Google Promises To Bring December Back To Android 4.2 “Soon” | Hacker News Reader

Google Promises To Bring December Back To Android 4.2 “Soon”

techcrunch.com

For those deceived by the headline, December is still in "Android", it is one date picker in one app, where dates are not used much (the People, or contacts app).

Yeah, it actually took me a few minutes to find this. The only place it seems to come up is if you're adding an Event to a contact, like someone's birthday I suppose. Honestly, who would be manually doing that on their phone?

Don't they use the same datepicker throughout the OS? Why do they have different ones for different apps? #DRY

They do. The People app has specialized it though, because in the birthday date picker the year is optional, whereas in the stock one the year is required.

It's always the little details. My limited experiences with Android (I try it every year or so) always end when I get annoyed by basic things not working. The tablet I got at Google I/O 1.5 years ago would power off every time it was fully charged, so I could either leave it unplugged (it which case it would run down the battery after a few days), or I could keep it plugged in, but then I'd have to wait for it to boot every time I tried to use it. It feels like they give more attention to the "big" features than the "little" details, which is why I still have an iphone.

Things were dramatically improved with Jelly Bean, which is the first Android release I think really stepped up to the plate with iOS. The little things were, by and large, dealt with. Matias Duarte has done a fabulous job.

> Things were dramatically improved with [X release]

I've been hearing this argument with every single Android release to date. Like your comment's parent, I try out another Android device every 18 months or so, and I still have yet to be impressed.

I haven't tried Jelly Bean though. Maybe it is really the release that makes everything better.

I was absolutely in the same boat as you: everything was better, but still not able to match iOS. I was happily surprised when I tried out Jelly Bean. The Holo theme is taking hold, Project Butter did really well (although I hear rumblings of regressions in 4.2).

Project Butter did really well (although I hear rumblings of regressions in 4.2).

It's frustrating that this happened in Ubuntu as well. They spent a couple of releases focusing on fast boot times, and it paid off. A few releases later, and now boot times are slow again.

> Like your comment's parent, I try out another Android device every 18 months or so, and I still have yet to be impressed.

And I try out an iOS device every year or two, and I have yet to be impressed. The notification system is still inane, Mobile Safari still lags when scrolling, all your app icons still show up on your home screens, and you still can't use widgets on the home screen. When is Apple going to fix these glaring UX flaws?

Ok, not trying to start an Apple war here, but:

> The notification system is still inane

No comment, haven't seen Android's version

> Mobile Safari still lags when scrolling

I haven't experienced this (iPhone 4 w/ iOS 5). Can you give specific URLs where this happens?

> all your app icons still show up on your home screens

You can make folders for your apps

> you still can't use widgets on the home screen

Not sure what this means (again, haven't used Android).

@defen, Android lets you put widgets like weather, clock, stocks, etc, in your home screens. Something like this: http://phandroid.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07...

Things were dramatically improved with Ice Cream Sandwich. Jelly Bean is just an incremental change in my opinion. (I am a happy Jelly Bean and iOS user.)

Things also keep getting better as apps convert their design to work better with Holo and Android 4.x. That is a gradual improvement that continues.

And new release of Android 4.2 added some more "little things" http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/19/android-4-2-gate-her.... I find it amusing that major tech news sites are very quit about it while they were beating drums about same issues happening in Windows Phone 8 devices just two days ago.

4.2 has dozens of tiny UI/UX touches that Duarte added in that I've not found documented anywhere online.

Well by "little things" I also meant bugs. Clock UI and new lock screen designs etc are matter of personal preference.

Those are features. Besides not giving my N10 back after showing it to her, my mother also wanted to know how to get her calendar to show up on her lock screen. It does have value and isn't just cosmetic. That I can check my email and calendar by simply turning on the screen is very valuable to me. Additionally the clock now includes the additional functionality that CM had just added (though I don't think the code is shared amongst them).

Besides, I was referring to small UX/UI details (new swipeable gestures, new bits of polish here and there, new icons for core apps, new even smoother/slicker/amazing multitasking animations [much less disorienting than 4.1 in my opinion], etc).

I'm personally quite aware of the Bluetooth, etc bugs (though I can't reproduce battery issues on ANY of my Nexus devices, it's obviously an issue). They're obviously problematic. I understand why they replaced the Bluetooth stack but they didn't do a very good job of it.

Glad to hear. I have a Nexus 7 on the way, so hopefully it will be awesome.

It's awesome, I'm writing this comment from it right now in my bed. I particularly like the new input method in 4.2 where you don't need to actually press the keys, you just need to let your fingers slide over the keys and it guesses the word you meant to type. As you see, it's pretty accurate too. I hope this before a standard for tablets, is life- changing. I don't any bad things to say about the tablet either.

After reading the last two sentences I can't tell if this is serious or satire.

This is what I was afraid of. One tiny bug in one app is proof that Android still sucks.

I'm going to stop reading comments about Android by people that haven't used it recently.

After Jelly Bean, ICS and 4.2 saying that Android doesn't get the little details right is just laughable for me to hear, obviously they're embarrassed about this bug that affects like a microscopic number of people.

It's the way the internet works. A few months back we were all chuckling over Apple maps screencaps. Google has to take their lumps on this -- it's a dumb bug and they should fix it. Frankly I didn't even know that app had a date picker and haven't used it ever. I'm far more upset over the fact that they replaced the bluetooth stack, frankly.

>I'm far more upset over the fact that they replaced the bluetooth stack, frankly.

