6 ms·

Nexus One from an iPhone Developer's Perspective

17 points by r11t 17y ago

jsz0 17y ago
One of the things I greatly dislike about the search button is sometimes it has a function inside an application, sometimes it's just a web search. So I have to use trial & error to figure out which apps actually use it and which ones are just going to send me off to an unwanted Google web search.
jrockway 17y ago
You can pry the hardware buttons and the trackball out of my cold, dead hands. I love them. When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery. It's a lot more complicated than this. There is a battery monitor application, and background apps don't use much power. (Keeping wifi on and scanning is my biggest power sink. It makes Locale more accurate, though.) Background apps are quite nice. With K-9 mail and my home IMAP server, I get true push email. Whenever I order something from Amazon or forget my password or something, the little trackball lights up instantly. It's really cool, and it doesn't need any special support. If I had an iPhone, I could never get this functionality. Anyway, apps are what make Android great, and it's strange that he didn't talk about any of them. If you want nice effect when scrolling through your Twitter feed, get an iPhone. If you want advanced software, get Android.
- theBobMcCormick 17y ago
  Agreed. The trackball is awesome for moving back and forth within a text field (to correct a missed typo for example). I also find it nice when browsing websites with lots of close together links.
  - sofal 17y ago
    * forehead smack * I did not know I could do that with the trackball until I read your comment.
bkrausz 17y ago
Some valid points, but much of the article seems very iPhone-biased. I agree that a search button is totally unnecessary, and I never use it, but I've had a use for the menu button on every screen. Keep in mind that most iPhone apps have a button bar on the bottom with items. This is just smart screen management. The back button has a few software design quirks that give it inconsistent result, but again most apps use it well. The author then assumes the higher resolution is just to show off a big number. There's a reason 300dpi is the minimum for print...the eye can detect lower resolutions (and usually higher) [1]. I find it interesting that he dismissed some Android features that "most people won't care about", citing the "average user", and then goes on to dismiss multitasking, saying: "Everybody except most 'tech pundits' knows that the iPhone's Mach kernel supports full preemptive multitasking and also knows that at any given moment there are somewhere on the order of twenty daemons and other processes running on a stock (non-jailbroken) iPhone." I don't know if that's a typo or a joke, but I don't think the "average user" cares, I think they just want to listen to Pandora while checking email. I'm not going to pick apart everything I disagree with the author about, and I'm probably as much of an Android lover as he is an iPhone lover, but I do think this article presents a fairly biased view of the two devices, even though the author claims to not be judging them "purely on what [he] was already accustomed to." [1] http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/ http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/ and other sites found on Google.
- elblanco 17y ago
  The multitasking bit stood as to me as well. From that point on I knew that I couldn't really take this criticism seriously. "Multitasking isn't important, but the iPhone could do it if mother Apple really wanted it to so Nyah." After that I noticed that pretty much everything the Nexus One does better than the iPhone was minimized or excused away.
amalcon 17y ago
The one hardware button he thinks is worth having is the one that seems to me least useful (well, except search). "Home" would be a perfectly good option to have in the menu, or a function of holding down the "Back" button. "Back", on the other hand, is something I could hardly live without, and "Menu" is at least understandable.
rbanffy 17y ago
Was I the only one expecting more of a comparison between Android and iPhone SDKs? The article could be better described as a tech-savvy user opinion rather than a developer opinion.
megaduck 17y ago
He's right about one thing: Multitasking on Android is something of a disaster from a UX perspective. There's no intuitive and obvious way to see what's running, and 'quitting' an application is often inconsistent and non-obvious. Most people just push 'home', and treat it just like an iPhone. Of course, performance and battery suffer. This leads to weird contortions in user behavior. For example, my father-in-law's favorite application on his Droid is 'Advanced Task Killer'. From my perspective, the fact that the application even exists is horrifying. A phone should not require sysadmin tools. In stark contrast, look at how WebOS handles multitasking. You know exactly what's running at any given point, because you have a visible card up. To close an application, flick the card up and off the screen. It's intuitive and obvious, even to non-technical people. It's really an amazing design. My suspicion is that Apple will never allow multitasking on the iPhone unless they can make it Palm-like in it's simplicity. However, that would probably require a major UI refactor, which is not going to happen any time soon. EDIT: This contains some bad info. See thread below.
- theBobMcCormick 17y ago
  Actually, he's completely wrong about multitasking on Android, and BTW, your father-in-law is (IMHO) wasting his time with "Advanced Task Killer". That app is in general a waste of time. Refer to my post elsewhere is this thread for more detail, but the short version is that apps don't need to be specifically killed on Android. Apps do not normally run in the background at all, they are stopped as soon as they're not user visible anymore. Apps that do wish to do things in the background, like play music, can register a service process, which is kind of like a background worker thread. The service process is the only thing that actually runs in the background.
  - megaduck 17y ago
    I'm happy to be corrected on this particular point. From appearances, it looked like they'd taken the Windows Mobile model and made it even worse. Good to hear that it's actually sensible. Apologies for spreading bad info.
    - 17y ago
elblanco 17y ago
