Things that Irritate me About Android OS - 4 weeks in
gallamine.com
gallamine.com
I think about half of the issues are valid problems, and some are fixed in later devices e.g.
* Google's moving away from mountable USB storage to MTP system, the Nexus S has no removable storage,
* the newer Android versions have a recently installed tab in the ELOP though Google would probably prefer you to use search
* moving things to the home pages is much smoother in Honeycomb
* menu actions are more obvious in Honeycomb
but some are just stuff you have to, and will, get used to like not closing apps.
Coincidentally I just blanked an old iPhone for my son to use and the number one annoyance for me was installing an app and being dumped out of the app store each time rather than them installing in the background in parallel. I can see how this might help people who have never installed an app before, but it was certainly an "annoyance" for me as I tried to fill the phone with apps. In general after a few days I found the Android experience better, but certainly at first coming from an iPhone it was like using a mouse with my left hand.
Why? Because power users like to be able to move their data around as they wish. For the typical "mother," they aren't filling up the 8GB internal that's included. The 16GB SD card (or larger) is just gravy.
> 2. The epic list of applications (ELOP)
Not sure what you mean... all apps are installed and available in the app locker? In the market place app list, they are organized by install/update date (I believe that is default).
> 3. I have to manually move apps from the ELOP to the home pane where I want them.
I think I get it... you don't like customization.
> 4. Inconsistent interaction
Huh?
> 5. If I have the power to run multiple apps, then give me the power to close them.
The apps aren't really "running" in the background. This isn't a pc like you're used to. It actually degrades performance and battery life to use task killers. The Android Developer site has a good article on this.
> If one of the top apps in your app store is a “app killer” application, then I think you have a problem.
(Quote from OP)
Yes, there is a problem. However in this case it is one of communication and understanding, as there is absolutely no need for a task killer on Android at all. I uninstalled the task killer I was using and haven't looked back, it's never a problem at all.
For those who don't know Android's internals that well, when you "tab" away from an application, it is sometimes terminated there and then. Whenever a pane is opened (can't remember the correct terminology) it is given a context object representing its state last time it was viewed. When a pane is closed (i.e. you go to another application), the O/S asks for a context object for it so it can be restored later. It will then be kept asleep in the background, but if the resources it is using are needed by another app, then it will be terminated without warning. That context item is the be-all and end-all, apps cannot rely on being notified by the O/S when they are terminated - only when they are hidden. It's a neat system IMO, optimising for responsiveness when resources are plentiful, and for resource usage when they are not.
TL;DR : Android kills tasks on its own based on memory needed. Memory management in linux is different than in windows. Battery and performance drain comes from CPU cycles and not memory used.
1: When I plug in my phone to my computer, I have to mount two separate drives and then hunt for the file I'm looking for.
Where's my music? Is it in "My Documents" or "MP3" on the phone storage? How about "data" or "documents" or "My Music" on the card?
The whole thing is a huge mess. Every app has its own little scheme for storing data.
2: Okay, so I hit "install" and now it's installing. I do something else for a minute, and now I want to put it on a page and launch it. Where is it? The app list. Where in the app list? I dunno. What's its name? Is it the same as the one in the market? Not always. Google Reader is "Google Reader" in the market and just "Reader" in the list.
3: No, he doesn't like having to hunt for something, then manually place it before being able to use it easily. Why isn't the option to place an app on a pane given at install?
4: Do you use Android at all? There's no adherence to an interface standard.
5: You're right on this one. Multitasking works great without me having to bother it at all.
2: You don't know where the app locker is? It's the main button on every home screen. Once you take 5 seconds and figure that out, you will never have that issue again. Not knowing the name is probably a moot problem that happens in a very infrequent cases. Getting it on one of the home screens has the same usability as the iPhone... hold and drag. I prefer to have clean home screens with the 20% of the apps I use 80% of the time. The other 80% are in the locker for the infrequent use.
3: Not sure, is that really the issue? Sure it would be nice, I agree. But to discount an OS cause you have to drag an app onto a home screen of your choice?
4: I have used Android (Droid X) for about 8 months now. I'm not consistently switching phones, so I learned my phone in a day and I was set. When I use a friends phone like a Galaxy or an Incredible, the main points of the interface are the same. Sure there may be a few different buttons here and there.. but it doesn't take more than a minute to figure out what they do.
5: It's a different line of thinking, for sure.
