I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only used privately, for example to launch the mail application from other applications, but my guess is that iOS 7 will add public API's for other applications to do the same. Whether this means you can change default applications like Maps etc. I don't know, but the way Apple handled the (lack of) public-transit directions in Apple Maps suggests they are starting to be more flexible about default application handlers.
That said, I wasn't really impressed by any of the other points the article makes. It starts out by saying 'Android on the Nexus 4 is better in almost every aspect', but besides the sharing thing it doesn't make a case for anything else. Some half-hearted observation that 'sometimes it even appears like rendering is smoother on the Nexus 4' and 'not all Android applications look like crap anymore' and that's about it. Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone.
Hardly a clear-cut case of 'better in almost every aspect'. Looks like it's more a matter of preference than an objective evaluation on which of the 2 platforms is 'better'.
Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone.
Good grief, you speak of personlisation like it's a bug and not a feature. I personally hate the iOS window-dressing. You have this sleek-looking bit of hardware, but the OS looks plastic and Fisher-Price, with safe and chunky buttons to give to your kid with no sharp edges. The way you speak, it sounds like you would deny me my preference for something different because you think it's ugly. What about those who don't think the default skins look good? Why isn't it a good feature that we can customise the way things look?
I really don't understand the Apple-spawned fanboy cult that considers personalisation to be a bad thing - especially since they once had a successful marketing campaign based around personalising your hardware with the coloured macs.
The moment you say "fanboy" and/or "cult" in reply to a comment you lose a lot of credibility.
" the Apple-spawned fanboy cult"
This is a completely meaningless phrase. It's easy to accuse people of this and impossible to prove. Furthermore when you say something along the lines of "you're just a fanboy of company X" the other guy can just come back and say "well you're a fanboy of company Y" and then everyone sounds ridiculous.
But to your point, I personally like the Apple design and I think that too much customization really can make a beautifully designed piece of hardware look like crap. That said, I also understand that other people either really love customizing their phones and/or have awful taste and that's fine and for them, iOS isn't the best choice. Whatevs. It happens. The thing is, you can't please all the people all the time so I'd say it's a great thing that Apple limits what you can do to personalize the phone. That's one thing that attracts people like me to it. Luckily they're not the only game in town so for the others you have choices.
You're really taking this as a direct insult it seems. I wish you wouldn't have made that fanboy crack because you did have a decent point in there under all the anger.
I'm not fond of making the crack either, to be honest, but I was annoyed by the subtext of what was being said: people make things that are ugly to me, so I don't like customisation.
For the record, I have had two android phones. The first got cyanogenmod put on it, not for UI (though it was prettier than stock), but because I was having reception problems and the carrier was dragging feet in upgrading their image (one of the good things about iOS, this one). The second phone runs stock carrier UI, which I haven't changed.
I didn't take the insult personally for me, but it does annoy the living shit out of me when some people say that others should be personally limited because of aesthetic opinion. There does seem to be this form of opinion that because Apple does design really well, that any design choice made is perfect, therefore the default position is 'apple is right and you are wrong', despite apple making some design blunders along the way.
Chill out and take a deep breath, because you're missing the point entirely. I was talking about the arguments the article gives that supposedly show 'Android is better in almost every aspect', not about the merits of customization itself. No one is denying you anything, like I said: it seems to be more like personal preference than objective superiority. Sure enough Android wins on customizability, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone cares for this particular aspect of the OS.
I always find it amusing how fans of customizability seem to over-estimate the importance of dicking around with something the vast majority of people primarily use as a tool, a useful utility. If the defaults work well (which seems to be the case for iOS, even toddlers appear to be able to use it), that's already much, much better than something that sucks by default but can be customized to suck less.
That said, if you really care about customizability, you can always jailbreak your iPhone and do whatever you like, lots of customizations possible on jailbroken iPhones. Or just buy an Android phone if customizability is high on your list of priority features. Again, this is more about personal preference than anything else.
On a side note:
Years ago when I was just starting to use Linux, I spent weeks customizing every aspect of the look & feel of the user interface. After a while I always got bored with what I had and started to get irritated by the various usability issues my customizations had introduced, so I started over. I went from FVWM to fluxbox, to Gnome, to KDE, back to Gnome, to XFCE and then back to Gnome again. The last time I switched to Gnome I stopped caring about customizations and simply stuck with the defaults, I had more interesting and important things going on in my life to spend time on, instead of wasting my time trying to be smarter than the people who designed the user interfaces I was using. I bought my first Mac running OS X and just used it the way Apple designed it, and never looked back. Since then I lost intereset in customizing my computers and phones altogether, realizing it's more like a hobby than actually making anything 'better', because 9 out of 10 times, you're only making things worse.
You seem to think that 'allows customisation' and 'defaults that work well' are mutually exclusive for some reason. Note that I was responding to your characterisation of personalisation, which was essentially "give people the ability to personalise and they make it ugly!". Yes, to you. Not to them.
I've also never really understood the toddler argument for 'well-designed'. 'Simple', sure, but not 'well-designed'. We don't consider this for any other thing we do - board games aren't considered poorly designed if a toddler can't play them; music isn't considered poorly put together if it's not in thirds, which young kids are drawn to; food isn't considered poor just because a toddler won't eat it, and neither are the utensils to prepare it considered shoddy because a toddler can't use them easily. 'Simple' and 'well-designed' can co-exist, but 'simple' does not mean 'well-designed'.
I also don't really understand your last paragraph - again, you see to be arguing against customisation because you don't enjoy it, despite other people doing it to have fun. Besides, OS UI designers do so for a generic optimal use-case, and can't possibly satisfy all. Even if it's true that 9 times out of 10 you're making it worse, 10% is still a lot of people to satisfy.
>> You seem to think that 'allows customisation' and 'defaults that work well' are mutually exclusive for some reason.
Well often they are, especially in a complex piece of software like a phone OS. Customizability requires trade-offs which may affect usability or performance. More often than not, software that allows skinning looks butt-ugly in the default setting and integrates poorly with the rest of the system (think Java desktop applications etc).
Anyway, you still seem to assume I hate customization just because I have no need for it, while my original comment was about one thing, and one thing only: that customization isn't actually a very strong argument to compare mobile OS'es on, primarily because better defaults always beat customizability (and IMO, looking past the homescreen, taking all aspects of the OS and ecosystem into account, iOS is still miles ahead of Android in that regard), but also because it isn't all that interesting to (I assume) most smartphone users.
>> I've also never really understood the toddler argument for 'well-designed'. 'Simple', sure, but not 'well-designed'.
I'd say 'simple' is almost the penultimate goal of UI design, especially when you are talking about something as complex as a mobile phone. Today everyone takes for granted that even your granny can use a smartphone, but you only have to go back to Windows Mobile to appreciate how much the iPhone has done for smartphone usability. Android users can only be thankful for that because they are profiting from these advancements just as well.
>> We don't consider this for any other thing we do - board games aren't considered poorly designed if a toddler can't play them [..]
I think this is a bit silly, because most board games are intended to be hard, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in playing and winning them. I fail to see the relevance of the other examples. My impression is that you are thinking about 'well-designed' in terms of aesthetics, while I'm thinking about usability and ergonomics. In that context, well-designed is almost a synonym of 'simple' and 'easy to use'. Kids can now operate a smartphone and do things that my parents would have been dumbfounded if they had to do them on a regular PC, yet my mom is perfectly able to find, install and run applications on her iPad, and use it for everything she previously hated to use her PC for. To me, that means we've made progress in terms of usability.
>> I also don't really understand your last paragraph - again, you see to be arguing against customisation because you don't enjoy it
That's a strange way of reading what I wrote, because I what I was saying is that I actually used to enjoy customization until I lost interest in it and found out it almost always makes things worse, not better.
I'd say 'simple' is almost the penultimate goal of UI design
I've run out of time for big swathes, sorry, but I had to comment on this. 'simple' is not the ideal goal of UI design. 'appropriate' is. You want a UI that is best appropriate for the situation. Sometimes this will indeed be simple. Other times it will not be. As an extreme example, could you imagine a cockpit with a single hardware button and a small grid of soft dials?
A more moderate example is that to do serious business work, people still need desktop environments - tablets do not cut it. Mobile OSs are too simple for most serious business work - they don't have an appropriate UI.
Both of your examples are wrong. It is well-known in aerospace industry that cockpit interfaces need vast improvements, and that is actually an active area of research. Pointing to the complexity of an airplane cockpit and saying "look, not all interfaces need to be pretty" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or lack of knowledge about the subject.
Second of all, the reason desktop environments are still preferred for "serious business work" is because of their features, not their UI. I work for a business-to-business software company that has been around for over 25 years, and our product is on version 9. We recently released an iOS app. It is being adopted slowly, but not because of its interface. The interface on it is actually very, very clean and effective. The problem is that we have not yet had the time to port all the features on the desktop version to the iOS version. Therefore it is not used for "serious" work... yet.
I didn't say the cockpit couldn't have improvement, I said could you imagine running one with a smartphone interface. It's really not appropriate for the situation.
Your other example seems to willfully ignore that features are stripped out of mobile OSs for the cause of simplicity, not because they're 'catching up'. Yes, for things that are solely within programs themselves you have a point, but we're talking about the operating system here. Quickly switch between windows? No. Have more than one thing visible at a time? No. Default input mode allows for quick entry of data? No. I mean sure, your program might be the ants pants, but what happens when the user needs to enter data while viewing another document?
>>Yes, for things that are solely within programs themselves you have a point, but we're talking about the operating system here.
I don't think the distinction really matters. In this context, you can think of an operating system as a "master app" that has escalated privileges for things such as root-level access to system functions and the hardware.
>> I mean sure, your program might be the ants pants, but what happens when the user needs to enter data while viewing another document?
This soon won't even be an issue, because the data will not have to be manually transferred between documents by a human user.
Can you really not think of any situation where a person might want to enter data while being able to see another document? Not even a coder looking at a reference guide?
Sure they will. It doesn't have to withstand drop from top of building. Just drop from pocket most of the time. A bit of plastic definitely cushions the blow.
Otter Box seems to be one of the most popular that I see, and it is definitely made to offer some protection.
> That said, if you really care about customizability, you can always jailbreak your iPhone ...
* Yes, you can, for now. There are no guarantees this will happen with future versions of iOS.
* If you jailbreak you are forever a fugitive. You can never again just update, you have to wait and make sure it doesn't kill your setup. You can end up losing your warranty, be refused tech support, etc.
* Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it. I'm OK with the default being locked down, but be like android and give me the checkbox to open up the rest of the world to me (Android devices are certainly not perfect on this front, though).
I agree with the rest of your points. I also have a similar story, but instead of going to OS X, I just started installing Ubuntu and using the defaults without customization. And that's the way I primarily use my devices. I just think it's ridiculous we're even having this discussion about whether people should have full ownership of devices they've paid for.
>> Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it.
Actually, if you buy a phone on contract, you didn't pay the full price and aren't entitled to the same rights as someone who paid the full $650+tax sticker price and gets it SIM-unlocked.
The discussion had nothing to do with being SIM unlocked or not, but rather constraints that remain whether you paid full price up front or not.
However the "on a contract" bit is frequently misrepresented I think: when you get a device on contract, in most cases you are being loaned the cost of the device. You have zero recourse to simply return the device when you decide you don't want it any more. There is little to no difference between buying a phone "outright" on a credit card, or getting it "on contract" with your carrier.
>> Yes, you can, for now. There are no guarantees this will happen with future versions of iOS.
[..]
