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> And wow how I've missed Android, the UX is soooo much better in most aspects. iOS has its problems, but every time I have to handle somebody's Android (i.e.

> And wow how I've missed Android, the UX is soooo much better in most aspects. iOS has its problems, but every time I have to handle somebody's Android (i.e. to help them do something faster than telling them), I want to give it back as quickly as possible.

spurgu 7y ago
I hope you're not equating Samsung with Android. I find most (if not all) skinned Androids horrible as well. Spent some time with mine removing preinstalled bloatware using adb and then a bit more finding various settings restoring default Android behaviour on the Sony, even though it's relatively vanilla.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tbrock 7y ago
  How could you not though? Skinned Android is how most experience android.
  - spurgu 7y ago
    Yeah, which in mind tarnishes the reputation of Android. Well on the other hand most regular people don't even don't know what Android is, they only talk about "Samsung" phones, which is somewhat correct.
shoulderfake 7y ago
I have same experience with ios
- spurgu 7y ago
  Right? Simple things like selecting/copying text can be so annoying and unintuitive to the point where I wasn't feeling comfortable even after 1.5 years, and I'm somewhat of a power user in that I like to figure out the most effective ways of doing things. With iOS I've failed on so many different occasions and having to succumb to what I'd consider workarounds. Another glaringly obvious thing with Android that frustrated me to no end with iOS: Why the fuck do you need to swipe twice to remove a notification. So many swipes wasted that I could've used for Tinder instead. I have a boatload of stuff that annoys me about iOS, to the point where at one point thought about opening a Twitter account to send a daily tweet about something that sucks on iOS. Emojis look good though.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    As an iPhone/iPad user, yes, selecting text is absolutely jackiechan.jpg befuddling on iOS. To the point that you wonder if anybody at Apple actually uses it. They've actually made it worse in a way by removing the magnifying glass, but at least the new copy/paste/cut swipe gestures are handy, if a little odd on smaller screens.
    - Daneel_ 7y ago
      I agree that removing the magnifying glass was a terrible idea, but what's befuddling about selecting text? The biggest loss for me on newer devices is 3D touch, since that's the best way to select text quickly and easily.
      - Razengan 7y ago
        Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL. On many websites it will zoom around unpredictably. Very awkward to select specific text in Notes etc. sometimes, especially around links and other clickable items.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        > Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL. I’ve found that if you try to move the cursor with the keyboard it’ll show up.
  - Talanes 7y ago
    Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop. And for the love of god why does your spellcheck keep trying to replace the word "talk" with "ya'll?" I've had to manually set text replacement for way too many word pairs like that, and if you do typo the word you're going for in a way that's not in the text replacement, it defaults to the weird choice anyway.
opan 7y ago
To be fair, most skinned Android variants are really horrible. My whole immediate family uses Android phones, but half the time I just don't know how to quickly tell them where an option is because I've used CyanogenMod/LineageOS on all my phones, and they're using Samsung's take on Android, which is shockingly different. Worse yet, they often are on much older Android versions than me which results in even more differences. Settings categories having different names is the biggest problem. At least on some newer Android versions there's a search in the settings so you don't have to guess where stuff is as much.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Yeah it's mostly Samsung but also Oppo and Huawei, that basically just seem to do a half-baked copy of Apple with their own peculiar weirdness thrown in to make it worse.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    As a counterpoint, I think OnePlus's "Oxygen" shell is often quicker and better than the already spectacular default Android experience.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      OnePlus’s customizations tend to be much lighter and more thoughtful.
- sumanthvepa 7y ago
  That's the primary reason that I use Pixel devices. I want the stock Android experience and updates to the OS. I don't get those with other phones.
camelNotation 7y ago
I feel the same way when someone hands me an iPhone. In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to. If you had a great Android phone for a few months, you'd probably be just as comfortable with it as you are an iPhone. When someone asks me what phone to buy, my answer is always "what phone do you have now?" because frankly, there is no reason to switch from one to the other. It's just a waste of time and energy to go through that.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Unless you care about privacy, in which case the answer seems to be iPhone. I haven’t found a good Android experience that doesn’t involve funneling everything to Google.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - searchableguy 7y ago
    You can atleast remove the googleware to a great degree, you can't do the same for iPhones easily. Huge difference. You have fdroid, apk slicer and alternative stores without google gate-keeping. You can reflash your phone with ungoogled android or open source alternative gapps package. Use microG to sandbox google stuff. There are ton of ways to contain googleware.
    - xtian 7y ago
      Which of those do you think are accessible to the average user?
      - sudosysgen 7y ago
        All of them if someone else does the initial set up, from first hand experience.
        7y ago
rattray 7y ago
Learning new things is always hard, and some flavors of Android (eg; Samsung) are pretty atrocious. What problems did you face? I have both an iPhone (work) and an Android (Nexus 2, personal) and use both daily. I find (stock) Android to be a much more usable and capable operating system. Which is a shame because the iPhones really are better hardware, especially the smaller ones.
michaelmrose 7y ago
Familiarity may be one factor you never use one device long enough to get familiar with it. It may also because idiots keep "innovating" with the home screen experience but for most androids the home screen is just another app you can replace with one not made by incompetents. Nova is nice for example.
mcv 7y ago
Part of that is of course what you're used to, but a lot of Android phone makers put their UI and crapware over Android. I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. I tend to look for the purest Android I can find.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. How else will you distinguish between them?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Hardware?
    - mcv 7y ago
      Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Same sizes, same shapes, same screens, same everything. In the early days of Android smartphones, we had phones with physical keyboards, phones made out of steel instead of glass, and tons of other physical differences. These days they all look the same and they try to make up for it by messing up Android in different ways.
      - SuperPaintMan 7y ago
        There's still a few outliers, I'm dailying a. BlackBerry Key2 and have a backup UniHertz Titan on the shelf (which has a passport style 1:1 screen). Love having a physical keyboard, and will gladly give up some screen size for a much comfier typing experience. That and the BlackBerry Hub is amazing and actually makes managing all my communication in a day much more effective. (Global shortcuts, gestured text navigation, a control key, etc): At least Hub can be installed on other Android devices, for me a unified inbox is a killer feature.
      - Razengan 7y ago
        > Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Not to mention that you basically need to look at the latest iPhone to know what maybe 70% of Android hardware is going to look like for the next year or so (notch, cameras, software features like Animoji, even the absence of things like the headphone jack).
tracker1 7y ago
I think that's less to do with realistic differences than it is familiarity... I've used google experience for the most part, and even then using someone's Samsung devices is different enough to be annoying. For the most part, I adapt along the way... I've felt similar with iOS, but refuse to buy from Apple.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Refusing to feed anything more to Google whenever I have the choice, is the reason I will probably always avoid Android.
zanderwohl 7y ago
I think one of the main problems with Android is how _varied_ different versions are. When I pick up anyone's iPhone I find it equally easy to do everything. Even when I had an Android, picking up anyone else's phone and trying to change settings (you know, being the only computer person around, I had to help people fix problems) was an enormous difficulty. Just because I had figured out my phone well didn't mean I could even find the same setting on someone else's phone. It's been a few yeas - it may be more standard by now.