Like I mentioned once, its a moot argument. You don't like Android? Fine, get an iPhone. Some of us like the customizability of the OS. I like that different phone manufacturers have slightly different concepts of what makes the OS the most functional. Because at the end of the day each iteration will better future phone models as they learn what the market likes more. Instead of what one companies design team likes better.
You've sidestepped #1 entirely, so I'll leave that be.
#2, I have over 100 apps, most of which came with the phone and/or are components of other things. It's like your grandma's Windows desktop in there. It's not much of a pain to get things more usable on the home panes, it's just a UX headache that doesn't need to exist.
And as for inconsistency, the original article was talking about inconsistency among different apps, not phones/UIs.
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification on the inconsistency. A lot of people are talking about hardware inconsistency, so that is what I went with. For app inconsistency, I guess I don't use enough apps to notice a problem. The majority of the time I can open a brand new app and guess what will happen if I hit the menu button (a menu pops up), the home screen (I go to my android home), the back button (I go back in the interface), or the search button (if its an app that has some sort of searchability, then I can search). There are indeed cases where that doesnt work, but meh.
My mother (why the quotation marks?) loves recording videos and wouldn't dream of removing them from her phone/SD, even if she imported them to her computer. Filling 8GB is very doable. She'd be thoroughly confused once she did so.
Giving power users the option of moving things around is OK, but the phone shouldn't report that it's out of space unless all the storage mechanisms (internal and SD and anything else) are actually full, as opposed to;
> Today my phone said I was out of space, but it turns out I have plenty of space, but just not in the right place.
I assume the author probably bought a dirt cheap Android device that doesn't actually have a decent amount of internal memory; my original G1 for instance only had 512M of internal memory, and installing some big apps or games could quickly fill that up. Modern, powerful Android phones can have 4G or more of internal memory for installed programs, which most users will never have a problem with.
Granted, I'm not saying this still isn't confusing, but for most people it should be a non-issue because the only thing they'll care about is filling the SD card.
Correct. All of the more recent "power" Android phones even tend to have 8GB internal.
I wonder what phone OP was using... I just checked my Droid X: 1 GB (of 16 GB) used on SD card, 2 GB (of 8G B) used on the internal.
Case in point, this phone recently went on sale at Best Buy and Target and has been sold out in every store in my city. There's a lot of new Android users that will be dealing with this problem.
I actually have no idea how much internal space my phone has, which I take as evidence that it's not an issue for me. Google tells me it's got a shockingly small sounding 150MB of internal of memory.
Android doesn't help that it warns you when you are below 10% of free /data. On Blade, it is still 23 MB.
Just out of curiosity, what are you using for 2.2 on Blade? AFAIK, the official version is still 2.1.
http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-roms-rom-customi...
Get the app "app2sd," get a 32gb SD card for ~$30, roll around in the money you saved from not getting a 32GB iPhone. ;p
But seriously, that is a flaw to license the OS out to manufacturers without making them abide to some level of minimum spec.
" roll around in the money you saved from not getting a 32GB iPhone."
That's exactly what I'm doing! For all my aggravations, the phone is still great. I only paid $140 for it (contract free!) and the savings from the virgin mobile prepaid plan will pay for the phone shortly.
As for a minimum spec, I'm a little torn. If Google had imposed a minimum spec, then I wouldn't be having this problem - because I wouldn't have bought the phone and wouldn't be telling my friends what a great deal it was.
His usage of mother seemed to be an allusion to someone non-technical in nature, not just his mother. Therefore, I "mother" to include the more generic person he was talking about.
I think at the end of the day, you're mom is an exception. I consider myself a power user and don't even come close to the 8gb internal and 16gb sd on my phone. Most people now listen to music on the cloud, use apps like qik to post movies online, upload pictures right to facebook, etc.
Also, I think a lot of my apps save created files (like pictures and movies) to SD by default. Not sure on that. But, one of the reasons most apps write some data to internal is because it has higher security privileges.
It's not much of an argument. For some people, the easiness and out of the box nature of the iPhone is preferable. For other people, the customization abilities and expandability of the Android OS is nicer. Every one wins.
Sadly, most app developers tend to ignore the SD storage option, and store all their maps, levels, save games etc on the internal phone storage. Whether this is an OS or App design fault is debatable.
Is there a compelling reason why Google allows developers to make this choice?
Even phones with a large internal storage (say, the Nexus S) will only have a small amount partitioned for Android's "internal" storage. Of my 16GB internal storage, 15GB is treated as being an external SD card and 1GB as internal storage.