>> If you jailbreak you are forever a fugitive. You can never again just update, you have to wait and make sure it doesn't kill your setup. You can end up losing your warranty, be refused tech support, etc
Well, in a sense that's an inherent risk of customizability, a tradeoff you have to make. Home screen customizations are probably perfectly safe on stock Android, but I'm not sure how more intrusive modifications will affect updating Android phones that are heavily skinned by the manufacturer (ie: most of them). Maybe I'm wrong, but I suppose you can forget about applying major updates to a Samsung TouchWiz or HTC Sense phone without either undoing or screwing up all your customizations, or in the worst case even bricking your phone to the point it needs a factory reset. If customization was at the top of my feature list, I wouldn't risk anything but a stock Android device.
>> Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it.
From a philosophical point of view you can have all kinds of opinions, assertions and beliefs about anything. In reality, what you are calling absurd applies to a very significant majority of products you can buy in stores. You can tune your car, but don't expect the dealer to fix it under warranty. You can modify the OS on your desktop computer, but don't expect Microsoft or Apple to supply patches to the problems you may introduce, or even make sure stock patches don't break your setup. You can make most electronic devices do things they were never designed for, but the risk of breaking them is all on you.
Here on HN, we take customizing hardware and software for granted and think it's only natural to modify it to make it better suit our needs, but I don't think a whole lot of people around here think the same about modifying (for example) their furniture, their clothes, their kitchen appliances, etc. But I'm pretty sure their are lots of people on other websites talking about exactly those kinds of things, people who wouldn't even think about customizing their mobile phone or PC. I realize this is getting a little tangential, but the point here is that if you really want to, you can modify almost anything, but almost always the risk is on you, whether you like it (from a philosophical standpoint or otherwise) or not. I don't see what makes mobile phones so special that you should expect the manufacturer to provide you with the tools to modify them, especially when there are alternatives that allow it out of the box. No-one forces you to use an iPhone ;-)
> Well, in a sense that's an inherent risk of customizability, a tradeoff you have to make.
What? No, it's an inherent risk of customizability that requires violating the companies ToS to achieve.
You really are suggesting that the 'inherent risk' of any kind of customizability is about the same, regardless of whether the vendor intends to support it as a feature, or intends to _prohibit you_ from doing it and does everything they can to prevent it? Really?
Customizability is of the utmost importance if you want to adapt your device to your workflow. I prefer it to adapting my workflow to each device I use (and they are more than one).
But the important part is that a customizable environment works for both parties: those who support and those who oppose customization.
I am happy with the apple default. I would not be happy with the default android layout, and I have tried to be.
I don't spend my time changing my desktop items. I don't customise my chrome borders, fiddle with rainmeter, etc. I don't even change my desktop background from the first one I got years and years ago. This may not be a very "hacker" attitude, but for me I just want function by default.
Personalisation is never a bad thing, but having a worse default is. Not wanting to faff with your display to get something acceptable is entirely within reason. In each case it is a choice, and the ability to personalise your screen is very much a subjective benefit.
I'm totally with you on this. On both my iPhone and Macbook I don't change the desktop background or much else from the day I get it. There are other things like the terminal colors and such that I do but for the most part I leave the design alone. Now, customization is obviously very important to people and if it is then that's a great reason to switch to a platform other than iOS. But is it a reason that iOS is worse or better than some other platform? Absolutely not. There is room in this world for things to just be different rather than better or worse.
I Just changed to Android yesterday. The first thing I missed was the polish of the iOS.
I looked up how to switch applications and all I got was "10 best task switcher apps." I don't have time to evaluate three, much less ten task switcher apps! All I've been able to find is if you hold down the main button and then scroll to task manager, you can get to one.
I like customization, but Apple's defaults were better for me, at least. You say Fisher-Price, I say well conceived and 1960's Braun.
sorry, missing from my comment (lost in a pre-edit, it seems) was that it looks Fisher-Price to me. I know that plenty of people don't see it that way. Even if nothing else, the big chunky soft buttons seem to jar quite strongly against the thin, sleek, hi-tech look of the hardware to me - while the software and hardware might separately tell their own stories well, to me they don't seem to jive well together.
Newer Android releases have a dedicated onscreen button for this, while older releases have a press and hold on the home button menu with the 6 most recent applications.
I haven't read the article but I was an iPhone3 for a year, nexus 1 for a year, nexus s for a year and now iPhone 4S for a year.
Things I still miss:
I still miss that android apps can download in the background so for example when I wake up I the morning any new podcasts I'm subscribed to are already on the phone. Contrast to iOS6 where I have to remember to manually run the app. Which generally means I only run it just as I'm about to get in the car. I then sit in my entry way for 2-6 minutes waiting for my podcast app to download
I miss that apps can register for more events and act on them. For example any app can register to get an event when a new photo is saved. It can then upload, in the background, that photo. That means I can install one Flickr app, one g+ app and one fb app and the photos get uploaded to all 3 services no matter which app I use to take the photo. Contrast to ios6 where either every photo app has to have built in uploading options for every service I could possibly want. Or, I have to manually run the specific app for each service.
I miss auto app updating. I don't have as many apps as most of my friends on my iPhone but it seems like every day or every other day there's a number on the app store bugging me to update stuff. having to manually update is a distraction, chore, and annoyance I don't need.
Of course I miss being able to choose various default apps. I want Camera+ to be my default camera. I want Google maps to be my default maps. I want gmail to be my default mail app. I want a different apps to be my default music player and video player. I want chrome to be my default browser.
I miss being able to customize my desktop and lock screen. Not just adding widgets but changing it to use other apps. See http://slidescreenhome.com as one example.
I miss geeky things like being able to run an ssh tunnel in one app and use that tunnel in another app.
That said I'm still on iPhone. There's still plenty of things I like about iPhone over Android. I don't see myself switching back for at least a few more generations.
You can do this kind-of on the iPhone. Some apps support the geo fence wake-up thing that lets them update subscriptions.
For example, you can set your home address in Downcast or Instapaper so that when you leave or arrive, those apps will fetch new content without you having to open the app. Downcast will even download the podcasts in the background.
Now, this requires you to move outside the fence, so it's not time based. But I had a decent system where I had my work and home address in Downcast and I set it to fetch whenever I leave or arrive. My regular commute meant that I was always triggering the geo fence.
I'm a very casual podcast listener. I pull up the stock iOS podcast app, hit the podcast I want to listen to, and it streams (plays) while downloading. On non-wifi it takes maybe 4 seconds to start.
Is this unusual? Do other apps make you wait for the whole 'cast to download? Is it a per-podcast thing?
This assumes that you're somewhere with wifi (or 3/4G, I suppose). I do a good chunk of my iPhone media consumption during my commute via the subway - there's no internet underground, so everything needs to be pre-downloaded.
The downside of auto-downloading is that your tablet/phone will run out of battery much faster than on iOS. iOS has stand by times of weeks (31 days?), which is wonderful. My nexus 7 runs dry after days, arguably because of the apps I use, or because the OS allows them. I'm unsure which I prefer, though I'd like to be able to configure a trade-off between the two myself..
+1
I use BeyondPod as my Podcast manager and its set to only download when charging, on WiFi and at 7am. No background processing otherwise. I've used BeyondPod for so long that I don't even realize effective it is until reading all these comments. I have over 40 podcasts that are updated. I listen to them on flights, walking, downtime..etc.
For podcasts, I use Instacast and that definitely downloads in the background, but I believe the app just can't be in suspend state. As long as a bunch of apps have not been opened after instacast, it should download everything fone.
The trade-off is to have background downloading on all the time, which is something I hated about android in the 4 years I used it. Background processes were always killing my battery and it was never obvious what was running.
I think the sane compromise that I wish apple would make is to allow for more permanent background tasks to run, but only when externally powered.
As long as a bunch of apps have not been opened after instacast, it should download everything fone.
See, for me that uncertainty is a killer. I want my podcasts downloaded in the morning. I don't want to have to check before I go to bed that the app is still in memory, that's mad.
There are Android apps that abuse their background abilities, but the vast majority work just fine and don't kill your battery.
I don't think it's a matter of other apps not running after you suspend Instacast. All apps have a limited amount of time to complete something like a download task while backgrounded.
In Downcast, I have set my home as a geo fence, and tell it to fetch new podcasts whenever I leave or arrive.
Downcast is allowed to subscribe to this geofence and wake itself up to fetch new podcasts, all without me opening the app at all. The only catch is if the downloads take more than 15 minutes, they get paused until I open the app again.
You sure make a good case for Android being vastly more capable. After that litany, I'm really curious what are the "plenty of things I like about iPhone over Android". Why are you sticking with the iPhone despite your compelling list of Android advantages? I ask as someone who has used iPhone but not Android, is keenly aware of iOS limitations, but likes the hardware.
I'd say the number one thing that made me switch to iPhone a year ago and that keeps me there is that it still feels like most apps appear on iOS first.
I like checking out new apps and games in particular. My impression is that more games are released first on iOS and then later Android (or not at all).
Others have complained that the average quality of apps on iOS seem to be higher than the average on Android. That's changing but it was certainly true a year ago. It's less true now.
The UX on iOS is still superior IMO to Android. I guess that's far more subjective. Some people like the back button on Android. I hate it since it's impossible to know where it's going to go.
but they require apps to do the right thing (insert fake history so pressing back in one screen always takes you to the same screen). That means there will always be apps that don't follow the rules. iOS doesn't have this issue because it doesn't have a back button.
That's just one example. There's more on that page. The Android team says they are 1/3rd the way there. Not sure how many versions until they are all the way there but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
There's a few issues I'm not sure will ever get fixed. The virtual (home/back/task) buttons really get in the way on games. Playing a game, at least an action game, my fingers slide all over the place. With the current iPhone design it's very unlikely to press the home button by accident but not so on Android (or at least not so for me). I'm sure some players have no problems.
There's a huge accessory market for iOS. Battery cases, Camera cases (lenses), stereos, 20x the case styles. I really wish Google would define some kind of standard for Android docks. iPhone5 broke all of this but I'm sure the market is catching up quick. Of course this is a fragmentation issue for Android but I'm sure someone creative could come up with a solution.
I'm sure there's a few others but that's the few that popped into my head.
I've switched between the two platforms a bit - I had an iphone 3G, a few android phones, and switched back to iOS with iPhone 5. I really like Android but there were a few deal killers:
1) Battery life - pretty much the reason I switched back to iPhone. It doesn't matter how great the software is - if I can't turn on the phone it's useless. I don't know how many times I would be racing to meet friends at night, hoping I would reach them in time before my phone completely died. I spent an unforgivable about of my time tinkering with settings to extend battery using widgets (toggling data, location services, turning down brightness to the point it was barely viewable, etc.). My last phone was a Galaxy Nexus and almost everyone on my team had one. Guess how many people had 4G on? No one - the phone died in hours with it on.
A close friend, who is a diehard Android fan, keeps a stock of 3 charged batteries on him at all times (he has a separate charger). All of this was just too much of a hassle for me to justify. I haven't had a single day where my phone has died before I've gone home with my iPhone; it lasts a full day with my normal usage.
2) OS upgrades - I was debating between the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5 for my last phone purchase. Besides battery issues, a major con was that I knew the S3 would probably never be updated. Some of my favorite Android features are recent updates (Google Now) and it'd be painful to know that I probably miss out on new features for the 2 years of my phone contract. If the phone you want is a Nexus, this won't be that much of an issue, but that severely limits your device options. And it still somewhat applies to Nexus phones - the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is 3 OS updates behind due to Verizon's approval process.
3) UI/design - There is still a lack of UI/design consistency across the Android ecosystem. It means that the learning curve for the ecosystem is still higher than iOS and sometimes things don't behave the way you expect. Anyone who uses a combination Maps, Nav, and the back button heavily will feel this. I find that the Google Maps iOS app is significantly more consistent than the Android version (although less powerful). This is a consistent theme with iOS vs. Android - better UI but less power.