spurgu 7y ago

I hope you're not equating Samsung with Android. I find most (if not all) skinned Androids horrible as well. Spent some time with mine removing preinstalled bloatware using adb and then a bit more finding various settings restoring default Android behaviour on the Sony, even though it's relatively vanilla.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tbrock 7y ago
How could you not though? Skinned Android is how most experience android.
- spurgu 7y ago
  Yeah, which in mind tarnishes the reputation of Android. Well on the other hand most regular people don't even don't know what Android is, they only talk about "Samsung" phones, which is somewhat correct.

shoulderfake 7y ago

I have same experience with ios

spurgu 7y ago
Right? Simple things like selecting/copying text can be so annoying and unintuitive to the point where I wasn't feeling comfortable even after 1.5 years, and I'm somewhat of a power user in that I like to figure out the most effective ways of doing things. With iOS I've failed on so many different occasions and having to succumb to what I'd consider workarounds. Another glaringly obvious thing with Android that frustrated me to no end with iOS: Why the fuck do you need to swipe twice to remove a notification. So many swipes wasted that I could've used for Tinder instead. I have a boatload of stuff that annoys me about iOS, to the point where at one point thought about opening a Twitter account to send a daily tweet about something that sucks on iOS. Emojis look good though.
- Razengan 7y ago
  As an iPhone/iPad user, yes, selecting text is absolutely jackiechan.jpg befuddling on iOS. To the point that you wonder if anybody at Apple actually uses it. They've actually made it worse in a way by removing the magnifying glass, but at least the new copy/paste/cut swipe gestures are handy, if a little odd on smaller screens.
  - Daneel_ 7y ago
    I agree that removing the magnifying glass was a terrible idea, but what's befuddling about selecting text? The biggest loss for me on newer devices is 3D touch, since that's the best way to select text quickly and easily.
    - Razengan 7y ago
      Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL. On many websites it will zoom around unpredictably. Very awkward to select specific text in Notes etc. sometimes, especially around links and other clickable items.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL. I’ve found that if you try to move the cursor with the keyboard it’ll show up.
- Talanes 7y ago
  Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop. And for the love of god why does your spellcheck keep trying to replace the word "talk" with "ya'll?" I've had to manually set text replacement for way too many word pairs like that, and if you do typo the word you're going for in a way that's not in the text replacement, it defaults to the weird choice anyway.

opan 7y ago

To be fair, most skinned Android variants are really horrible. My whole immediate family uses Android phones, but half the time I just don't know how to quickly tell them where an option is because I've used CyanogenMod/LineageOS on all my phones, and they're using Samsung's take on Android, which is shockingly different. Worse yet, they often are on much older Android versions than me which results in even more differences. Settings categories having different names is the biggest problem. At least on some newer Android versions there's a search in the settings so you don't have to guess where stuff is as much.

