4 ms·

Android is too chaotic for my tastes. The conservative simplicity of iOS just works better for me. I would be more inclined to give WP7 a chance than another An

by jsz0 15y ago

Android is too chaotic for my tastes. The conservative simplicity of iOS just works better for me. I would be more inclined to give WP7 a chance than another Android device at this point.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
Your comment would hold more weight if you elaborated on what is chaotic about Android. I have my complaints but "chaotic" is not one of them.
- megablast 15y ago
  The back button is chaotic. Handy in many situations, but not in others. If you go into an app already running, there may not be a way to go back to the start screen of that app.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    I so tire of this complaint. It's very consistent if you understand what it does. Think of Android Activitys in a stack. The back button pops off the stack. There, you're done. Unless an app overrides it in a broken way, that will explain all cases. If you launch an app via the Launcher, it will try to restore state, and then the back button pops back through Activities to the "start screen". Likewise, if you're in an app and you go to a notification, the back button pops that notification's loaded Activity and you're returned to the app you were in when you clicked on the notification.
    - megablast 15y ago
      We all understand how it works, it is not complicated. Why you feel the need to explain this is amazing to me. There are problems with how it works, something you ignore in your "reply". Like getting to the start screen of an app, where an app always assumes it comes from the start screen, rather than in the middle of the app.
- baddox 15y ago
  For one thing, the standard buttons are ridiculous. Differ phones have them in different orders, and the app deceleration has free reign to make them do whatever they want. The "menu" button sometimes hides crucial information and functionality, but there's no indicator when this is the case. In the Path app, recently lauded for its design and user experience, on one activity you have to press the phone's menu button, then choose "menu" from the onscreen menu. At that point, you're actually at the menu.
  - Tichy 15y ago
    So you have several Android phones from different vendors, and use them all on a regular basis? Because otherwise the complaint about the buttons being arranged differently on different phones seems a bit odd. Why would you care, as long as you know the arrangement on your phone? Is the path app for iOS better than the Android version? Because it also seems odd to blame the OS for the flaws of some specific apps. Personally I am sad to see buttons being optimized away. For example my Galaxy Tab doesn't have a search button. Now all apps seem to hide the search functionality in a different place. I miss not having to search for the search button.
    - baddox 15y ago
      I do frequently use many different Android phones, because I do Android development. I've briefly compared Path on Android and iPhone. Other than performance (iPhone is much smoother), I didn't notice many differences. I'm not really blaming the OS for having any technical flaws. I'm speaking more to flaws in the platform.
- jsz0 15y ago