4) Camera - The camera is one of my most frequently used applications and Galaxy Nexus camera was pretty bad; Google sacrificed camera quality for shutter speed. There are a few Android phones with great cameras (S3) but they are not part of the Nexus line (see #2)
5) App polish - There is still a gap in the quality of applications on the two ecosystems. This is due to many developing on iOS first and Apple's review process. This is a minor complaint since the gap is narrowing and I expect this advantage to be gone by the end of 2013.
6) Maintenance & Depreciation - Have a cracked screen? Good luck finding a shop that will replace your phone model at a decent rate. Screen replacement on my Galaxy Nexus was $100+ while you can easily get your iPhone screen replaced for $30. Depreciation is a "feature" many don't think about, but it's nice to know that I can sell my phone for a decent rate if I switch back to Android (http://priceonomics.com/phones/)
I'm still a big fan of Android and will probably switch back when there's a Nexus phone released with a solid battery & camera.
>And it still somewhat applies to Nexus phones - the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is 3 OS updates behind due to Verizon's approval process.
It really is fairly straightforward to unlock the bootloader and update the ROM yourself, though. It would certainly be nicer if you didn't have to, but it's definitely an advantage of the Nexus devices that there's always good community support for this.
It also lets me use 4G wireless tethering on my unlimited data Verizon plan -- for that reason alone I'm not even a little tempted to switch to an iPhone. Really, the huge difference in camera quality is the only thing I'm jealous of.
Sent from a Starbucks where the internet is down. :)
Its probably not that straightforward for the non-techie crowd; at the end of the day these devices are built for the general population and not just hackers.
And to go on that reasoning, it should be just as easy to jailbreak an iPhone to allow tethering as well.
Regardless, my point was not that iPhones have a better feature set than Android (this isn't the case) but rather to outline a few deal breakers that made me migrate back to iOS.
Android users will tell you that battery life is not an issue anymore but that hasn't been my experience at all. I think that it's a case of you can get good battery life as long as you don't take full advantage of most of the Android features. In particular GPS based apps are horrible on Android, most of them seem to poll constantly.
The article talks up the app data sharing, but I haven't found many apps that take advantage of it. Sorry, it just feels kinda gimmicky to me.
As a diehard iPhone User (Original, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4s, 5) - I'd like to point out that the iPhone isn't without it's "GPS Battery sin" also. 90% of the time when my battery goes crashing to zero (while simultaneously heating up the chassis), it's some crappy (or even quality) Application sucking on the GPS in the background without me wanting it to. DarkSky (Weather App) has been a bad culprit recently, but there have been a host of them.
My single most desired feature of the iPhone that I know I will never, ever, get - is a list of how much power each app has used in the last 1/2/4/12/24 hours. I understand that data is available through xcode telemetry, but Having to search for purple icons throughout the environment, reboot your iPhone, switch into Airplane mode - just to get full control over your battery gets old after a while...
The closest I've seen, though I haven't really looked hard and it's not a full analysis, is Battery Doctor by Kingsoft, which shows current draw for apps, both active and inactive, and system. It's only good for hints, and if there's something better I'd like to know about it.
I've got a GSM Galaxy Nexus. I picked up a 3.5 Amp-Hr battery on amazon, and the phone lasts 3-4 days on a charge now. It's a massive quality-of-life improvement. The only things I switch on/off are GPS and wifi.
I had an iPhone 3G. I despised the thing. It just made me wait allthetime for everything I wanted to do. It was probably the slowest iPhone ever made (bad RAM decisions), but after I left, I'm happy never to go back. Most importantly, I can avoid the iTunes ecosystem now. I can stream my music on my work linux box, off my phone, or any other device I want.
My 4G Xoom dies really quickly with 4g on. it's kept me off of 4g as a technology for at least a year.
I've got a GSM Galaxy Nexus. I picked up a 3.5 Amp-Hr battery on amazon, and the phone lasts 3-4 days on a charge now. It's a massive quality-of-life improvement. The only things I switch on/off are GPS and wifi.
The fact that you still have to turn off GPS and wifi to get 3 days battery life with a 3500mAh battery sort of proves the original point.
Most importantly, I can avoid the iTunes ecosystem now. I can stream my music on my work linux box, off my phone, or any other device I want.
That's funny because in Canada, iTunes is the only realistic way to buy digital music on a smartphone. On Android I really missed Sound-hounding a song, and then clicking on the link to buy it in iTunes instantly.
My 4G Xoom dies really quickly with 4g on. it's kept me off of 4g as a technology for at least a year.
I don't have 4G, but a friend has an iPhone 5 and even though he's always on 4G he gets great battery life. YMMV.
I routinely read through the comments before I actually click on the link to the article. It's a quick indicator to the quality of the article and often, I learn more from the comments vs. the article itself.
I used to do the same thing until I realized how much it affected my interpretation of the article. It colored my thoughts, making me part of the hivemind. Now I read the article first, then wait a few seconds before looking at what other people think so I can better for my own opinion.
Somewhere between 50-75% of the time I don't read the articles posted to HN. The comments are frequenty more interesting, and almost always have commenters that are more informed about the original topic.
Well, there are quite beautiful homescreens and widgets for android. You don't have to use them but i would say that iPhone users are just missing out on something.
Sure, you are used to just take what Apple gives you and praise that but i couldn't.. I want high customizability and i love to change the entire phone setup when i get bored by the current setup.. or try out a new home screen once in a while. It's painless and fun for me to do :)
But surely, what really is missing on iOS is the whole intent/sharing system. It's just painful to try to interact between several apps on my iPad.
This is I feel like I can't trust anyone on this sort of thing. I had an Android tablet. Widgets are almost universally ugly and useless. "Beautiful Widgets" is a great example of what passes for well designed on Android, and it's ugly as sin and useless.
Did you ever change the theme from the default for the widget? The default is exceptionally bad and mimics the one from HTC Sense (also extremely ugly).
Not bad, but I still prefer the consistency Notification Centre widgets provide. Swiping down from the top and swiping to the side are pretty equivalent actions IMO.
Yeah, if you're comparing those two things, I'd agree it's about the same difficulty to access either. Normally, I just look at my lockscreen though if i want the weather (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24904191/2013-01-05%2000.45.21.png). I'm using Cyanogen 10 in that screen shot before lockscreen widgets, so that wouldn't be found on stock Android, but I assume there's some sort of lockscreen widget for 4.2 that can do something similar.
True. For the record I'm in favour of using device's lockscreen for more, that does feel like wasted space that could be used for more at-a-glance information. When the iOS jailbreak rolls around for my current model I typically hop on board and install LockInfo so I can have twitter & weather at a glance.
The thing is though I don't really miss it when I don't have it, it's just a nice extra when it's available so it's never been a convincing reason for me to consider Android. TBH I find LockInfo to look nicer as well.
Android widgets always felt really inconsistent to me, however I've never used CyanogenMod and I do like the look of that screenshot. Clean, consistent, and most of all not gigantic and flashy.
They also have an option to add your calendar notifications to the lockscreen as well for daily events. I don't have them added there, but it's a nice touch to see what is on your literary next with a quick glance. Cyanogen is really the only ROM I trust and the most professional. I don't agree with all their decisions (though that's kind of typical of any project), but they're more professional than most other projects and have higher standards for gerrit commits they accept.
They have a built in updater for their ROMs since Cyanogen 9 (4.0) so no more having to download from a website. Delta updates may have been merged in recently, but have not had time to stay on top of their changes. Killer feature for me though has always been switching music tracks with the volume buttons (like how Blackberry would do it by hold pressing the volume button). I never knew how much I missed it until trying to run one day without it. It's a pretty trivial thing to add to the AOSP source though (add maybe 50 lines total to a few Java files in the framework base) and wished Google would do it. I can only assume there must be some sort of patent/licensing reason as to why they don't.
You're right about wasted space and stock devices have yet to really find a good way to use it. I don't really like how Google implemented lockscreen widgets in 4.2 if you tried them out yet. They're either full out maximized (by pulling them down and thus no easier than unlocking the device) or they're minimal. Someone will probably mod them to be more customized in the community I would guess. I'm still using 4.1.2 on my Galaxy Nexus just for stability since CM 10.1 (4.2.1) is still in early development.
Random question, but how is the post-jailbreak modding community for iphone? I mean I could look it up, but I'm guessing you have some first hand observations.
> but how is the post-jailbreak modding community for iphone? I mean I could look it up, but I'm guessing you have some first hand observations
Pretty good, you would be surprised. I've always been of the opinion that even the iPhone jailbreak community is better organized than anyone who hasn't tried it in person realizes. Via tweaks like DreamBoard you can customize anything and everything. Even total overhauls like turning it into an Android style or WP8 style device. It's pretty remarkable.
It's worth getting ahold of a 4S and jailbreaking to check it out firsthand if possible. The impression I get from Android users is that they feel iOS is completely impossible to customize in any real way. IMO installing total overhauls is actually easier assuming you're past the jailbreak process, which also tends to be simpler than rooting (although obviously that depends on the specific Android device you're trying to root).
Yeah, I'd love to try it out if I happen to find one cheap or one falls into my hands one day. Just as a device to hack around on and play with would be nice. I knew you could theme on iphone, but I didn't realize there was more in the modding community for it than that.
You're correct about the average Android user assuming that there's nothing you can really mod with an iOS device. The fact they assume that is sort of odd to a point, given how many in the Android community readily accept and mod phones without a complete source tree by Samsung, HTC and others in a similar fashion by reversing the dalvik byte code into Smali.
> I knew you could theme on iphone, but I didn't realize there was more in the modding community for it than that.
I definitely have to throw together a video demonstrating various jailbreak tweaks. If I still had my 4S I would do it right now, but I'm waiting on the iOS 6.1 release to jailbreak my iPhone 5. I'll be sure to send you a link if you're still interested.
> The fact they assume that is sort of odd to a point, given how many in the Android community readily accept and mod phones without a complete source tree by Samsung, HTC and others in a similar fashion by reversing the dalvik byte code into Smali.
No doubt, I was astounded at how much I had to figure out and how many attempts I had to make to root an EVO 3D for a friend. And this was after someone had already made a handy tool for the process and spent months developing it.
All that just to take it past the awful stock HTC ROM Rogers left it on and to peel out the crapware. Jailbreaking, by contrast couldn't be simpler. However you can get away with a fair bit more on an unrooted Android device than you can with stock iOS so in reality it's just a tradeoff.
It's nice to see the phone market becoming a Windows/OS X/Linux situation though, where the differences aren't so drastic and what you use basically comes down to personal preference instead of any blatant advantages. Every time I have a chance to play around with a more recent Android device the experience has become better.
Sure, send the video my way whenever you have time :). I'd like to see what is possible just out of hacker curiosity and I do like to enlighten some of the more diehard Android users whenever possible for assuming everything about iOS is bad, haha.
My first Android phone was an HTC, I know where you're coming from with that. Was not the easiest thing to deal with for rooting. Nexus devices are thankfully a bit easier since you don't have to deal with working an exploit to get the bootloader unlocked and root. I pretty much vowed to avoid anything Non-Nexus in the future for that reason and a few others.
I always felt like the lockscreen itself is a total waste.
Most people don't use complex security mechanism on it but rather some slide stuff and why? It wasn't possible to disable the lockscreen for a while but at least now it's possible to disable. It never turns on by accident and i'm right in my homescreen, much better (imo)! :)
I've considered disabling mine, but I figured I may still turn it on by accident in my pocket. Risk is far reduced from say when I had a blackberry (and pocket dialed at times), but I figured it could still happen.