Razengan 7y ago
Yeah it's mostly Samsung but also Oppo and Huawei, that basically just seem to do a half-baked copy of Apple with their own peculiar weirdness thrown in to make it worse.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  As a counterpoint, I think OnePlus's "Oxygen" shell is often quicker and better than the already spectacular default Android experience.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    OnePlus’s customizations tend to be much lighter and more thoughtful.
sumanthvepa 7y ago
That's the primary reason that I use Pixel devices. I want the stock Android experience and updates to the OS. I don't get those with other phones.

camelNotation 7y ago

I feel the same way when someone hands me an iPhone. In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to. If you had a great Android phone for a few months, you'd probably be just as comfortable with it as you are an iPhone. When someone asks me what phone to buy, my answer is always "what phone do you have now?" because frankly, there is no reason to switch from one to the other. It's just a waste of time and energy to go through that.

kortilla 7y ago
Unless you care about privacy, in which case the answer seems to be iPhone. I haven’t found a good Android experience that doesn’t involve funneling everything to Google.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- searchableguy 7y ago
  You can atleast remove the googleware to a great degree, you can't do the same for iPhones easily. Huge difference. You have fdroid, apk slicer and alternative stores without google gate-keeping. You can reflash your phone with ungoogled android or open source alternative gapps package. Use microG to sandbox google stuff. There are ton of ways to contain googleware.
  - xtian 7y ago
    Which of those do you think are accessible to the average user?
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      All of them if someone else does the initial set up, from first hand experience.
      - 7y ago

rattray 7y ago

Learning new things is always hard, and some flavors of Android (eg; Samsung) are pretty atrocious. What problems did you face? I have both an iPhone (work) and an Android (Nexus 2, personal) and use both daily. I find (stock) Android to be a much more usable and capable operating system. Which is a shame because the iPhones really are better hardware, especially the smaller ones.

michaelmrose 7y ago

Familiarity may be one factor you never use one device long enough to get familiar with it. It may also because idiots keep "innovating" with the home screen experience but for most androids the home screen is just another app you can replace with one not made by incompetents. Nova is nice for example.

mcv 7y ago

Part of that is of course what you're used to, but a lot of Android phone makers put their UI and crapware over Android. I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. I tend to look for the purest Android I can find.

Razengan 7y ago
> I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. How else will you distinguish between them?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Hardware?
  - mcv 7y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Same sizes, same shapes, same screens, same everything. In the early days of Android smartphones, we had phones with physical keyboards, phones made out of steel instead of glass, and tons of other physical differences. These days they all look the same and they try to make up for it by messing up Android in different ways.
    - SuperPaintMan 7y ago
      There's still a few outliers, I'm dailying a. BlackBerry Key2 and have a backup UniHertz Titan on the shelf (which has a passport style 1:1 screen). Love having a physical keyboard, and will gladly give up some screen size for a much comfier typing experience. That and the BlackBerry Hub is amazing and actually makes managing all my communication in a day much more effective. (Global shortcuts, gestured text navigation, a control key, etc): At least Hub can be installed on other Android devices, for me a unified inbox is a killer feature.
    - Razengan 7y ago
      > Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Not to mention that you basically need to look at the latest iPhone to know what maybe 70% of Android hardware is going to look like for the next year or so (notch, cameras, software features like Animoji, even the absence of things like the headphone jack).

tracker1 7y ago

I think that's less to do with realistic differences than it is familiarity... I've used google experience for the most part, and even then using someone's Samsung devices is different enough to be annoying. For the most part, I adapt along the way... I've felt similar with iOS, but refuse to buy from Apple.

Razengan 7y ago
Refusing to feed anything more to Google whenever I have the choice, is the reason I will probably always avoid Android.

zanderwohl 7y ago

I think one of the main problems with Android is how _varied_ different versions are. When I pick up anyone's iPhone I find it equally easy to do everything. Even when I had an Android, picking up anyone else's phone and trying to change settings (you know, being the only computer person around, I had to help people fix problems) was an enormous difficulty. Just because I had figured out my phone well didn't mean I could even find the same setting on someone else's phone. It's been a few yeas - it may be more standard by now.