Yes, yes, yes. I would happily upvote articles about this subject rather than a microscopic bug (iOS6 maps is no microscopic bug).

> It feels like they give more attention to the "big" features than the "little" details, which is why I still have an iphone.

Whereas Apple ignores the big features, such as Maps. Give me a break.

there are so many problems with iOS, you have just become acclimated to them. big ones and details too, like this: even if you have the sound turned off, when you plug it in, it chirps. and the power key and slide-to-unlock clicks. and when i open it, if i have a notification then it chirps. volume is OFF. wtf. maybe that is a big one, what do you think?

What I cannot fathom is why the list of dates available via a date picker (which, as far as I can tell, is a standard kit component) is up to each app.

I can understand situations in which the available dates should be limited, but the People application does not need to impose any such restrictions; therefore, what is available in the picker should not be up to it.

The People app uses its own picker widget for event dates, in order to support the optional year element; it uses NumberPicker widgets internally. There is an off-by-one bug in NumberPicker that was worked around in the standard DatePicker component, but not in the custom widget implemented in the People app.

4.2 has been a real disappointment to me compared to 4.1. Since my update, the phone lags on input more, apps crash frequently, and restarts must happen more often. Just today, I had Google Voice slow down, crash, restart, and crash again. Then, after I took a picture, the whole phone locked up. It seems that 4.2 wasn't ready for prime time, but was pushed out for the Nexus 4 release.

Unless you add dozens of people to your address book every day, this is actually not such a big deal. I tend to edit the address book on the web anyway.

It sounds and looks like an off by one bug. But it could be nasty to fix if people have already created events with an off by one bug. Any update to fix the date picker could then cause their scheduled dates to show up a month early, and would therefore also have to include some sort of script to update existing scheduled events users have created.

Yap, there was a change in the NumberPicker that seemed to have caused it: https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/commit/a...

That makes sense, but why is the patch taking so long?

Rushing a patch and possibly breaking something further is worse than just having the bug you have out now.

As a former intern, usual Google practice is to rollback rather than attempt to fix with non-client apps, in order to take a more measured approach to the issue and not accidentally break something with a hasty fix. Android is in a different position as rollbacks aren't possible, but my guess is the release managers would take a similar view to not rushing.

50% of comments: what horrible QA, don't they test anything?

Other 50% of comments: why is the patch taking so long!

It may be a trivial <=12 instead of <12 in the controller that populates the view.

If it is more than that, ugh. It wouldn't be so bad for new devices, but for people who upgraded, this could be seriously ugly.

Think if Android had the same "patch small and often" as Google Chrome, that way, this could be fixed rather quick.

That would require Google to be in a very different business than they are, however. Apple can do this, and Microsoft, but no matter how quickly this gets fixed upstream, there are many more stops the fix-the-damn-defect train has to visit in Android world.

What makes you say this? How many iOS system apps are inexorably linked to the OS itself (ie. not installed & updated through the app store)? This is a really hard problem. Features that you thought belonged at the system level during design and conceptualization half a decade (or more?) ago have grown to be fully-functional applications in and of themselves today. It's all too easy for us to sit back and think "I wouldn't have linked any apps so closely to the OS" but the situation probably looked very different to the original designers.

Simply that for all the good will in the world, fixes to Android are gated by forces beyond Google's control (by design).

They're working towards it. Lots of former system apps are being extracted from the base OS and turned into apps updated through the Play store. The most recent I remember was the Calendar app, which changed into Google Calendar through the Play store.

But I don't think they'll ever make the whole OS work like that, unfortunately. I was hoping they would at least create a whole line-up of "Nexus" devices from all manufacturers that would be updated the way they update the Chromebooks. But I'm beginning to think that won't happen either

They can't. Many of the core underlying bits are tied to the device drivers. [Insert mobile device drivers and ARM complains here.]

Say what you will about Microsoft's products, but I doubt an error like this would make it through their robust testing process these days.

I can't tell for "these days", but back then on Windows 98 IIRC, they forgot Poland (literally) on their time zone map:

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9331/nopoland9fg.jpg

A cosmetic issue from 14 years ago doesn't make a great counterexample.

The reason for the Poland error is explained here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/10/27/88041...

https://www.google.com/search?q=you%20forgot%20poland

Windows was a liberal conspiracy!

I was immediately reminded of how every Zune locked up on December 31st, 2008 due to a calendar bug: http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/zune-bug-explained-in-detai...

Every company has its own share of date related bugs

Microsoft: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/how-a-leap-year-bug-...

Apple: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/10/apple-deleted-2am-and-2pm-...

This bug should be Google's last worry. There are people with Nexus devices that can't make a simple phone call.

Open issues: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=typ...

Am I the only person that thinks that DatePicker really sucks because there's no way to actually enter a date thru a "keyboard"?

Maybe it's not cool to admit it, but this is a bug I can really relate to. I had a Facebook page title become [Object Object] the other day and this feels similar. I wonder if the luddites of tomorrow will lament the loss of these wabi-sabi details.

for some reason i find this hilariously funny.

As if they don't expect December to arrive..

Maybe it'll be a Christmas present. :-)

Just replace it with Smarch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RCs2RKiLlA http://simpsonswiki.net/wiki/Smarch "Smarch is the thirteenth month of the year, according to Springfield Elementary School calendars. It has 28 days."

Soon as in next month, January.

...and the carriers will push the update in about 6 months.

UIDatePicker must have had a good laugh at this.

What kind of QA google has? - Good for nothing kind

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