Mh, no, the 3D cylinder is not even default ( i think ) and it's just one option of many. I have set it to normal scrolling behaviour as we know from other home screens.
The 3D cylinder is just one option. This example shows that you can have a very different homescreen (an option you don't even have on the iOS).
Another homescreen with a totally different layout was slidescreen. Sadly it was discontinued: http://slidescreenhome.com/
My point is: Customization is a great thing to have. Atleast for me. All the examples i show you are just a tiny fraction of what is possible, i just don't care so much for nice looking as i care for useful and handy.
The Weather widget is hell of a lot of themes and is quite awesome, the animations on opening etc. They did redesign it recently and it looks just nice. I get that "looks nice" is very subjective but i don't see your point. I can read all texts perfectly fine on the phone.
Another point is: I couldn't live without a calendar widget anymore. It's too nice to have the agenda for the next days right on your homescreen.
Yes, inter-app communication is a major difference for developers. On iOS, apps will say "Supports Twitter and Facebook" and the developers have hand-written the integrations; on Android, the app integrates with whatever the user has installed and the developer does no work at all to integrate with any specific service or app. So it's a win for developers as well as users.
Twitter and Facebook is integrated at a OS level with iOS. A few lines of code gets me access to the user's accounts (with their permission of course).
A bit more generic than that; there's no global setting where user says "this is my preferred App.Net app". When user hits Share in any app (many apps provide such a feature), a menu appears with all available apps user might want to share to. Any app can opt in to be in the menu, based on MIME type of what's being shared.
Does it take you out of the app or bring up a part of the other app which you use to share and then dismiss and you are back exactly where you were before you attempted to share?
That's how it usually works though there's a lot of flexibility. In some cases, it might not even be interactive at all, e.g. adding to your Pocket queue, you'd just hit the Pocket menu item and you're back where you were.
Apps can register to handle URIs, which can be local, or something like http://*.reddit.com/* so whenever a link to reddit is found in say an email or web page, you can choose how to handle it, either via the browser app, or a reddit client.
Launching other apps can be done by any app right now, but the app package needs some info saying the app is able to handle a certain data type or open a certain URL protocol.
I am an Objective-C developer and I love the SDKs on the iPhone, but I am just so tired of Apple's bullshit regarding using our devices the way we want to. I'm tired of waiting for them to enable basic features like phone number black/whitelists.
My next device will be a Nexus. Then I can run apps in the background other than music, share data between apps, sideload apps from third parties, run a mobile terminal, run mobile scripting languages, and basically be free to use my hardware as I'd like.
"I'm tired of waiting for them to enable basic features like phone number black/whitelists."
Keep in mind that's a basic feature for you, not necessarily for all. I wouldn't use it, so I'd prefer Apple to work on X/Y/Z feature instead. Feature priority is hard to work out at the best of times, because no matter what gets picked someone will be disappointed.
My long term interest is in Android, but I switched to an iPhone a year ago to follow that ecosystem, too. The first thing I did was buy three call blocking apps from the App Store, none of which worked at all. After reading all the horror stories about the vaunted App Store approval process to protect innocent iPhone users from bad apps, I realized it was all marketing FUD. When an app has 99% bad reviews, all saying "doesn't work" and it stays in the app store, that is Apple fraud.
Developer community demanded Apple reduced their ban hammer swing, they did. They get a lot of crap that slips through the net because of it, however when complaints are made they seem to respond, the problem being a review isn't a complaint. Well, the problem being Apple isn't draconian enough now really.
I just want to confirm my understanding of the argument you are making: Because Apple backed off a bit on the huge list of things one cannot do with an app, they now have a pass to approve apps that, by definition, cannot ever work on their platform, and can be demonstrated to not work at all by ... trying to use them?
What you're arguing against is not the point of my statement.
If the vendor does not implement something like that, it should still be available as a third-party software. It doesn't need to be a security problem using a system like permissions. If they had a reasonable system there would be multiple options for blacklists.
I'm not irritated that they choose to implement feature X over feature Y, I am irritated because there's no way to implement feature Y at all without their most holy consent.
Something like a blacklist is simple and useful, why can't we have it? Why can't we have mobile interpreters for our scripting languages? Why can't we have apps that download articles while we sleep, without us babysitting the phone to make sure they are open, and add them to a reading list?
It's a small computer. It's ridiculous to restrict it as it is.
> iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events.
As far as I understand, it doesn't provide for an application "register[ing] itself to handler certain data and events", which would probably be an extension to UIActivityView and UIActivity[0]. Remove View Controllers provide two features of interest, one of which could work with UIActivity for sharing:
* An application or framework providing views to an other one (said view could be invoked by a UIActivity of some sort, so that the Facebook application would provide a "Share on Facebook" remote view and the corresponding activity, a sharing application would invoke the activity view, then display the correct remote view upon selection by the user)
* Isolated cross-process communication between the embedding application and the embedded view, which allows different security settings (and thus things like JIT-ed UIWebView, or more simply a twitter remote viewcontroller being able to use the data the Twitter app has access to without leaking it to third parties)
Interestingly it seems like Apple is doing something with remote view controllers with their 12 Days of Christmas app, which could imply they're trying to test it as much as possible in a live context.
I ended up coming down with a cold/flu bug so I was a bit useless and missed the opportunity. My quick notes on it basically go along the lines of:
- 12 Days App remains constant, no outward transition to other app, 12DA is last in tray, normal application switch over/switch back as seen with Facebook auth etc leaves app as 'used' in tray.
- Remote views seem to be getting called as downloads are instantly in store apps on that device, not globally on all devices that can pull them, writing off a trick with the 'download content' settings.
- Not web views as capable of accessing local stored credential for itunes account, unless apple has begun exposing that in some specific and bizarre way.
Wish I hadn't been sick, my plan was to watch the processes to see if they were running something like the mail composition one, or whether it was getting done like the Facebook one.
The coolest bit is that I can install both of these on my phone and tablet (which is back at home and not with me) right now via the links you just shared without having to interact with either device.
What's funny is that this feature gets often pointed out as one of the cool Android exclusives, but iOS has it too: you just need to turn on Automatic Downloads in the store settings, it works for apps as well as media and books purchased from the store.
It's more limited, in that it will download all purchases made on any other device (or iTunes) connected to the same account, but it seems like very few people are aware of it.
Apple does not have a web bases store right? You still have to use itunes and download the app to the computer? Android install can be done via the web store from what I understand
you have to do it from iTunes, but you don't have to download to the computer or do any syncing. It works the same way as Android, just from the iTunes app instead of a web browser.
I know you don't need to sync but buying an app in itunes automatically starts downloading it to the computer. That's how I remember it. Has it changed?
Hopefully, there has been some serious work done on iOS 7 and it'll probably address most of the OP's concerns.
However, I do hope they introduce none of these customization shenanigans. I don't care for widgets (nor do I want another icon or thing I cannot remove from my homescreen). If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper (e.g. OS X).
I disagree - widgets are enormously important to me, and were the deciding factor in my choosing an android phone. I'm quite forgetful, and I have a tendency to focus on one thing to the exclusion of others. Widgets allow me to display important information on my home screen that will be shown to me every time I look at the phone.
This means that I can have a list of (for example) upcoming birthdays on my phone that I see over and over again, enough that I will eventually see the reminder at a point when I am in a position to do something about it. Alarms are useless by comparison, because I will inevitably be busy with something else when they go off. Calendars/todo apps are equally useless to me, because they require me to remember to open up an app all the time.
I realise my use case is relatively niche, but I imagine there's a lot of different niche users out there that benefit from customisability.
I do the same thing. I have a birthday calendar and todo list on my home screen, it's immensely helpful. Even more so now that I can also have it on my lock screen.
But see, you have analyzed that you desperately needed some kind of birthday widget and that iOS didn't suit your particular needs. You switched over or went directly to Android. That's fine, you have an alternative and you seem happy with it.
However, I despise such things. I've analyzed that I wouldn't stand using Android for those reasons, and that I'm better off with iOS.
I go with Apple's motto: "there's an app for that".
That's absolutely fair enough - I love that there's a variety of options out there for everyone, and I'm never going to criticise someone for finding what works for them.
I guess my point was more about the statement that there's no need for customization if the OS is well-designed - to my mind, there may be no need for customization for many (or perhaps even a majority) of users, but there is for some. An OS that tried to serve all niche needs without allowing customization would likely be a confused mess - and yet, for those users, having their niche need served can be extremely important.
This is basically what I miss most from Android. My home screen was taken up largely by my upcoming calendar items. It was a nice ambient awareness of what I had coming up, with absolutely no effort on my part.
My understanding was that at least on the lock screen there was no easy way to distinguish between different calendars - I want birthday reminders to show up persistently for at least a week before the event, which is obviously undesirable for most other events.
If the lock screen gets/has that functionality, I'm not sure what the real difference between that and a widget is - except that mine displays on the home screen while yours displays on the lock screen.
And those things only work in cases where Apple has made special agreements. It's going to look silly when Facebook and Twitter are no longer things and iOS rushed to integrate them instead of just opening an API to enable it.
If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper
I take it you share Jobs' opinion on clothes? Same jeans, sneakers, turtleneck every day. Hey, it's perfectly functional, why would anyone want to vary things or look different? I mean, everyone has the same use-case, right?
Actually, now that you mention it, I pretty much wear the same-looking clothes all year long. I have one brand and a favorite cut for each of my garments and I stick to it. I even have 20 pairs of identical black socks for easy selection in the morning.
I like how iOS and OS X force us into one particular set of minimalistic UI. I despise skeuomorphism and I'm eager to see it go away on iOS. But I realize others may want to customize their OS, and for that they have to be grateful to have alternatives, namely Windows/Unix and Android/WP.
Yes, because android has always been buttery smooth. And the battery life has always been excellent. The density of the screen was impressive from day one.
I agree, though I think some of the "not all Android applications look like crap" type stuff is just pointing out that some of the things people have used to beat Android with in the past are no longer true which is fair enough.
Interesting. I too am an iPhone lover who recently picked up a Nexus 4 to get into Android development. This is my first experience with Android, so I didn't realize that the Nexus 4 Android experience might be different than your typical Android smartphone.
I was very impressed with the overall experience. If I wasn't so used to iOS, I could easily see myself using Android on a Nexus 4. But in the end, I walked away with the opposite impression; I saw no compelling reason to switch to Android and have decided iOS is still the mobile OS for me. Unlike the author, I do not really consider myself a power user. The customizability of Android is really enticing, but at the end of the day I find myself preferring the design/philosophy of iOS. But it really just comes down to personal preference.
After using an iPhone for so long, I became annoyed at the small design/interface differences present in the Nexus 4 (e.g. no physical home button). At times I found it difficult to use the Nexus 4 because of it's greater width. The iPhone width is optimal for my hand size and pocket size. Also, in my opinion as an app developer, the iOS app ecosystem still seems a lot stronger than Android. Browsing the Play Store was a little boring to me. Yes, most popular apps have both iOS and Android versions, but many developers still target iOS first and Android second. Until there's a reason for that to change I think iOS still has the edge in "killer" apps.
That being said, I agree that there are a lot of nice things in Android that I would love to see implemented in iOS.
Are you kidding me? The iPhone has the optimal width? You sound just like Marco, Gruber, and all those other Apple sycophants who were claiming that the iPhone size was perfect for the hand, until the iPhone 5 came out, of course.
Just like they got their thumbs surgically altered when the 5 came out, no doubt you will be getting all your pockets resized if Apple increases the iPhone width.
The fact that the iPhone 5 made the screen bigger doesn't mean the original rationales for the smaller screen size wasn't justified. It's an engineering problem, and that involves trade-offs. My wife doesn't follow the tech press at all, and complained unprompted about the extra length on the 5. She can't reach the top with her thumb anymore.