> 1. Phone storage vs. SD card storage
As much as people much like expandable storage it is, by definition, more complicated. There are currently two simple models:
1. All internal (the Apple model); and
2. All external (the digital camera model, even though some do have up to 1-2GB of internal storage).
Having a mix is like having two hard drives. You're suddenly asking your users to make decisions about things they probably don't care about or that they do care about in ways you can't predict. Will they want this app on internal or external storage? What about this music?
All external works for digital cameras because the OS (firmware, etc) is in the camera. The photos and videos go on the card. You don't lose functionality when you take out the card (apart from edge cases like saving profiles on certain high end DSLRs).
This is why I believe iDevices will never have an SD card slot. Or, if they do, it will only be for very limited use, much like the Camera Connection Kit on the iPad.
> 2. The epic list of applications (ELOP)
I find this a little strange too. If someone installs something, it appears at the top level in iOS. On Android, mainly due to manufacturer customization, you have less "home pages" for your apps (and they're generally filled with crud you need to remove). Making your newly downloaded app harder to find is a little odd.
> 4. Inconsistent interaction
This is like the one/two button mouse argument. iDevices have one button, the home button (as well as volume and, on the iPad, a mute/orientation lock switch). In part for this reason, iOS apps are extremely consistent.
Android has 4 buttons: back, home, menu, search. IMHO at least 2 of them are unnecessary. App developers use them in completely inconsistent ways, which tends to frustrate the user.
The way I describe iOS (and Apple in general) is that they make the right choices for most users most of the time. Nothing will ever make everyone happy. The uncomfortable truth is that this is really the best thing to do for the market as a whole.
Many tech-savvy people chafe against what they see as choices being taken away from them (which they are) but they're also under the illusion that a) they need these choices and b) having these choices, by definition, is better. Neither is true. You may like these extra choices but that doesn't mean that they're good or that you need them.
Again, we can make a Windows/Mac comparison. Windows apps are horribly inconsistent. Mac apps are almost completely consistent. That makes learning new Mac apps much, much faster for experienced Mac users. By the same token, put a Mac user in front of Windows or a Windows user in front of a Mac and both will flounder (I don't buy the argument that Macs are inherently easier; it still comes down to what you're used to). The learning curve is definitely gentler on Macs however. Same for iOS (vs Android).
Except it's not. Android doesn't give the user any options, with one exception that almost nobody ever needs to worry about. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327424
>> 2. The epic list of applications (ELOP) >I find this a little strange too. If someone installs something, it appears at the top level in iOS. On Android, mainly due to manufacturer customization, you have less "home pages" for your apps (and they're generally filled with crud you need to remove). Making your newly downloaded app harder to find is a little odd.
This boggles my mind. What is so hard about pressing a button on home screen and then finding the application in a sorted list of icons? If it's something you'll be using often, you can put it directly on a homescreen, but otherwise, how is it hard to find? Just because it's different from iOS doesn't mean it's hard; it just isn't what you're used to.
Edit: Further on this note, iOS allows you to group app icons into subfolders on your home screen. How is that any easier than having a single sorted list for finding everything installed on your phone, other than the fact that you were the one to define those folders? How is that any different than being the one to define what's on your home screens?
1. The list can be very long. As far as I can tell, there's no scroll bar indicator or even a alphabet marker.
2. It's sorted by alphabet, not by install time, so it requires you remember the name of the application. If the name is different than in the market, you're really in trouble.
That is a completely valid insight. Either solution would definitely make it easier to scroll to the correct area of the list.
> 2. It's sorted by alphabet, not by install time, so it requires you remember the name of the application. If the name is different than in the market, you're really in trouble.
I would imagine that for anything not just-installed, having the list sorted by install time would be a nightmare. I have no idea what the relative order of installation would be for any of my apps. As for the name, I would hope that application authors wouldn't be so daft as to have the package's name be different that the actual launcher's title, although I wouldn't put it past somebody to do that.
> Android has 4 buttons
Android does not define the number of buttons. My Android phone has three buttons. The Motorola Xoom tablet running Honeycomb (Android 3.0) has 0 of those buttons. It has only power and volume, I believe.
Copied from below: I like that different phone manufacturers have slightly different concepts of what makes the OS the most functional. Because at the end of the day each iteration will better future phone models as they learn what the market likes more. Instead of what one companies design team likes better.