I give points for the excellent commentary on the search buttons and attention to detail in the UI. But I take them all back with the Apple apologetics concerning the things that the Nexus One does better than the iPhone. It should have just read, "In conclusion, the iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken."
donaq 17y ago
While I tried to be fair, it should come as no surprise that I believe in Apple's approach to both hardware and software Wait, wait, wait. Isn't this sort of like a creationist reviewing evolution as a theory? What's the point of "reviewing" something when you already "believe in" the opposition? [added quote below] Not chintzy or cheap like the Motorola Droid or most cell phones. It feels solid and very much like the iPhone. Ok, well, if "like the iPhone" == good to you, then maybe you should just ignore other devices?
- ellyagg 17y ago
  Baffling. So, if you like one thing, you can't express your opinions about some similar thing? Isn't that specifically why we even have disclosure statements like the one he made? If you like, take his review as "this is how far the Nexus One diverges from my favorite industrial design philosophy, as embodied by Apple".
  - donaq 17y ago
    Well, a more accurate title given the tone of the post would be, as another commenter on this thread has written: "The iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken" If you think that's a post worth reading, we have very different preferences in reading material, that's all. The criticisms I directed at it were made given the premise that I expected to read a post about what the title said it was about.
theBobMcCormick 17y ago
Ahem... I'm gonna take the liberty of reposting my comment from another thread where this "review" cropped up. When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery.....To truly quit most applications requires a multi-step navigation that is neither intuitive nor well-documented. That one is one of the most pernicious bits of misinformation about the Android platform. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are NOT "background" applications like they are on a desktop OS. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are stopped. They no longer consume CPU resources, but the OS does hold them in memory in case the user returns to the app. Stopped applications may be killed by the OS, thereby freeing up the memory used by them, at any time by the OS when it determines it needs resources. Think of it like caching. The app state is cached in memory so that if you switch momentarily to another app (to answer a call for example) you can return immediately to the previous app with minimal delay and minimal resource cost (ie, the app doesn't need to be re-loaded, etc). The Android developer docs have more information: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#.. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#.... The only things that truly run in the background on Android are service process. These are somewhat like worker threads that are created specifically to handle long running background tasks (like playing music, or downloading data over the network, etc). There is absolutely no need to go through any "multistep navigation" to quit apps, nor do non-visible apps continue "using processor cycles and eating battery" (with the exception of course of apps that are supposed to be using processor cycles, ie, music players, etc. running in a background service process).
- bmalicoat 17y ago
  I have little Android experience so forgive me if this is obvious after using the device, but your description makes it sounds like you can't reliably know if an app will be in the state you left it, is that true? Meaning sometimes the OS will kill the app if necessary but other times it will not. If that is the case I'd prefer the iPhone way wherein the onus is on the developer to preserve the state and if they have, the app will always return to the way you left it or, if they haven't it will always be restarted from scratch. For me, knowing is better than not knowing. However, if it is the case that the OS rarely kills apps then the Android method seems preferable.
wglb 17y ago
So if the screen resolution is not such a big deal, how does the HD video from youtube on the iPhone compare to the HD video resolution on the android devices?
timdorr 17y ago
Can anyone speak to the misalignment of the hardware buttons activation area? I'm seriously considering a Nexus One since my AT&T contract ran out and I could see that being a serious nit to pick (slowness and the misclicks associated with it being my major issue on my iPhone 3G right now).
- nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
  Honestly, I've never had a problem with hitting the buttons the entire time I've had my Nexus One (a couple weeks after launch). I'm in love with it; don't let other people's fat fingers influence your decision, unless you too have fat fingers...
- pkulak 17y ago
  Yes, you have to click slightly at the top of the buttons. It's like that on the Eris too, the only other Android phone I've owned, so it may be an HTC thing. And the touchscreen really is less sensitive. Scrolling a web page is jerky, whereas on the iPhone it really does feel like you're dragging around a piece of paper with your finger. And not having scroll bounce on the menus _will_ drive you nuts. It really does seem like the phone froze. Something he didn't mention is that the new apps launcher blows hard. They tried to go with some pointless 3D effect where the rows snap into place. All it does though, is make sure that right after you scroll, your apps move just a little bit, making tapping the right one a game you'd rather not have to play every damn time. However, all that said, widgets and multitasking are huge. I got rid of my Nexus One to go back to my iPhone, but only because I'm stuck with AT&T and couldn't handle edge for everything. Every day I miss the snappiness of switching between apps that don't close and regret having to open the calendar app all the time to check what's coming up because I can't make it a widget.
harrygeo 17y ago
This is very similar with my experience with the N1. The screen sensitivity problems and outdoor screen visibility were too great of issues to ignore and I returned the phone for refund. One additional comment about the scroll ball and hardware buttons is that the UX is poor when used in landscape mode and now you have to move your finger in a different position to perform the same task.