I still think the iPhone 4 &< had the best screen size for ergonomics. I don't think you can contest that.
The iPhone 5 compromises to make the screen bigger, but only by a little.
I don't think I could use a 4" device like a Nexus 4 (I have a Nexus S which was a good size), on my commute where I need to hold onto a handle of the train, underground with one hand, smartphone in other.
You don't think that's contestable? It's one of the most absurd things to say. It's impossible for a device to be perfectly ergonomic for everyone.
I have big hands. I loved the original Xbox controller before they shrank it. I love bigger phones. I find the iPhone 4 and earlier too damn small for me.
The Apple commercials with someone hand showing that it is "perfect size" are simply laughable. Lets have someone with small, medium, and large hands film that commercial and you will see how ridiculous the concept of "perfect size" is.
Sorry but while it may not work for everyone it is close to the perfect size for most people. You even acknowledge it with your comment about the original Xbox controller. I've never met a single person who thinks that controller was appropriately sized.
Nobody said perfect for everyone. It is however, very likely, better for more people than anything else. There are a few people with large hands that liked the original xbox controller. There are 0 people in the world who think it was the best size for most people. It's just not. The same goes for the Samsung Note (1 and 2). It's objectively not the correct phone size for most people, but there is a large subset (in raw numbers, not percentage) that likes the huge phone.
Oh I think it's very contestable. I use my Galaxy Nexus one handed all the time in many situations, including on public transport. Can iPhone users please stop saying that their device has the best ergonomics of all time as if the ratio came down from the heavens. I don't see how people can even think something like a perfect size exists suitable for every human being. To each their own.
A perfect size doesn't exist for every human being. But the average thumb travel for adult males is 4 inches. For adult women it is 3.8. The width directly impacts usability for over 50% of the human population. Get over 3.5 inches and you're having to fidget with the phone to go side to side while holding the phone.
There are actual limits to width that have to be take into consideration. Just because you might have a hand large enough for a nexus, does not mean every human, or even adult male for that matter shares that trait. And you're guaranteed less women share that trait.
> I still think the iPhone 4 &< had the best screen size for ergonomics. I don't think you can contest that.
Yes, I can. It's complete bullshit. All the arguments for why the iPhone 4 form factor was the best are now being used to claim that the iPhone 5 is the best by a lot of the same people. That just goes to show that you can manipulate that argument to work with whatever screen size you want.
The argument that a smaller screen, allows for a smaller surface area, that is easier to navigate is obvious.
That's not obvious at all. Larger screens can allow for larger touch targets, and by showing more content they can reduce the need for "navigation" in the first place.
> All the arguments for why the iPhone 4 form factor was the best are now being used to claim that the iPhone 5 is the best by a lot of the same people.
Some people have larger hands than others. Android gives you the whole range from an Xperia tipo to the Note. On the iPhone, unless you want to compromise performance, you have one phone.
The ecosystem may give you a choice in size, but that has an impact on power. Take the Tipo, woeful screen and battery life as well as being desperately underpowered. So, no, there isn't really a choice. If you want a useable device, these days you are looking at 4" plus.
The danger is that changes to screen size aren't always reflected by the software, so you may have a small screen that scales down, or a large screen with wasted real estate. See the host of apps that haven't update for the iPhone 5 screen yet!!!
Keep in mind that the Android SDK has quite a few features that allow you to create liquid layouts that will work fairly well on most device sizes, as precisely because the Android OS comes on a great variety of hardware, this problem had to be addressed early on, while on iOS every time a new screen size/pixel density comes along you have to create an all new view.
I'll acknowledge that many times you have to fiddle a bit to make sure that your Android view works well on a variety of screens, but usually you can target between 3 and 4 layouts and have a usable UI for all devices from 10" tablets all the way down to small feature phones.
On this note - I didn't get surgically altered, and if there is one thing that drives me bats (daily) about the 5 it's the bigger screen. Man do I wish we could go back to the 4's screen size!
Agreed on the size. Nexus 4 is basically a mini-tablet, and looks incredibly retarded when someone holds it up to their ear. Reminds me of people who use their iPad cameras to take photos and videos.
> looks incredibly retarded when someone holds it up to their ear
I care more about my phone's abilities than I do about what people think of me when I'm holding it up to my ear. (Which only happens maybe once a week for me, anyway.)
Interesting - I switched from android to the iPhone 5 recently (after having the N1, NS and Galaxy Nexus). I thought this was the first iPhone that finally had the necessary hardware (LTE being required after the galaxy).
The main things I miss are better google voice integration on the nexus phones (the ability to use the web interface for texting is something I can't give up). I also used to not pay for texting this way and could actually afford to have a smart phone because of it since Tmobile has a $30 no contract 100min/unlimited data plan for unsubsidized phones.
I also needed some sort of google talk app which I finally found with the $5 version of the verbs app. A bunch of people I communicate with are on android and use google chat instead of facebook chat or imessage.
The current iPhone does some things much better. The biggest thing is battery life which is at least twice as good as any nexus phone I've used (probably even more). The difference in battery is really incredible. The new native Facebook iOS app is also great to use. The iPhone hardware is also subjectively much nicer, it both looks and feels a lot better to me - makes me wish Google had partnered with Nokia.
Really though they're both pretty equivalent at the point.
Edit: Almost forgot, the critical feature of android was turn by turn navigation which apple finally came out with in iOS6. Now that google's released their maps app as well the core differences that mattered are gone.
Battery life in Android land is a matter of choosing the right handset. I don't believe the iPhone holds a candle to my Note 2 or the RAZR Maxx if you actually use the phone heavily. Plus replaceable/extended batteries are another option.
Most people buy the Note 2 as a phone though. But the point is you can still choose - big hands, like big screen get a Note 2. Want something smaller - get Razr Maxx HD or S3 mini with extra battery. All I am saying is that battery life isn't an issue on Android any longer. Even with the smaller non-removable battery phones, with little tweaks you can get battery life very similar to what the iPhone 4/4S have offered (don't know about iPhone 5).
I guess any Android phone is now a days. The Razr is smaller of the two. But I think the point still stands due to replaceable batteries on phones like the S3 mini.
Do you find you have problems with MMS and Google Voice? Last I checked, it was unsupported and text messages with pictures or video just went to /dev/null without any notifications to either party. That was a no-go for me.
My main # now is Google Voice. For the past 4 years, there was just 2 instances that I needed MMS.
What's frustrating though is the inability of Google Voice to receive SMS from short codes. Craigslist and Paypal also don't verify accounts with a Google Voice number.
Perhaps so, but you can't deny that for wider adoption, Google Voice needs to do something about both Short Codes and MMS. Lack of MMS is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, and "text it to my email address", as I explain to friends, is like a paradigm shifting without a clutch (with apologies to Dilbert).
MMS isn't supported and still silently fails (which is annoying). I just tell people to 'text my email addresss' which works, or to use something else (like facebook/snapchat).
If someone attempts to send your Google voice number an MMS you will receive a notification about the message and the image will be sent to your email address.
Only if the MMS is from a Sprint customer.
"Google Voice users are now able to receive pictures and other multimedia messages from Sprint subscribers."
When I get MMS from AT&T or Verizon, then I don't get anything but from Sprint customers, I get the notification and its in my gmail account right away. Probably due to the integration with Sprint and Google Voice. http://www.google.com/googlevoice/sprint/.
I've received MMS from a MetroPCS user. I can't find an updated list of providers that google voice supports. The blog post announcing sprint mms support was in October 2011.
Curious, do you actively use the power control widget? Turning off wi-fi and GPS when you aren't using them can help a lot with battery life.
Also, if you are using CyanogenMod (or many other custom builds) you can change the performance settings on your cpu governer, etc., to improve it further.
That's silly. I don't have to manually turn off wi-fi or GPS for my iPhone to last about two days, why should I have to on an Android phone? Automatic management would be fine, but having to think about it is not. Even using cell-towers-only coarse location to set them when I'm at home or work could be OK.
> I don't have to manually turn off wi-fi or GPS for my iPhone to last about two days, why should I have to on an Android phone?
Because an Android phone doesn't assume you have unlimited data and automatically turn Wifi off periodically, thereby downloading things over the cell network.
I've gotten burned this way on the iPhone; luckily I opted for the larger data plan.
Chances are, there is a ketnel wakelock held by a device driver and preventing the phone from sleeping. This is a common issue with poorly written drivers (even Nexus 7 3g suffers from it). Properly functioning Android phone should be managing its radios automatically.
I bought the Nexus 4 and couldn't believe how little runtime I was getting. Even paid $5 for juice defender to turn off wifi / automatic downloading. It's the screen. Went back to my iPhone 4. Sites should really do a better job of reporting battery life, although I guess I should have guessed from the Anandtech table [1]. Gave it to my brother to jailbreak and underclock, to see if it could be saved.
My cheapo android phone from Virgin had an app installed by default (ICS) that lets you automate power control. My phone goes from 100% to 60% about twice as fast as 60% to 0%, because once it hits 60% it automatically dims the screen (unless you force it bright). And if you ever watch power consumption, by and far it's the screen that uses the most.
& I switched from an iPhone 4S to a Galaxy Nexus & back to an iPhone 5 , couldn't be happier. These posts are pointless. Whatever device works for you. All of these platforms have strengths & weaknesses. You can make equally cogent cases for the upcoming Blackberry 10 or Windows Phone 8. The First iPhone was a significant leap in mobile computing, since then, the way I see it, it's been mostly polish. Google & MSFT caught up to the competition, RIMM retooled. The more competition the merrier.
Google Now is amazing. iOS fluidity still has no equal. Google play automatic app updates are convenient. iOS apps polish is extraordinary. Windows Phone tiles are fantastic. BB contact integration is a thing of beauty...etc.
The Galaxy Nexus is garbage. I went from 4S to Galaxy Nexus too and it infuriated me. The screen was unusable in sunlight, microphone and speaker quality were laughable, battery life is half the 4S, not-very-sensitive touchscreen, etc.
Now on an HTC One X, which I like more than the iPhone. It doesn't have any of the quality issues of the GNexus.
I have to agree with this sentiment. My wife has a 4S, but when I needed to upgrade my phone last spring, I didn't want to buy an iPhone mid-cycle. I got the Galaxy Nexus and was pleasantly surprised in all aspects. With ICS and especially JB, Android has really closed the gap to the point where I'm actually glad I don't have an iPhone because I'm a big Google ecosystem user and the better Gmail and Calendar apps tip the scales for me.
GN is clearly inferior in build quality to an iPhone, but you have to be a bit of a snob to call it "garbage". It's solid hardware.
> GN is clearly inferior in build quality to an iPhone
It's only inferior in visible quality (I've dropped it a lot and it barely has a scratch on it), but I'm okay with that because it costs half as much as an iPhone, which I think is very significant.
You can get a top-of-the-line smartphone for $300. That's amazing.
> You can get a top-of-the-line smartphone for $300. That's amazing.
Not sure why you think this. It is mid range phone by every benchmark (e.g. no LTE, battery life, screen quality) and it gets destroyed by the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 in every performance benchmark.
Why are you comparing it to the iPhone 5? The current top-of-the-line Google smartphone, the Nexus 4 (which is what you should compare to the iPhone 5), also costs $300.
When the phone only goes up to 16 GB of non-expandable space, it's hardly top-of-the-line. It doesn't have LTE either. Neither of these matters too much now, but will reduce longevity compared to actual top-of-the-line phones, e.g. the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5.
He was talking about the Galaxy Nexus, which does have LTE.
