previously the iPad was "gooorrrrrgeous" with it's very low DPI).
>the 900 pixel OLED screens most Android handsets have is nowhere near comparable to the 900 pixel IPS LCD display
You know it's weird how when Apple does something, suddenly it's considered superior. I keep reading people hilariously holding up IPS as some sort of ultra-tech compared to "inexpensive" OLED. It, of course, is absolutely wrong.
The iPhone's 800:1 contrast is terrible, but that's what you get with LCD. All IPS adds to the plate is better off-axis viewing (not that it really matters), but that's a non-problem with OLED.
I'll take a SuperAMOLED any day of the week. It beats LCD on virtually every metric.
Apple does make the most of what they do have though. See that Android prior to 2.2 had horrific banding in the Gallery app because it did ridiculous processing of the color bands, completely undermining the massive colour capabilities of the AMOLED screen.
- 960 is 20% bigger than 800, and that's not accounting for the fact that the screen is much smaller, which makes a big difference in DPI.
- the argument that the iPad didn't have as good a DPI as an Evo and people didn't complain then is a straw man. The iPhone 4's display is clearer more impressive, numerous media outlets have said it's the best display they've ever seen.
- Have you tried using an OLED screen? You can't read it at all in sunlight. I know LCDs aren't amazing, but I can at least see what's on the screen and interact with it. maybe I don't know enough about newer OLED technology though, I haven't had a chance to play with an Evo
- That's the problem with Android, or maybe their development team: they simply don't have the resources or smarts to focus on specific features of the OS. They couldn't get the color band processing right on a first-party device until 6 months after launch!
The iPad display was widely regarded as gorgeous, and suitable for a great eReader where DPI really matters most. It has 130DPI, and is meant to be used at the same sort of distances as a smart phone.
So why didn't a "retina" (honest - gag) display matter for the iPad? Is the iPad junk now?
In reality the 960x640 display was necessitated by the very limited adaptability of iPhone applications to varying screen densities. They couldn't just pixel double if they went to 800x480, for instance, but their hand was pretty much forced to double each axis.
All I'm pointing out is that the sudden demand for pixel density rings a bit hollow.
>Have you tried using an OLED screen? You can't read it at all in sunlight.
The Evo actually uses an LCD.
And yes, I use an AMOLED every day. It is horrible in the sun, and the car dock is almost a joke because it is essentially unusable. That's why Samsung (who makes many of the parts for the iPad and iPhone, as a side note) made SuperAMOLED coming on the Galaxy S, among other models. It solves the visibility in the sun issue, although it's quite a bit more expensive of a part than going with an old school LCD.
Personally, when I use the iPhone in bed with my glasses off and I surf or watch something, I see pixels. I can't wait to see how the new screen performs.
You characterize the fact that they went super high resolution to accommodate existing apps as a bad thing? How many other companies would have chosen the cheap and easy way out? I say most. This is one example of Apple's focus on the consumer that separates it from the competition.
The reason is almost certainly limited supply. If you want to sell millions upon millions of a device, and the premium part has limited supply, you simply don't use the premium part. The less obvious reason is that OLEDs simply don't come with that high of a density, so Apple would have had to increase the screen size or go with a lower resolution which, as mentioned in the following point, they didn't want to do (and it isn't to achieve some bogus "retina" quality).
>You characterize the fact that they went super high resolution to accommodate existing apps as a bad thing?
It's bad in that its covering a mistake. The iPhone SDK should have had density-independent pixels from the outset -- geez we've known about this problem for years -- but it didn't. It was remarkably shortsighted, and still they merely duct tape it.
>How many other companies would have chosen the cheap and easy way out?
Apple chose the easy way out, so not really sure what you're saying there. They went with a basic LCD display so I doubt the cost is all that great.
Clearly shows you know nuts about the iPhone SDK.
I know enough about the iPhone SDK to know it is very physical pixel-centric. Contrast this to the Android SDK that is very pixel agnostic (which is how it isn't a big deal that one device has 854x480 and another has 480x320. The former simply looks better. Just as it isn't a big deal if aspect ratios significantly change, whereas in iPhone world developers had to rush to make iPad specific apps, just as now they'll have to make iPhone 4 variants if they don't want simple pixel doubling.
Nonetheless, I look forward to your clarification.
I am not familiar with Android SDK. Do you mean you can write one UI code that runs on all Android devices irregardless of their screen resolution? Such as on Nexus one and a tablet running Android?
I think the key phrase there is "for the features I use," however. If I were younger and cared more about video chat, I might be wanting to seriously hop on this phone.