17 points by r11t 17y ago

jsz0 17y ago

One of the things I greatly dislike about the search button is sometimes it has a function inside an application, sometimes it's just a web search. So I have to use trial & error to figure out which apps actually use it and which ones are just going to send me off to an unwanted Google web search.

jrockway 17y ago

You can pry the hardware buttons and the trackball out of my cold, dead hands. I love them. When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery. It's a lot more complicated than this. There is a battery monitor application, and background apps don't use much power. (Keeping wifi on and scanning is my biggest power sink. It makes Locale more accurate, though.) Background apps are quite nice. With K-9 mail and my home IMAP server, I get true push email. Whenever I order something from Amazon or forget my password or something, the little trackball lights up instantly. It's really cool, and it doesn't need any special support. If I had an iPhone, I could never get this functionality. Anyway, apps are what make Android great, and it's strange that he didn't talk about any of them. If you want nice effect when scrolling through your Twitter feed, get an iPhone. If you want advanced software, get Android.

theBobMcCormick 17y ago
Agreed. The trackball is awesome for moving back and forth within a text field (to correct a missed typo for example). I also find it nice when browsing websites with lots of close together links.
- sofal 17y ago
  * forehead smack * I did not know I could do that with the trackball until I read your comment.

bkrausz 17y ago

Some valid points, but much of the article seems very iPhone-biased. I agree that a search button is totally unnecessary, and I never use it, but I've had a use for the menu button on every screen. Keep in mind that most iPhone apps have a button bar on the bottom with items. This is just smart screen management. The back button has a few software design quirks that give it inconsistent result, but again most apps use it well. The author then assumes the higher resolution is just to show off a big number. There's a reason 300dpi is the minimum for print...the eye can detect lower resolutions (and usually higher) [1]. I find it interesting that he dismissed some Android features that "most people won't care about", citing the "average user", and then goes on to dismiss multitasking, saying: "Everybody except most 'tech pundits' knows that the iPhone's Mach kernel supports full preemptive multitasking and also knows that at any given moment there are somewhere on the order of twenty daemons and other processes running on a stock (non-jailbroken) iPhone." I don't know if that's a typo or a joke, but I don't think the "average user" cares, I think they just want to listen to Pandora while checking email. I'm not going to pick apart everything I disagree with the author about, and I'm probably as much of an Android lover as he is an iPhone lover, but I do think this article presents a fairly biased view of the two devices, even though the author claims to not be judging them "purely on what [he] was already accustomed to." [1] http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/ http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/ and other sites found on Google.