> battery life
That's a function of the functionality - I'd rather be able to synchronize my reading lists in the background and forgo a bit of the battery life. I rarely use more than half of my Galaxy Nexus's battery on a given day, so that's fine for me.
> screen quality
No idea where you're getting this from. Both screens are fine, but the Galaxy Nexus's screen size is the major difference.
Benchmarks never demonstrate typical use cases, which is especially true for battery life. Unless all you do is load web pages for hours on end at fixed intervals. Personally, I have better things to do with my time. Based on what I've witnessed with my Nexus 4 and iPhone 5s in my family, battery life is very comparible.
> screen quality
When compared to the iPhone 5, the Nexus 4 has better blacks, better contrast ratio, but poorer whites. Color reproduction could be calibrated better, but hey, this is just a mid range phone, right?
In fact, the quad core Krait is arguably the best CPU you can find in a smartphone, performance wise. The only existing (ARM-based) CPU that is better is the Exynos 5250 found in the Nexus 10 (dual core A15).
The GPU is the Adreno 320, which absolutely wrecks the Mali GPU in the Galaxy S3. It still isn't as good as the PowerVR SGX543MP3 found in the iPhone 5, but calling it a mid range GPU is laughable.
taligent was still horribly wrong then, though it's easy to understand given Apple was a year late to the LTE party and since half his posts are pro-iOS apologies.
My Galaxy Nexus has 4G and has excellent battery life. The AMOLED screen is also, of course, gorgeous.
There are multiple versions of the Galaxy Nexus. The Verizon version has LTE, the other version is HSPA+ for the rest of the world and ATT/TMobile in the US.
I've dropped mine (which does not have a case) from chest-height onto brick, down a flight of stairs onto tile, and onto the road while biking at a moderate speed (maybe 15-20 km/h). It has some dents on the side but the screen is totally fine. I rather doubt the iPhone would survive the same.
I have a One X, and get a lot of questions from people with iPhones. Its just a good phone to me, but everyone else seems impressed with the screen quality, photo quality, speed etc. I thought all phones were more or less in the same ballpark.
The screen is the immediately impressive quality about the One X. Photos are mediocre in good lighting/outdoors but excellent under very dim light. Speed is alright I guess, but runs out of ram more often than I'd like (thus clearing an app out of cache causing a reload when switching back to it).
To me, the most impressive is its battery life. I've gone through too many Android phones with poor battery life. The (snapdragon) One X is the only Android phone with acceptable battery life to me. So it's either iPhone or One X. Everything else dies on me at some point in the afternoon/evening.
I've been using the iPhone for a while before switching to a Nexus 4, and honestly there is nothing that feels more fluid on iOS than on a Nexus 4 running jelly bean 4.2.1.
And though some may view it as heresy, as someone who has always had a penchant for "high end" phones, has owned and used the 4S, S3, fluidity seems to be a "solved" problem - even on my latest phone, a Lumia 920 running Windows 8 (now my favorite device, despite the lacking ecosystem - the store is my least favorite aspect).
They are not pointless. I found it informative. I may pick up an android at some point in the future, and since I'm currently an iphone user, I found this point of view relevant.
Unlike most people commenting here, I got a sub-200$ Android (Huawei G300). I got it a few days ago through Amazon just to try something new, and it's way better than I expected it to be.
I first had an iPhone when it came out, then moved to a BlackBerry (weird, I know), and now I'm considering staying with Android, at least for daily use. I still have to stick to the BlackBerry as it's the only phone on the market that provides international roaming at affordable prices, very good battery life (+replaceable, I have my own arsenal and can go for weeks travelling without charging the phone) and a very good keyboard, which is good when you spend your time writing awkwardly long emails.
Android, since ICS, seems to be mature enough for most users. It's snappy (its multitasking, background apps and toggles mean you can do things faster than in an iPhone), does good resource managing and has a very good integration across the whole system. And, as some people have said, it's no longer ugly!
OT: Speaking of the G300, I'd recommend moving to CyanogenMod9 on the G300 -- I think it's much better than the default ICS it ships with (CM10 and above are still quite shaky, although it's fine for my needs).
I understand if you'd prefer to not to mess with your phone and use the default install, but if you feel like getting your hands dirty g300.modaco.com is the place for alternate ROMS.
Best £70 (PAYG, but I guess there is still some operator subsidy in that price) I spent on a phone.
I'm using the CM9 release found at MoDaCo, and still getting used to it while doing small tweaks. It took me less than an hour since I opened the box to wipe the original system (at least Huawei is way better at hardware than they're at software).
As a side note — do you too suffer of touch sensitivity problems? I feel it isn't as snappy as I'd like it to be, and there seems to be no workaround for it. Mostly around the corners, when typing on the keyboard, it might miss some keys and I have to press harder.
If a good Android phone comes to market with a keyboard like the Blackberry or Nokia communicators, it will certainly get me to consider switching away from the iPhone.
BlackBerry phones do use BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) as opposed to standard TCP/IP via an APN. This means that a secure link is made between your phone and RIM's servers (or directly to a company's servers — that why many enterprises still use BlackBerry). And it's also compressed — good thing when using slow connections or roaming.
It goes a bit further, because the "network stack" made by RIM is quite comprehensive, including some tweaks to the way they push information to devices, using operator infrastructure (I believe, I might be wrong here) resulting in a very battery-efficient system.
Because of this, RIM is responsible of negotiating with carriers across different countries, and this result, somehow, in the ability to sign up for sub-100$ / month roaming plans (in fact, it's 55$/month on roaming, pro rata, for me in Spain with a major carrier). Of course, it depends on your home carrier, some want you to keep paying an expensive price per megabyte —around 14$/MB when travelling outside the EU— and then some others let you use roaming as long as you're on BIS (so, no tethering), for a variable amount, or even included in the price for large enterprise plans. It varies depending on each operator and country. On the UK for example, MVNO giffgaff includes a small amount of complimentary roaming data, even for PAYG users.
On a side note, that also means you can tether to a BlackBerry PlayBook while roaming, which is fantastic. I have found roaming to be a bit slow-ish (around the speeds of EDGE even under HSPA), but for email and some random browsing, like reading the news while waiting for a flight on some random country, it is definitely worth it.
(And yes, the PlayBook sucks, someone thought it was a brilliant idea to just release and sell a device with a half-finished operating system — but it does the job.)
Been an Android user for a year (Galaxy Tab 8.9) and was going to get an iPhone 5 last Christmas just to try out a different device. I changed my mind and am getting a Nexus 4 instead. I was able to use one of our test iPhones at work for a primary phone and here are just 3 things I don't like about iOS:
1. Toggling settings can be difficult. In Android, you have a pull-up/pull-down menu right from the home screen where you can just turn things on/off, like Bluetooth, sounds, WiFi, etc. In iOS, you go to the Settings app and scroll through the text labels and go through one or two more screens before achieving the same thing. And this, despite Apple's marketed UI simplicity.
2. The thing can't even send files over Bluetooth. How is that not possible in 2013?
3. Boring old homescreen from way back 2007, which displays an amalgamation of all the apps installed on my phone, not the apps I use the most.
Of course, whichever phone you end up buying is nothing more than a personal preference. However, I just think that saying Android is better than iOS has become more of a fact than an opinion these days.
1. Is Samsung specific I think. On my Nexus S pulling the notification drawer down has a button that launches the Settings app but doesn't have the settings right there. My wifes Samsung S3 does however.
If you pull down with two fingers (a bit counterintuitive, I'll admit), it'll open the settings app directly. You can also toggle the default notification drawer and the settings app by tapping the icon in the top right corner.
I chose to install Widgetsoid - it places a couple of toggles directly into the notification drawer. I never got Airplane Mode to work, though.
My Nexus 4 has this feature by default, perhaps it was a Jelly Bean addition? Very much like having it there since getting my N4, I used to use a 3rd party widget for this purpose (powerstrip if anyone is interested), but it's largely been superseded by this (even though powerstrip is still great)
> The thing can't even send files over Bluetooth.
> How is that not possible in 2013?
The thing will also not accept your 1.44MB floppy. Shocking, I know.
Ok, ok, I get what you say, but frankly, this is some pretty obscure use case for most. Not for you, obviously.
Maybe you and everyone you know has unlimited data, but not everyone does. Bluetooth file sending works on every single phone apart from the iPhone, and it's frustrating when people can't send you photos because your stupid phone doesn't support the most ubiquitous file sharing method since 1995.
Obscure? This is one of the stupidest misfeatures of iOS. The hardware is there and there are workaround apps that can help you do it from iDevice to iDevice.
Many times I wanted to send a picture, contact or a document to someone standing right next to me and couldn't do it because they had an iPhone (or Windows Phone). This is especially pleasant when you're roaming and it's a bigger file.
Can only agree with OP. I gave up my iPhone 4 for a Galaxy Nexus this summer and have never looked back.
I think Google can still work on the default look, but I find Android to be very "clean" and quick to work with. Android feels much more like a real operating system. iOS is so restricted and there are many work tasks that I cannot do (e.g. mailing a dropbox file to someone).
Google Now is also amazingly good. And the fact that mail search actually works is a "small" bonus :P
Samsung has also implemented some cool features in the SGS3, like that the screen stays on as long as you look at it. They are just much worse at marketing it. Can you imagine how much Apple would have hyped a similar feature?
I have always wondered about that feature, and always think..
- What if two people are looking at it.
- Does it flick on and off as I look around
- Is it using a huge amount of power when ever the screen is on, not only with powering the screen but with powering the camera.
- Can I still use my screen as a light, or does is power off when I face it away from me? (I have a flash light app but it's quicker some times to just use the screen).
- What if I am holding it sideways and cover the camera with my hand.
- What if I am wearing glasses (something that obstructs my eyes)
- What if I put glasses on while looking at the phone?
- What if it's too dark for the camera
I imagine there are enough facts here that made someone like Apple or Google think it's a bad idea. I expect someone in the Samsung marketing department came up with this idea.
1) Just as it is about to lock the screen it checks if someone is looking. Doesn't matter if it's one or two persons. If you're looking away at that instant it locks. A reasonable compromise that ensures it works more than good enough if you're reading an article.
2) It doesn't power off just because you are not looking at it. You can still use the phone as a flashlight.
3) It doesn't work if you're holding it sideways or cover the camera lens. Don't think this is a problem though - again the feature is directed for situations where you are browsing some content or reading an article.
4) It works if you have glasses
5) It doesn't work in low light situations, also a reasonable compromise.
I think the way you have to see it is that you don't really think about the feature. Sometimes you are reading something and notice the screen isn't dimmed. Sometimes when you're reading the screen dims and you have to touch the screen to have it not go into lock mode.
Having used it in practice for a few weeks I can say it's a great feature. I would expect it to show up on iOS and the core Android distribution.
Reading this it occurs to me I've never had an iOS device lock itself while I'm using it for reading or anything else, nor have I even thought about it as a possibility until this very moment.
IMO in that sense iOS already has an equivalent feature. Just don't lock when the user is clearly doing something. Just like how you don't have to shake the mouse to wake your computer while watching a video anymore, most video playback programs/plugins poll the system properly and force it to stay awake.
I don't know if you need to go as far as activating the camera to see if you're still there. What if your lock frequency is set to a minute or two? Wouldn't activating the camera every minute have some affect on battery life?
As the guy said HTC don't do a good job of communicating these features, the advert shows a guy falling asleep and as he shuts his eyes the phone locks...
I have never actually had this problem though generally I can read a screen full of text before the phone locks. My scrolling will reset the lock timeout. Videos and games stop the phone from locking.
It has a normal screen timeout. When it gets close to the timeout, it looks for 'open eyes looking at me' and if it detects them, stays on. When the screen does turn off, it's like any other timeout - it won't flick back on by newly detecting eyes again.
