Hacker News Reader

Comment by CraigRood | Hacker News Reader

Personally I disagree. I've been using iPhone for 13 years, I have complaints sure, but it works. I got an Android Samsung Galaxy thing earlier this year as a work device - primarily to offload Teams, email etc of my personal device. The phone itself is good, hardware feels modern, but the Android 12 OS is just poor from top to bottom. It took far too long to work out some of the most basic features. Even today I find myself getting slightly lost or confused when looking for some hidden setting. Windows 10, OSX, iOS, you can search battery and go into the battery menu... my galaxy doesn't do that. I'm sure someone will tell me the Samsung version of Android isn't the real Android or some bollocks, but really, Android needs some serious work and little UI/UX tweaks wont cut it. The experience has shown me that my 4 year old iPhone is far more modern than a latest Android.

View on HN

My anecdotal experience is that the things you are talking about have way more to do with what you are used to then what is "better".

At this point I don't think either is that much better or worse the the other.

For one I have your exact same feeling when using an iPhone. And I know it's not because it's bad, it's just completely different than what I have been using for many many years.

(And yes, i can just go to the app drawer, type "battery" an find the battery settings)

Oh I appreciate its different, that's not my complaint, the UX is just a heavy learning curve that sours the entire experience for something that is actually a decent device. It feels like its built by engineers where having things a certain way makes sense to geeks, where as iOS is built by designers to work for the masses.

I suppose this is where I get the feel that iOS is more modern.

Pulling the app draw and searching battery doesn't work. I've tried it again. Not sure what I've done wrong. I can search in settings itself, but given I'm already half way there, I don't really need to search from there.

> I'm sure someone will tell me the Samsung version of Android isn't the real Android or some bollocks, but really, Android needs some serious work and little UI/UX tweaks wont cut it

I'm sure that if you stop to reflect on what you've just stated you'd realize that accusing stock Android of poor design from your experience running what is not-Android-design maybe doesn't make much sense?

Samsung radically changes the UI on their phones. They're significantly different from every other Android phone out there. Lots of other manufacturers don't make massive changes to the UI.

I'm running Android 12 on a Pixel 6a right now. I flipped up the app drawer, tapped the "Search your phone and more" at the top, and typed "bat" and it has an autocomplete suggestion for "battery percentage". The list then shows a deep link to the Battery Percentage screen on the Battery settings, then a link to the Battery settings area, then a link into the Battery usage area under the Battery Settings. Then it shows Pixel Tips for "Quickly see battery info for your devices", "Make your phone last longer with Extreme Battery Saver".

Your experience is 100% a failure of Samsung, not of Android. The stock Android Open Source launcher does the thing you're wanting. You bought a device which purposefully doesn't do that.

The equivalent would be to install a Linux distro that defaults to just a command line interface and then complaining that Linux is impossible for average users to figure out. There are other choices out there! You could have bought a Pixel, or a Motorola, or a OnePlus, or a Sony, or a Nokia, and all of those would have done this.

Theoretically, you can also install a different launcher which might do this behavior. Maybe try the Pixel Launcher?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

There are lots of other potential launchers which take over the home screen UI. It won't change the settings UI or some of the other Samsung related skinned areas. You can then revert back to the default Samsung launcher.

Samsung S10 lite. This device went from Android 10 to 12. At each version what parent said works just like you said it does on your phone. (Maybe not the autocomplete)

I usually go to Settings and search there but searching from the top search thing on the App drawer works fine too.

> Windows 10, OSX, iOS, you can search battery and go into the battery menu... my galaxy doesn't do that.

You have a malfunctioning Samsung device then.

I go to settings, search battery, and choose the first result which takes me to the battery menu.

Agreed, this is definitely in there. Not sure what PP was talking about.

Either that or search in the app drawer (at least on a pixel)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com