elblanco 17y ago
The multitasking bit stood as to me as well. From that point on I knew that I couldn't really take this criticism seriously. "Multitasking isn't important, but the iPhone could do it if mother Apple really wanted it to so Nyah." After that I noticed that pretty much everything the Nexus One does better than the iPhone was minimized or excused away.

amalcon 17y ago

The one hardware button he thinks is worth having is the one that seems to me least useful (well, except search). "Home" would be a perfectly good option to have in the menu, or a function of holding down the "Back" button. "Back", on the other hand, is something I could hardly live without, and "Menu" is at least understandable.

rbanffy 17y ago

Was I the only one expecting more of a comparison between Android and iPhone SDKs? The article could be better described as a tech-savvy user opinion rather than a developer opinion.

megaduck 17y ago

He's right about one thing: Multitasking on Android is something of a disaster from a UX perspective. There's no intuitive and obvious way to see what's running, and 'quitting' an application is often inconsistent and non-obvious. Most people just push 'home', and treat it just like an iPhone. Of course, performance and battery suffer. This leads to weird contortions in user behavior. For example, my father-in-law's favorite application on his Droid is 'Advanced Task Killer'. From my perspective, the fact that the application even exists is horrifying. A phone should not require sysadmin tools. In stark contrast, look at how WebOS handles multitasking. You know exactly what's running at any given point, because you have a visible card up. To close an application, flick the card up and off the screen. It's intuitive and obvious, even to non-technical people. It's really an amazing design. My suspicion is that Apple will never allow multitasking on the iPhone unless they can make it Palm-like in it's simplicity. However, that would probably require a major UI refactor, which is not going to happen any time soon. EDIT: This contains some bad info. See thread below.

theBobMcCormick 17y ago
Actually, he's completely wrong about multitasking on Android, and BTW, your father-in-law is (IMHO) wasting his time with "Advanced Task Killer". That app is in general a waste of time. Refer to my post elsewhere is this thread for more detail, but the short version is that apps don't need to be specifically killed on Android. Apps do not normally run in the background at all, they are stopped as soon as they're not user visible anymore. Apps that do wish to do things in the background, like play music, can register a service process, which is kind of like a background worker thread. The service process is the only thing that actually runs in the background.
- megaduck 17y ago
  I'm happy to be corrected on this particular point. From appearances, it looked like they'd taken the Windows Mobile model and made it even worse. Good to hear that it's actually sensible. Apologies for spreading bad info.
  - 17y ago

elblanco 17y ago

I give points for the excellent commentary on the search buttons and attention to detail in the UI. But I take them all back with the Apple apologetics concerning the things that the Nexus One does better than the iPhone. It should have just read, "In conclusion, the iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken."

donaq 17y ago

While I tried to be fair, it should come as no surprise that I believe in Apple's approach to both hardware and software Wait, wait, wait. Isn't this sort of like a creationist reviewing evolution as a theory? What's the point of "reviewing" something when you already "believe in" the opposition? [added quote below] Not chintzy or cheap like the Motorola Droid or most cell phones. It feels solid and very much like the iPhone. Ok, well, if "like the iPhone" == good to you, then maybe you should just ignore other devices?

