IOS 6 vs Android 4.1 - A comparison of new features of each OS. | Hacker News Reader

IOS 6 vs Android 4.1 - A comparison of new features of each OS.

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3 pointsVierScar4 comments

Having more features on a consumer device isn't necessarily a good thing: On the Android side Widgets make sense on a desktop, they even might make sense on a tablet but on a phone sized device they're just adding more useless clutter. And on the iOS side the call rejection thing seems like a great deal of work from a casual glance.

I've had my nose deep into Android tablets (Ice Cream Sandwich) due to a project I'm working on, and the one thing i notice is that there's tons of clutter that doesn't need to be there. And on the flip side there are some annoying things like the power button is never in the same place. The biggest thing I've noticed is that Android starts to feel like a PC screen crammed into a small space -- that may get an engineer or gadget geek excited, but it shows a lack of focus on design and usability.

I will say this though: Even though it's forked and is an older version of Android looking at my Kindle Fire you do get the feeling that Amazon understands usability much more than the other vendors and Google itself. If Amazon makes a phone device or something like Apple TV they'll do very well...

Well, in my opinion you are wrong.

The Android widget system is tremendously useful. It is an information gateway that gives me the up to date information I need almost instantly by just turning on and off the screen for a few seconds.

Every widget on my home screen has a purpose and a well suited one. From simple tasks such as displaying date and time beautifully arranged, to allowing me to keep track of several services on (as well as themselves) my EC2 instances, upcoming calendar events, snippets of the latest incoming email and latest tweets.

Android is a wonderful tool and very very useful. And, the best part; It allows you to customize your experience.

So my advice to you; If you feel it to be "cluttered", then simply remove all widgets from your screen.

so you are saying android is not doing well. Just to put in perspective growth from 100 millions to 400 millions in a year is doing well. Activating million devices a day is doing well. I am using Android now to. type this and my swift keyboard is way awesome then any virtual keyboard I have used. As far as UI is concerned I feel Android got the UI right with ICS and JB. It's very intuitive and very useful. I use plenty of widgets on my phone and to tell you what you like it when you use it.

I think part of the great thing about having iOS, Android and Windows Phone available to us as consumers is that everyone has different things that are important to them. Something that seems cluttered and useless to you is a selling point for someone else.

I have personal anecdotes for the two examples of Android and iOS clutter you mentioned. Again, different things are important to different users.

For me, part of the reason I got a Nexus One a couple of years ago was that I could make my home screen more useful than just app launchers. For pretty much the whole time I've had the phone I have had a home screen that includes a widget to turn on and off my led flashlight, a widget displaying the weather for the next 24 hours and a widget to call my wife directly.

In regards to iOS, I was actually just having a conversation with my wife the other day about her being able to easily reject a call on her iPhone.

You could certainly chalk my anecdote up to being a power user, but my wife is not the type to be installing and tweaking Linux. :-)

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