And no, of course if you're going to use your screen as a flashlight, it's not going to detect your eyes and stay on. If you're not willing to go to the marginal effort of activating a flashlight app, what mechanism do you propose they use to have the phone detect when you're using it as a flashlight-by-screen?
Mailing a Dropbox file directly is only hard on iOS because Dropbox makes it that way. If they offered a "send link" and a "send file" option it would be one step like Android.
Instead I have to kick it to FileExplorer and send it from there. It's not ideal but its also not Apple's fault.
I was going to respond in snarky-kind but I'm a fan of yours Taligent so instead I'll just rephrase it so it's clearer.
> Mailing a Dropbox file directly is only hard on iOS because Dropbox makes it that way. If they offered a "send file" option <<in addition to their already existing "send link" option>> it would be one step like Android.
I'm well aware of the send link option. FileExplorer allows me to do what OP is referring to in iOS, sending the file directly to the other person via e-mail. In Android, this is a single step you can perform within the Dropbox app. There is no technical limitation stopping Dropbox from offering that feature on iOS, they just choose not to for some reason.
I use iPhones exclusively since they came out and I hate the mail search. I basically just give up and wait until I am at a real computer. Incedentially that is very often for me. My wife rarely uses a computer anymore for her this is really troubling. I guess to completely replace a real computer an Android tablet might be the better choice
I always had to mail a link to the Dropbox file on iOS.
And searching for old emails was hit and miss on my iPhone. On Android you're basically using the same search function as on gmail.com.
It doesn't mean all apps follow the standard, especially those naievely ported from iOS. Even some Google apps don't always meet expectations. But the convention is mostly there now and just needs more adoption.
The main issue with the back button is that devs love to mess around with how it works by default, usually to satisfy some kind of architecture that doesn't make sense in the first place on an Android device. From what I've seen of people's Android code, a lot of folks don't grok the Activity and Fragments APIs at first and end up making huge mistakes or creating excessive architectures to try and 'solve' the problem. Unfortunately, this is a kind of chicken and egg problem, since a lot of Android apps are done by hobbyists who need time and practice to get up to speed or by commercial companies that don't care for or don't have any idea on how their product should work on Android.
> It doesn't mean all apps follow the standard, especially those naievely ported from iOS.
Agreed. Amusingly, the only apps that I ever complain about (whether for the back button or for general styling and functionality) are the ones that are clearly half-baked ports of iOS apps.
No wonder it looks terrible and doesn't seem to work properly - you're following all the best practices for the wrong operating system!
Apple is increasingly making me look stupid, something I couldn't imagine happening when the iPhone first came out.
Few days ago I saw a friend of mine unlock her phone using facial recognition. I was amazed. She was surprised at my amazement. I feel lots of iPhone users have similar moments when they see their friends with android use "magical" looking features the iPhone is slow to adopt.
If that's what makes you look stupid, I guess it's still pretty good.
Facial recognition doesn't work for everyone nor everywhere. As you put it it's "magical" and when the next guy unlocks your phone with it's face it's also part of the magic.
It reminds me a lot of the same discussion was done for the Bump app, where just bumping two devices together transferred your contact infos. Magic. Except it might not be your contacts but the ones of some random guys bumping roughly at the same time at the next table, or a few kilometers from you. It was part of the magic too. It still worked out 90% of the time, but that's not a feature I'd feel stupid not to have when better, simpler and more reliable ways were available.
Android has really good basic things. I personally don't think shiny magical features are what's to be the most envied.
Another amazing one is someone with the Swype keyboard who is good at it. They can type way faster than I can on the iPhone while looking like they are just scribbling random stuff.
The facial recognition is very cool. Does it take longer than a swipe+pin? I guess it's just a matter of the hardware - how long it takes the camera to focus, how long it takes the chip to process, etc. It's just that I can swipe+pin in probably 1 - 1.5 seconds and I'd be surprised if facial recognition is faster.
Great question but dont assume speed of unlocking is what everyone based their decision on. I can tell you my mom would rather use facial recognition than entering a pin even if the latter was faster.
She did point out quirks like if her hair isn't brushed it may not work etc. It could well be that the technology isn't polished enough for Apple's standard but I know when I see an Android user use it, I walk away impressed and questioning why my iPhone can't do that.
> It could well be that the technology isn't polished enough for Apple's standard but I know when I see an Android user use it, I walk away impressed and questioning why my iPhone can't do that.
We're living in a post Siri, post Maps world. Apple is not concerned if software works before they decide to ship it.
No, Scott Forstall was not publicly fired over Siri and Maps. He was fired because Steve Jobs was not around to protect him and he made a lot of enemies. None of it was public, there was a press release about the new roles but that's it.
It's usually very fast, around 1 second. In fact, they had to slow it down, because sometimes it recognized the face immediately, making the user wonder whether there's any security check involved. But it's useless at night, which is why I don't use it.
Takes about the same time to unlock in my experience(EVO 3D).
I'd really prefer for a different unlock method all together. I'd like my phone to be locked in case its lost/stolen, but I'd like it unlock faster. It's be fine wearing a Bluetooth-enabled accessory (ring,tie pin, device secured to the shoes/belt/pants/wallet in some fashion) that would bypass the lock because I'm with-in a given radius to the device.
Depends on the lighting; can be anywhere between instant and 2s. Trade-off is the camera's useless in the dark, takes maybe 1s for the phone to realize this (or there's an override button) and falls back to pattern/PIN.
My huge problem with iOS (and Apple in general) is the obsession with constantly making you enter passwords. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I am convinced the codebase mainly consists of password entering routines interspersed with small bits of other functionality. iOS's inability to share between apps also means usernames and passwords have to be constantly re-entered there too (eg every app that supports Dropbox requires entering a username and password in each app).
This Apple disease spreads elsewhere. I had to enter my username and password on their developer site, and some web developer at Apple had gone to great lengths to prevent you from pasting your password into the password field. (I don't know that password - it is stored in a password management program.)
I can't for the life of me understand why the Apple faithful put up with this nonsense.
Do you mean different passwords for different services (eg a specific password for Apple email versus a different password for iTunes store?) or that you want access to individual apps password protected?
For the latter Android has the concept of multiple users but only on tablets. It isn't that useful as you can't for example create limited access guest accounts, only full blown ones. And software can't be made accessible the new users unless they create a google account in order to access the play store, even if already installed. It also turned off face recognition for me.
The one thing Android did get right (but not perfect) is having a central account manager. Any service can add itself - for example the Github and Dropbox apps do. Any app (with permissions) can request access to accounts that require user interaction to confirm. However the app does not get a password, but instead a token that has to be periodically renewed.
I've been using my Nexus 4 for one week now and I obviously love it. I think the feature that impressed me the most is the 'gesture typing', which compensates for my apparent inability to type correctly on a virtual keyboard. And it works surprisingly well in French too.
Love the gesture typing as well, it's really impressive how well it works. I've only been using it in english so far, and feel crippled as soon as I have to write a message in other languages.
Is there any way to quickly toggle between different languages?
If you have multiple languages enabled (as opposed to the default, system-language only), you can just point-hold the space-bar and a language selector will be opened.
You can also enable a language-cycling button which will appear left of the space-bar if you so please.
They might be dicks, but it would still be dilution of the term "patent troll" to call them that. After all, they do actually sell a product with said feature.
It may be a TouchWiz thing, but I've seen it on Samsung phones I've owned. That is until Apple decided to throw patent lawsuits around. A firmware-update later and gone it was.
These days most Android-phones have a "overflow" effect when reaching the end of a list. Specifically designed to avoid lawsuits.
I'm confused what part bothers you. That Apple patented it. Or that it is worth a billion dollars.
Because if it's the first then it is just a hypocritical position. And if it's the second then maybe you don't understand the math. Size of lawsuit = Price per patent * Number of infringing devices.
It's because the number of devices sold is so large that it ends up being such a large lawsuit.
For sake of clarity, both bothers me, but it's the fact that a trivial UI implementation detail can be patented and monopolized I consider fundamentally wrong.
That someone can build a 1 billion dollar beast on top of that, what any decent software engineer can do in a matter of days, just makes it so much worse.
Some people have a rather mellow attitude to it all and simply say "Don't hate the player, hate the game". I proclaim the right to hate the game and anyone who plays it. Apple should have some pride and a sense of dignity. Apple should be better than this.
Firstly there is nothing trivial about it. The concept never existed before the iPhone and it is absolutely not intuitive that it is how list scrolling is supposed to work. It's unquestionably distinctive to the iPhone.
Secondly what a software engineer can do in a matter of days is a ridiculous and pointless measure of anything. I could build Google's original search engine once I knew exactly how it worked. It's the "how it works" part that is novel.
Thirdly you completely fail at understanding the maths here. The only reason it is a billion dollar idea is because Samsung sells so many devices.
"In a non-final Office action the USPTO has declared all 20 claims of Apple's rubber-banding patent (U.S. Patent No, 7,469,381 invalid [for prior art and obviousness]... A finding of anticipation is a determination that there was no inventive step at all."
Superficial as it is, absolutely, this is something I love about iOS. It reinforces the "manipulating real objects with touch" metaphor. If I move my finger while pressing down on a piece of paper in real life, I expect the underlying paper to move as well. The highlight on Android just feels weird and clunky with no basis in real world interaction. That's not to say it isn't usable -- it just isn't as much fun without the momentum scrolling physics.
I don't really think of my phone as obeying any sort of real life physics. There are way too many interactions that don't (on iOS as well) for me to be able to keep up that illusion.
I hate the bouncing scroll - yet another example of Apple's idiotic focus on skeuomorphism. I like to scroll up when I'm at the top of a list, or down when I'm at the bottom, while reading an article or whatever. If that bouncing scroll thing existed in Android, the page would move as a result. That's not a problem with the highlight.
We all know that Android would have this if it wasn't for patents.
You can't scroll without the page moving... so I don't understand your point.
Plus if you are scrolling slowly and reading as you go, having a litte bit of background show (part of the effect) is little difference from showing a flash of colour.
> We all know that Android would have this if it wasn't for patents.
No, we don't. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Now that there is a viable alternative that people are used to, I don't think bouncing would be used if the patent were to be invalidated tomorrow.
The only reason to use the bounceback early on was because (a) no alternatives had been developed yet and bounceback was adequate, and (b) it appeased all the early adopter Apple fanbois.
> Plus if you are scrolling slowly and reading as you go, having a litte bit of background show (part of the effect) is little difference from showing a flash of colour.
You completely missed my point. It has nothing to do with scrolling while reading. It only has to do with when I'm at the top or bottom of a page/list.
> You completely missed my point. It has nothing to do with scrolling while reading. It only has to do with when I'm at the top or bottom of a page/list.
If that is the case, what is the diference between scrolling and nothing moves but you get a flash of color, vs some text moves and you see a bit of the background.
So you’re saying you scroll while you read, and it's a noticeable advantage than when you hit the bottom your reading is slightly easier because the page didn't move a fraction.
I would have thought if you are already scrolling and reading, the slight decrease in distance when you hit the bottom would be less distracting than a total change in behavior.
No. Not at all, the Android mechanism for end-of-list is literally much less jarring. It's a subtle fade up of color that clearly indicates that you're at the bottom without having the damn thing jump around the screen.
I fail to see how it has anything at all to do with skeuomorphism. What object exists in real life that is comparable to a bounce back scrolling list ?
Backgraound. Happy iPhone user since 2008 (available in our country then). In december they gave me to try out Nexus 4 (unavailable in our country).
As a device Nexus 4 itself is not much better than previous - Galaxy Nexus. Display itself is much worse on Nexus 4 than it was on Galaxy Nexus.
