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I have been an iPhone user since whenever the first one came out. I now own an iPhone 3GS. I recently (3 weeks ago) bought and tried my very first android phone

I have been an iPhone user since whenever the first one came out. I now own an iPhone 3GS. I recently (3 weeks ago) bought and tried my very first android phone (with OS 1.6) I have really never been so disappointed in my life. This thing is supposed to compete the iPhone? The movement is not smooth, the interface flickers, buttons don't react immediately, the keyboard is laggy and the entire thing feels so unpolished. I instantly hated it. I still have it - I use it for development, but Android 1.6 is not even close to the iPhone in 'goodness'. Maybe 2.0 will be better. On the other hand, I wrote my first program for it. Programming for Android is MUCH easier, a lot more intuitive and there are so many widgets that you can very quickly get things sown together. Android programming reminds me of programming in Basic, while iPhone programming is like normal C++ programming. I know java somewhat and C++ very well, and it took me like a month to really feel I understood iPhone programming. It took me 2 or 3 days to feel comfortable programming for Android. I have not yet sold anything on the Android market, but when I do I'll be sure to post a comparison of the two platforms with the exact same app. In a week or two I will have my first Android app up.

buster 17y ago
SO, you are actually saying the hardware you have is crap. I guess with the newer phones (nexus one, xperia x10) the UI will be as responsive as you know it from your iphone and android will begin to shine.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  It's worth pointing out that when the very first G1 showed up in customers' hands, people complained that there were issues with speed and responsiveness. The standard reply was "wait until the next phone comes out with better hardware, then Android will really shine!" It's been a year and three months since then. Each new phone on the market has bumped things up a bit, and now the top of the line has roughly doubled every hardware spec on the original G1. And there are still issues with speed and responsiveness, and the standard reply is still "wait until the next phone comes out with better hardware, then Android will really shine!"
- dirtyaura 17y ago
  Smoothness of UI is as much about software as it's about hardware. My Macbook Pro is a super-powered work horse compared to iPhone, but still many applications and web pages do not give a great smooth, experience. Reason? Because asynchronous, multithreaded programming, which is required for smoothness, ain't trivial with abstractions that current programming languages and platform libraries provide.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggruschow 17y ago
    With any hardware made in the past couple decades, it's entirely about software. Plus, asynchronous, multithreaded programming isn't required for a perfectly smooth interfaces. Consider the enormous amount of instantly responsive software on 1 to 4mhz 6502s (Atari 2600, NES, C64, Apple II, Atari 8-bits, etc).. Every current platform, even the phones, can emulate those at multiple times real-time speed, so the hardware is certainly capable of it. In the 2600s case, it didn't even have video memory and a video chip to help the CPU. The programs had to be timed to output straight to the TV at the exact speed and time the TV needed data. No threads or asynchronous events to help there.
iron_ball 17y ago
I've found the Motorola Droid, with Android 2.0, to be quite smooth and responsive. It's not quite up to the iPhone's well-oiled level of smoothness, but I've never seen the "jerky menus" people talk about either -- just the occasional one-frame pause when scrolling a graphics-heavy web page.
- donw 17y ago
  I looked very heavily at the Droid before I got my iPhone, and it felt far less polished than the Apple offering. Plus, Verizon's decision to not include multitouch staggers me -- pinch to zoom is one of the things that makes web browsing on the iPhone usable, IMO. The Droid also has no IME, and rotating the device when in the web browser seemed to have no effect whatsoever, and a CDMA-only phone is, to me, as a communications device, marginally less useful than a brick. That said, I don't think it's a bad phone, and Motorola seems to be selling a hell of a lot of them. The hardware feels to be very good quality, and when Google works out the Android UI quirks, it'll be one hell of a platform, especially because there's no App Store Nazi sitting between the developer and the customer. So, the Droid is not in the same area code as the iPhone, but unlike a lot of other phones on the market, it's at least on the same planet, in terms of usability.
  - iron_ball 17y ago
    The hardware and SDK have multitouch; there's a browser called Dolphin which has iPhone-style zoom gestures. I suspect they did not implement it in the default apps because Google wanted the Android install to be a reference implementation. However, I found myself going back to the Google browser: on a double-tap, it switches between a website overview and a zoomed view which intelligently sizes itself to the width of the text column you're reading. I've found it much easier than manually zooming to find a comfortable reading magnification. In my experience, when held between a 45 degree angle and exactly upright, the screen re-orients itself on rotation faster than an iPhone. When overtilted (so the screen points downward), it does not respond -- which is nice when you're lying in bed holding the phone up above your face. I got my Droid on launch day, so it's definitely one of the same phones that have given people negative impressions. Maybe there are differences in manufacturing quality? I'm open to the possibility.
sunkencity 17y ago
It's always possible to tell when an app is running non-native on any platform. C/C++ is more responsive.