ellyagg 17y ago
Baffling. So, if you like one thing, you can't express your opinions about some similar thing? Isn't that specifically why we even have disclosure statements like the one he made? If you like, take his review as "this is how far the Nexus One diverges from my favorite industrial design philosophy, as embodied by Apple".
- donaq 17y ago
  Well, a more accurate title given the tone of the post would be, as another commenter on this thread has written: "The iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken" If you think that's a post worth reading, we have very different preferences in reading material, that's all. The criticisms I directed at it were made given the premise that I expected to read a post about what the title said it was about.

theBobMcCormick 17y ago

Ahem... I'm gonna take the liberty of reposting my comment from another thread where this "review" cropped up. When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery.....To truly quit most applications requires a multi-step navigation that is neither intuitive nor well-documented. That one is one of the most pernicious bits of misinformation about the Android platform. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are NOT "background" applications like they are on a desktop OS. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are stopped. They no longer consume CPU resources, but the OS does hold them in memory in case the user returns to the app. Stopped applications may be killed by the OS, thereby freeing up the memory used by them, at any time by the OS when it determines it needs resources. Think of it like caching. The app state is cached in memory so that if you switch momentarily to another app (to answer a call for example) you can return immediately to the previous app with minimal delay and minimal resource cost (ie, the app doesn't need to be re-loaded, etc). The Android developer docs have more information: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#.. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#.... The only things that truly run in the background on Android are service process. These are somewhat like worker threads that are created specifically to handle long running background tasks (like playing music, or downloading data over the network, etc). There is absolutely no need to go through any "multistep navigation" to quit apps, nor do non-visible apps continue "using processor cycles and eating battery" (with the exception of course of apps that are supposed to be using processor cycles, ie, music players, etc. running in a background service process).

bmalicoat 17y ago
I have little Android experience so forgive me if this is obvious after using the device, but your description makes it sounds like you can't reliably know if an app will be in the state you left it, is that true? Meaning sometimes the OS will kill the app if necessary but other times it will not. If that is the case I'd prefer the iPhone way wherein the onus is on the developer to preserve the state and if they have, the app will always return to the way you left it or, if they haven't it will always be restarted from scratch. For me, knowing is better than not knowing. However, if it is the case that the OS rarely kills apps then the Android method seems preferable.

wglb 17y ago

So if the screen resolution is not such a big deal, how does the HD video from youtube on the iPhone compare to the HD video resolution on the android devices?

timdorr 17y ago

Can anyone speak to the misalignment of the hardware buttons activation area? I'm seriously considering a Nexus One since my AT&T contract ran out and I could see that being a serious nit to pick (slowness and the misclicks associated with it being my major issue on my iPhone 3G right now).

nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
Honestly, I've never had a problem with hitting the buttons the entire time I've had my Nexus One (a couple weeks after launch). I'm in love with it; don't let other people's fat fingers influence your decision, unless you too have fat fingers...
pkulak 17y ago
Yes, you have to click slightly at the top of the buttons. It's like that on the Eris too, the only other Android phone I've owned, so it may be an HTC thing. And the touchscreen really is less sensitive. Scrolling a web page is jerky, whereas on the iPhone it really does feel like you're dragging around a piece of paper with your finger. And not having scroll bounce on the menus _will_ drive you nuts. It really does seem like the phone froze. Something he didn't mention is that the new apps launcher blows hard. They tried to go with some pointless 3D effect where the rows snap into place. All it does though, is make sure that right after you scroll, your apps move just a little bit, making tapping the right one a game you'd rather not have to play every damn time. However, all that said, widgets and multitasking are huge. I got rid of my Nexus One to go back to my iPhone, but only because I'm stuck with AT&T and couldn't handle edge for everything. Every day I miss the snappiness of switching between apps that don't close and regret having to open the calendar app all the time to check what's coming up because I can't make it a widget.

harrygeo 17y ago

This is very similar with my experience with the N1. The screen sensitivity problems and outdoor screen visibility were too great of issues to ignore and I returned the phone for refund. One additional comment about the scroll ball and hardware buttons is that the UX is poor when used in landscape mode and now you have to move your finger in a different position to perform the same task.