  As others have mentioned the back button is kind of a nightmare. Rarely a day goes by I don't accidentally back my way out of an application. That sends me to a long-hold on the Home button to find the application again and sometimes this involves starting from scratch and other times I just pickup where I left off. It seems totally random to me. I did not care for the day when my stock-ish Droid X got the MOTOBLUR update. Any OS can be updated in a way that changes a lot of things but it rarely happens with iOS or, from what I've seen, WP7. Basically everything stays the same with some enhancements. This change from stock-ish to MOTOBLUR was a big step backwards and when/if this phone gets ICS it will be another major change. The locked boot-loader situation is chaotic. When I go to buy a new phone I have to study the details of locked vs. encrypted loaders. Checkout forums to see if anyone is developing a stock-ish ROM in case there's another MOTOBLUR type of incident with the carrier provided ROM. Motorola promised to unlock their loaders then just never did it. Obviously now I would go with a Google phone running stock Android instead but that was not an option when I got the Droid X. Battery life is not reliable. Some days I get 6-8 hours and other days its dead by noon. I don't know why this happens. I can't rely on using my Droid X as an alarm clock because occasionally the battery goes from full charge to dead overnight. Random apps in the Android Market are allowed to SPAM me with ads in my notification bar. It feels like a massive invasion of my personal space when this happens. I can't even stress how big of a problem this is for me. I'll stop using any platform that allows this to happen. It's a non-negotiable point. In general I'm also concerned about malware in the Android Market. I don't really install many third party apps anymore. There are things I would like to try out but hitting the install button is a difficult decision. When it comes to games it's total chaos. You have no way of really knowing if the game is going to work correctly or not on your phone. The Droid X isn't all that old yet most games seem to lag on it. It ranges from annoying to unplayable. The lag/jitter of the UI, especially in the stock browser, is just annoying. Some sites scroll fine and others jump around annoyingly. I can't really count on being able to happily use the web browser. My phone reboots a lot. A few times a week at minimum. Something to do with being paired to a Bluetooth device. Bluetooth should never reboot my phone randomly. Never. Every-time I plug my Droid X into my computer two volumes are mounted. The SD card and another Motorola Tools volume. Every single time I have to close the window when it comes up. Annoying. My SD card is littered with all sorts of random files. Trying to find folders on it is pretty difficult. Some of the folders are from apps I deleted long ago. I have to go through every now and again and clean-up all these random folders. Annoying. For other people these things may not be a big deal but they really deeply annoy me. It's not so much that I can't deal with them but just that I don't want to. I hate needing to micro-manage every little detail.
Mithryn 15y ago
I am really enjoying the new UI paradigm in Android 4.0. Soft colors, geometric shapes, white space, thin dividers. Yeah, the UI of Android sucked for a long time. But I see it making lots of progress, especially since they hired Matias Duarte (the designer from WebOS). Hopefully third party app makers will start to put more effort into design now that Google is. It's going to be interesting to see where Android and iOS go over the next couple of years.
m0nastic 15y ago
I find myself wanting to like WP7 (the Lumia specifically) but that may just be because I respect the different approach they're taking. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy another Android phone (the 2 I owned were miserable enough experiences to put me off the platform for good), and that was before I ever used an iPhone. Now that I've invested in the platform (apps, media, and hardware peripherals) it would take a revolutionary breakthrough to switch. But deep down I like technology, so I hope to see that breakthrough.