After giving back Nexus 4 I thougth I'd try out living with Galaxy Nexus, which until now was my phone in the drawer. And, actually, though I was an iphonee for 4 years, Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.2.1 is an awesome device.
Back button is something you miss dramatically on iphone after a detour to androidland. Sharing feature, Google Now, tiny things. I do not give a damn about configurability. There is a lot of stuff that I'd welcome into android world from ios, but other than that - I'm satisfied.
Such migration would be unthinkable a year ago. 4.2.x, though not that much different from 4.1.x, is mature.
What are people's experience dealing with the migration of music from iOS to android? As an iOS user with an itch to checkout android again (had one of the first HTC "google phones"), this is one of my bigger concerns.
I love the process, but I've been having trouble with uploading. A lot of songs simply weren't uploaded successfully, and there is no way for me to manually upload anything in order to fix that. I have no idea if the uploader application does this automatically or if I'm just stuck with a bunch of broken songs.
Also I noticed some mistakes with generic album titles, such as "Unknown Album" - selecting an artist, then their album titled "Unknown" would usually play all the titles that don't have an album title, even the ones by entirely different artists.
So exactly like iTunes Match? Oh, except iTunes Match has a real client that allows you to manage your music instead of a crippled uploader that only allowed you to pick folders, 5000 more song storage space and smart playlist ability. Also, it doesn't require that every song be uploaded instead of matching them against songs that already exist on the server. Half of my library didn't need to be uploaded and most of the time when I add an album it matches instantly.
Google Music has a web client that is just as functional as iTunes and doesn't require a 1GB download for every update. Further, Google Music also performs matching now.
Nice completely inaccurate rant. Oh yeah, and Google Music matches at 320Kbps.
iTunes is actually 200mb+QuickTime if you're on Windows which is 80mb, and the Google Music web client is nowhere near as functional as iTunes. Next you'll try and tell me Google Docs is just as functional as Word. Nothing I said was inaccurate, except that apparently Google matches music now. I'm curious as to how they do that without ponying up to the labels, but whatever.
I actually have a Google Music account that I use in addition to iTunes Match, so I'm actually one of the few here not bullshitting my knowledge on the topic. For the record, I would trade a basically unnoticeable quality boost for an extra 5000 tracks of space any day.
You also conveniently avoided the fact that to use the less functional Google Music web client to actually DO anything, you have to upload all your music first via the shitty uploader. Which still gives you no way of managing uploading except managing a list of folders by hand.
Whereas with iTunes Match, I can download an album, clean the tags in iTunes while it's matching, and it'll be available on my phone in seconds. With the 25000 song storage space I don't need to do any managing. It all fits with plenty of breathing room.
Nice completely inaccurate reply, though. Next time try downloading iTunes next time instead of assuming it's 4x the size it actually is. Which speaks volumes as to your level of knowledge on the topic BTW.
So to even use Google Music in this far off, backwards land of Canada I have to maintain a separate Google account for that purpose that is set to United States.
Apple treats Canada like a first class citizen, typically the second or 3rd launch market. Google frequently forgets we even exist and took literally years to allow people to sell apps here, and they STILL haven't brought Google Music over. Meanwhile iTunes Match has been active in something to the tune of 50 countries for almost a year now, with matching available from day one.
Look, Google Music lets me listen to my music in the web interface without taking 6 hours to index my library, consuming tons of memory, locking out my MP3 player if I plug it into a different machine and doesn't require large client updates. It matches my music in higher quality than iTunes Match.
I'm sorry you live in Canada, and I'll concede that 25K>20K.
What the hell else do you want me to say? I'll still take a wireless sync and app install system every single day of the week over iTunes.
> Look, Google Music lets me listen to my music in the web interface without taking 6 hours to index my library
iTunes does this once, when you add the music, and the only reason Google Music doesn't do this is because you can only add music so slowly that it has plenty of time to process each track.
You think Google Music doesn't need to index? I don't even know what to say to that.
> consuming tons of memory, locking out my MP3 player if I plug it into a different machine and doesn't require large client updates.
Clearly you haven't used an iOS device or iTunes in years. None of this is true anymore, and hasn't been since the days of the iPod. Great job though.
> I'm sorry you live in Canada
I'm sorry Google failed geography class. Living in Canada is awesome.
> What the hell else do you want me to say?
Something accurate or based in the last 5 years? Apparently that's out of your purview though.
> I'll still take a wireless sync and app install system every single day of the week over iTunes.
Jesus, iTunes is nowhere close to that bad. You really are living in 2007 aren't you? The backup and restore system iTunes offers so thoroughly trounces anything Android has to offer, it's worth it for that alone.
A few years ago, apple stopped encrypting music. The music is watermarked, but not encrypted anymore. These files (m4a), can be played without issue.
The older stuff, which is encrypted (m4p), can't be played.
However, you can just remove the DRM using any of the available DRM removers, with no loss (they are just removing the encryption, not transcoding).
iTunes DRM tracks will likely not work, but at this point iTunes hasn't sold DRM tracks in a long time. Most (all?) other tracks have had the ability to upgrade and make DRM free for awhile now.
First things first; stop buying music and movies from a store that is tied to a particular brand device. Never make this mistake again and it won't be an issue in the future. Today Amazon is probably the best choice for cross-platform cloud music, but there are others as well.
It's my opinion that you can't make the assertion that the Nexus 4 is faster than the iPhone 5 by feel. Some people feel like their cars or motorcycles perform better after an oil change and a car wash, but it's psychological. Otherwise, I guess the rest of the article is interesting because it just proves that these "Why I switched" articles are never going to die for whatever reason.
In 2008: "Why I switched from BlackBerry to iPhone"
In 2009: "Why I switched from iPhone to give webOS a shot"
In 2010: "Why I switched to Windows Phone from iOS"
In 2011: "Why I switched to Android from iPhone"
In 2012: "Why I switched from X to X because it doesn't even matter anymore"
I get that it gives perspective on the differences between platforms and devices, but these pieces can only be so narrow because it's only one person's perspective.
I am getting frustrated with all these mobile os posts. Reminds me of the desktop OS wars people took pride in joining.
Everyone's needs are different; some people love customization and hacking their phone. Others get it to just conform to the majority. Some even get it because it's free.
Platforms evolve with different visions. The beauty of the era we are in is the fact that services like Amazon Cloud Player, Dropbox and Spotify let you be on whatever platform you wish without losing your "services".
Am I the only one who doesn't care what OS they use as long as texting/podcasting/web browsing/music is available?
I went the other direction recently, from Galaxy S2 with 4.2.1 Jelly Bean to iPhone 3GS with jailbroken iOS 6.0.1.
The iPhone feels great in my hands because it's so small and the battery seems to be lasting for ages. I don't even feel like it's that old because it still has the latest OS and apps.
I'm enjoying the iPhone for now but I think it's mainly due to getting bored with the Galaxy. The Galaxy is due an upgrade in November and I think at that point I'll get a Nexus.
Agreed, especially after any real use. My ex- complained bitterly about iOS 5 on her 3GS being horrific, even after the updates claimed to alleviate performance issues.
I still like my iPhone and iPad, but I could see moving to Android in 1-2 generations. Apple's first-party software quality is declining, and not being able to override it is grating and limiting improvements.
The two things which keep me from moving to Android are:
1) My ~$500 or so in purchased applications. Vendors should allow a one-time return of purchased apps on one platform to get them for the other, or just give both iOS and Android licenses for the same price if there's a way to prove the phone belongs to the same human. Admittedly 99% of what I really care about is free or <$100 total (Kindle, 1Password, Facebook, web, email, ssh pretty much cover my use).
2) Lack of hardware platform security features on most Android devices (semi-supported on the S3, apparently, but I'd only ever buy a Nexus device). If Google developed a Nexus 4+, 7+, 10+ with apple or blackberry level hw security, I'd probably switch, particularly if there were a way for an enterprise to essentially replicate the Google Apps management of devices with a simple self-hosted server (i.e. root of trust being enterprise, vs. Google or Apple).
I was just making the case for investing in Apple on seeking alpha (an investing site). I've seen few people switched to the iPhone and even I was tempted with the release of the iPhone 5. To be honest, I haven't played with an android phone that matches it hardware wise. The lack of nexus 4 devices in the store really hurts google as there's no way one can just walk in a store and 'test' it out, like one can do with the iPhone. You have to make do with youtube unboxing videos, which are good, but leaves much to be desired. FWIW, I'm now seeing the value of iPhone's especially for people already in the eco-system. I could have never seen this before
I had an Iphone 3 once i liked it very much. Now i have a lowly ZTE Aqua with Android 4.0.3 and i'm very satisfied. Tried an Iphone 5 at a store and Ipad's and found the UI, boring.
In my opinion, Apple's "chromed" UI is getting old and would really love something more fresh, either on iOS and OSX.
Does not compare the security model of the two platforms. This is the number one factor for me (and dare I say, should be for everyone). I don't know much about the Android security model - does it have any advantages over iOS?
I'm really curious about Android as I've been an avid Apple iPhone user since iPhone first came out. Part of me wants to switch as I love what Google is doing, but I'm hesitant as I'm so entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.
I believe that doubleTwist is able to sync with an itunes library (or at least it used to, and it was it's major selling point so i can't imagine that's changed). It has a desktop app and a mobile counterpart.
The Samsung S3 / Nexus 4 comparison is interesting. I just sold a Nexus 4 and bought an S3. I do prefer stock android, but no sd card, fragility issues and the unremovable battery were a deal breaker for me.
I do see a lot of iPhones with smashed screens but I've only ever seen two or three Androids with smashed screens (and no blackberries). So this probably means that either the androids don't smash easily; that android users don't drop their phones on hard surfaces (unlikely - these are humans we're talking about); or that the iPhone screen is so good it keeps working when smashed and the Android ones don't.
Sample size: public transport users and eatery-goers...
Most Android phones don't have glass running all the way to the edge, I'd imagine that's a factor.
Semi-related: I've dropped a pocketknife blade first on a Nokia E71. There's the tiniest scuff on the screen, that's it. (And it's still in active use. Remains the best phone with a keyboard ever built.)
GROUP TEXT MESSAGES drive me crazy on android (complete rubbish), iOS has nice user experience for this. If there was one thing I wish google would fix ASAP its this.
Wish I could get my phone updated without rooting it. My friend's iPhone 4 (released June 2010) is now patched up to worked with group messages fine, but my EVO 3D (released June 2011) that's a year younger won't get any updates. Android fragmentation graphic info:
http://cdn2.techanalyzer.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Andr...
Amazingly, innovation is where the OEM skins we normally deplore really shine. Yeah, a lot of their experiments don't work out, but some do and it pushes Android forward.
Looking at 4.2, for instance, at least lockscreen widgets, wireless display and gesture typing (usually via licensed Swype) were anticipated by OEM skins.
Exactly! The Nexus4 is still sold out as we speak and even if you manage to order one, you will get a 8 weeks window for delivery but Google will make you pay £10 for "express" delivery. What a joke.
and express is 2 fucking days in the UK, I'd call that a cultural faux pas, as 2 day shipping here is the crappy option. I've had amazon get things to my door in less than 14 hours given the right conditions.
That said, I wasn't really impressed by any of the other points the article makes. It starts out by saying 'Android on the Nexus 4 is better in almost every aspect', but besides the sharing thing it doesn't make a case for anything else. Some half-hearted observation that 'sometimes it even appears like rendering is smoother on the Nexus 4' and 'not all Android applications look like crap anymore' and that's about it. Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone.
Hardly a clear-cut case of 'better in almost every aspect'. Looks like it's more a matter of preference than an objective evaluation on which of the 2 platforms is 'better'.