buster 17y ago

SO, you are actually saying the hardware you have is crap. I guess with the newer phones (nexus one, xperia x10) the UI will be as responsive as you know it from your iphone and android will begin to shine.

ubernostrum 17y ago
It's worth pointing out that when the very first G1 showed up in customers' hands, people complained that there were issues with speed and responsiveness. The standard reply was "wait until the next phone comes out with better hardware, then Android will really shine!" It's been a year and three months since then. Each new phone on the market has bumped things up a bit, and now the top of the line has roughly doubled every hardware spec on the original G1. And there are still issues with speed and responsiveness, and the standard reply is still "wait until the next phone comes out with better hardware, then Android will really shine!"
dirtyaura 17y ago
Smoothness of UI is as much about software as it's about hardware. My Macbook Pro is a super-powered work horse compared to iPhone, but still many applications and web pages do not give a great smooth, experience. Reason? Because asynchronous, multithreaded programming, which is required for smoothness, ain't trivial with abstractions that current programming languages and platform libraries provide.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- ggruschow 17y ago
  With any hardware made in the past couple decades, it's entirely about software. Plus, asynchronous, multithreaded programming isn't required for a perfectly smooth interfaces. Consider the enormous amount of instantly responsive software on 1 to 4mhz 6502s (Atari 2600, NES, C64, Apple II, Atari 8-bits, etc).. Every current platform, even the phones, can emulate those at multiple times real-time speed, so the hardware is certainly capable of it. In the 2600s case, it didn't even have video memory and a video chip to help the CPU. The programs had to be timed to output straight to the TV at the exact speed and time the TV needed data. No threads or asynchronous events to help there.

iron_ball 17y ago

I've found the Motorola Droid, with Android 2.0, to be quite smooth and responsive. It's not quite up to the iPhone's well-oiled level of smoothness, but I've never seen the "jerky menus" people talk about either -- just the occasional one-frame pause when scrolling a graphics-heavy web page.

donw 17y ago
I looked very heavily at the Droid before I got my iPhone, and it felt far less polished than the Apple offering. Plus, Verizon's decision to not include multitouch staggers me -- pinch to zoom is one of the things that makes web browsing on the iPhone usable, IMO. The Droid also has no IME, and rotating the device when in the web browser seemed to have no effect whatsoever, and a CDMA-only phone is, to me, as a communications device, marginally less useful than a brick. That said, I don't think it's a bad phone, and Motorola seems to be selling a hell of a lot of them. The hardware feels to be very good quality, and when Google works out the Android UI quirks, it'll be one hell of a platform, especially because there's no App Store Nazi sitting between the developer and the customer. So, the Droid is not in the same area code as the iPhone, but unlike a lot of other phones on the market, it's at least on the same planet, in terms of usability.
- iron_ball 17y ago
  The hardware and SDK have multitouch; there's a browser called Dolphin which has iPhone-style zoom gestures. I suspect they did not implement it in the default apps because Google wanted the Android install to be a reference implementation. However, I found myself going back to the Google browser: on a double-tap, it switches between a website overview and a zoomed view which intelligently sizes itself to the width of the text column you're reading. I've found it much easier than manually zooming to find a comfortable reading magnification. In my experience, when held between a 45 degree angle and exactly upright, the screen re-orients itself on rotation faster than an iPhone. When overtilted (so the screen points downward), it does not respond -- which is nice when you're lying in bed holding the phone up above your face. I got my Droid on launch day, so it's definitely one of the same phones that have given people negative impressions. Maybe there are differences in manufacturing quality? I'm open to the possibility.

sunkencity 17y ago

It's always possible to tell when an app is running non-native on any platform. C/C++ is more responsive.