by jsz0 15y ago

Android is too chaotic for my tastes. The conservative simplicity of iOS just works better for me. I would be more inclined to give WP7 a chance than another Android device at this point.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Your comment would hold more weight if you elaborated on what is chaotic about Android. I have my complaints but "chaotic" is not one of them.

megablast 15y ago
The back button is chaotic. Handy in many situations, but not in others. If you go into an app already running, there may not be a way to go back to the start screen of that app.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  I so tire of this complaint. It's very consistent if you understand what it does. Think of Android Activitys in a stack. The back button pops off the stack. There, you're done. Unless an app overrides it in a broken way, that will explain all cases. If you launch an app via the Launcher, it will try to restore state, and then the back button pops back through Activities to the "start screen". Likewise, if you're in an app and you go to a notification, the back button pops that notification's loaded Activity and you're returned to the app you were in when you clicked on the notification.
  - megablast 15y ago
    We all understand how it works, it is not complicated. Why you feel the need to explain this is amazing to me. There are problems with how it works, something you ignore in your "reply". Like getting to the start screen of an app, where an app always assumes it comes from the start screen, rather than in the middle of the app.
baddox 15y ago
For one thing, the standard buttons are ridiculous. Differ phones have them in different orders, and the app deceleration has free reign to make them do whatever they want. The "menu" button sometimes hides crucial information and functionality, but there's no indicator when this is the case. In the Path app, recently lauded for its design and user experience, on one activity you have to press the phone's menu button, then choose "menu" from the onscreen menu. At that point, you're actually at the menu.
- Tichy 15y ago
  So you have several Android phones from different vendors, and use them all on a regular basis? Because otherwise the complaint about the buttons being arranged differently on different phones seems a bit odd. Why would you care, as long as you know the arrangement on your phone? Is the path app for iOS better than the Android version? Because it also seems odd to blame the OS for the flaws of some specific apps. Personally I am sad to see buttons being optimized away. For example my Galaxy Tab doesn't have a search button. Now all apps seem to hide the search functionality in a different place. I miss not having to search for the search button.
  - baddox 15y ago
    I do frequently use many different Android phones, because I do Android development. I've briefly compared Path on Android and iPhone. Other than performance (iPhone is much smoother), I didn't notice many differences. I'm not really blaming the OS for having any technical flaws. I'm speaking more to flaws in the platform.
jsz0 15y ago
As others have mentioned the back button is kind of a nightmare. Rarely a day goes by I don't accidentally back my way out of an application. That sends me to a long-hold on the Home button to find the application again and sometimes this involves starting from scratch and other times I just pickup where I left off. It seems totally random to me. I did not care for the day when my stock-ish Droid X got the MOTOBLUR update. Any OS can be updated in a way that changes a lot of things but it rarely happens with iOS or, from what I've seen, WP7. Basically everything stays the same with some enhancements. This change from stock-ish to MOTOBLUR was a big step backwards and when/if this phone gets ICS it will be another major change. The locked boot-loader situation is chaotic. When I go to buy a new phone I have to study the details of locked vs. encrypted loaders. Checkout forums to see if anyone is developing a stock-ish ROM in case there's another MOTOBLUR type of incident with the carrier provided ROM. Motorola promised to unlock their loaders then just never did it. Obviously now I would go with a Google phone running stock Android instead but that was not an option when I got the Droid X. Battery life is not reliable. Some days I get 6-8 hours and other days its dead by noon. I don't know why this happens. I can't rely on using my Droid X as an alarm clock because occasionally the battery goes from full charge to dead overnight. Random apps in the Android Market are allowed to SPAM me with ads in my notification bar. It feels like a massive invasion of my personal space when this happens. I can't even stress how big of a problem this is for me. I'll stop using any platform that allows this to happen. It's a non-negotiable point. In general I'm also concerned about malware in the Android Market. I don't really install many third party apps anymore. There are things I would like to try out but hitting the install button is a difficult decision. When it comes to games it's total chaos. You have no way of really knowing if the game is going to work correctly or not on your phone. The Droid X isn't all that old yet most games seem to lag on it. It ranges from annoying to unplayable. The lag/jitter of the UI, especially in the stock browser, is just annoying. Some sites scroll fine and others jump around annoyingly. I can't really count on being able to happily use the web browser. My phone reboots a lot. A few times a week at minimum. Something to do with being paired to a Bluetooth device. Bluetooth should never reboot my phone randomly. Never. Every-time I plug my Droid X into my computer two volumes are mounted. The SD card and another Motorola Tools volume. Every single time I have to close the window when it comes up. Annoying. My SD card is littered with all sorts of random files. Trying to find folders on it is pretty difficult. Some of the folders are from apps I deleted long ago. I have to go through every now and again and clean-up all these random folders. Annoying. For other people these things may not be a big deal but they really deeply annoy me. It's not so much that I can't deal with them but just that I don't want to. I hate needing to micro-manage every little detail.

Mithryn 15y ago

I am really enjoying the new UI paradigm in Android 4.0. Soft colors, geometric shapes, white space, thin dividers. Yeah, the UI of Android sucked for a long time. But I see it making lots of progress, especially since they hired Matias Duarte (the designer from WebOS). Hopefully third party app makers will start to put more effort into design now that Google is. It's going to be interesting to see where Android and iOS go over the next couple of years.

m0nastic 15y ago

I find myself wanting to like WP7 (the Lumia specifically) but that may just be because I respect the different approach they're taking. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy another Android phone (the 2 I owned were miserable enough experiences to put me off the platform for good), and that was before I ever used an iPhone. Now that I've invested in the platform (apps, media, and hardware peripherals) it would take a revolutionary breakthrough to switch. But deep down I like technology, so I hope to see that breakthrough.