I still think that since Android 2.1 was released the momentum in terms of software development is still in Android's favor, while Apple's last development cycle seems to be all about making a seriously slick looking piece of hardware.
Video chat is awkward because it means your contact is on speakerphone so everyone can hear you, and I don't really need to see who I'm talking to anyway.
About that: You can use an earpiece.
I honestly don't see this catching on - the trend I see is away from actual human interaction (SMS, Facebook updates and IM) rather than towards it.
I'm never standing still unless I work or relax, in which case I don't want to answer phone-calls. Even when I happen to take long bus-drives, it's usually crowded, I'm standing on my feet and I can't hold that phone focused on my face for long (I know because I've been trying to read on my ebook).
The only use-case I'd have for video-chat is to talk with my family if I were far away from home, but then a video-call is much more expensive than a regular call (I have hundreds of voice-minutes included for a few bucks per month), and all family members have computers anyway ... which means I prefer using a laptop to also transfer pictures and links or whatever, and Skype is OK for that.
I don't know ... maybe with slick phones like iPhone4 and with lower prices on 3G connections it could appeal to me, but not right now that's for sure. And I hope it comes with an open standard, because buying iPhones for every member of the family is expensive.
The cloud sync stuff Google showed off was impressive and that's their strength. Apple has a lot of catching up to do and they need to get to it pretty soon.
Contrast that with the iPhone update I did from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3 - first a huge 300+ MB download, then erasing the device, then overwriting everything and finally syncing back countless gigs of data. ugh.
I do wish that my Droid had a video camera on the same side of the phone as the screen for video Skype, but that will probably be in a later release.
One surprising thing about the iPhone (and about the iPad) is that it still only comes with 256MB of RAM. They seem to accomplish a heck of a lot with that, yet still that is very constricted once you start talking about multitasking and the like.
It is a pretty major update, but really the Giz leaks among others did take some steam out of it. It isn't as big of news simply because it isn't news - we long knew about it.
-- Jef Raskin, during the design of the first Macintosh
(from http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/macintosh-project-genesis-an... )
We don't have the hardware problem so well licked that we can disregard it. IMHO programming phones like we program desktops is a serious mistake, and seriously hamper what we can do with mobiles (e.g., bloatier code results in need for faster hardware with little performance gain for it, thus raising battery, heat, device size problems).
My prediction - next year we'll see A9 based smartphones/tablets with 512MB-1GB of RAM and these memory starvation issues will be a thing of the past. It certainly doesn't bode well in the short term for early adopters though.
The post PC era is upon us - too bad the hardware (and software) is still in it's infancy.
Possible, though the Evo 4G, Nexus One, HTC Dream, among a variety of other Android devices are coming with 512MB these days. One weird thing, though, is that one of the feature notes of Android 2.2 is "HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB", so not sure how that plays into this.
Also, I still can't help but laugh at this moniker of the "post PC era". The rest of us are still doing real work in Windows, Mac, Linux and the smartphone/tablets are accessories.
Most people who use computers really don't do much beyond browsing the web, reading e-mail, and balancing their checkbooks. Ergo, they consume content and use web apps.
Most of the people for whom mobile devices like the iPad are inadequate for doing their job are creating content (e.g. games, movies, books, etc) and web applications.
Revenue from the internet is from people using applications, viewing and clicking on ads, and buying content. You don't need a PC for that. We're not quite at the point where an average user doesn't need a personal computer no matter the OS, but we're close.
This is the divide. I have two geeky friends. One is OCD and well dressed. He likes things to work smoothly and look good. He is very happy with his iPhone and is excited to upgrade. My other friend is like me, he loves to hack and is a fan of Google's services.
Google needs to put Matias Duarte to work. Gallery3D is beautiful, there's no reason those GUI elements couldn't be more standard/accessible to the avg dev.
I'm not sure about Google's ability to retain talent... but I'm hopeful that Matias can bring Android some UI/UX love.
http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
Given that, is it really all that unreasonable to point out that Google's UI problems probably are not going to be solved by one person, no matter how much the general community likes him (after all, Bowman's pretty well-loved in the design community, and look what happened to him)?
Can we not have both? I don't buy the dichotomy that a hacker-friendly device must be jerky and ugly. IMHO what Android lacks is integration - the odd fusion of hardware and software that Apple seems uniquely able to pull off. With the exception of the Nexus One (for probably obvious reasons), every Android phone I've used feels very discretely disconnected between software and hardware.