4 ms·

> Android by comparison feels more like it was designed to look pretty with usability as a second class citizen. I do think that this comes from the code base

> Android by comparison feels more like it was designed to look pretty with usability as a second class citizen. I do think that this comes from the code base not being very good. The base layout and view classes have hundreds of thousand lines of codes, the layout algorithm is quadratic to the number of views. It was originally designed for digital cameras, not for phones. The base classes use many bit fields as well instead of enums, they don't look like Java. Plus the strange back button concept which comes from the camera. All this means developers waste a lot of time wrestling the framework.

lostmsu 3y ago
What's strange about the back button? It is one of the things that makes me not consider Apple devices since they lack it.
- xenospn 3y ago
  Didn’t Google get rid of it as well?
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    There's a gesture now, but the consistent OS response is the important bit.
  - serial_dev 3y ago
    You can configure on Android (at least I can on my Pixels and Motorolas) whether you want gesture navigation or 3-button navigation. The gesture navigation is similar to what iOS does (not the same), and the 3-button navigation is basically the old version of the Android navigation. This article could help you understand where Android stands today https://www.makeuseof.com/three-button-navigation-vs-gesture-navigation-android https://www.makeuseof.com/three-button-navigation-vs-gesture... I'm a Flutter developer working on iOS and Android apps, my 2cts is that the Android back button experience is more predictable (both with the gesture navigation and with the 3-button navigation): on iOS, the back swipe doesn't always work and sometimes I need to track down where the on-screen back button or back icon is. On ios, sometimes instead of swiping horizontally, I need to drag the panel down, and even though it's easy to figure out based on the screen which one will work, it's one more way of doing things, whereas on Android, I can just hit the back button in most scenarios.
    - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      The 'back' gesture is a piece of shit. I'm forever accidentally setting it off when trying to swipe to the next photo or drag something from near the edge of the screen, it's lost me browser tabs I'd just opened. Swiping left/right is too common an action to be an OS-level gesture. Edit: since having the above whinge I've found the option to turn down the sensitivity. I'll see if that makes me a bit less 'old man shouts at cloud'.
- msh 3y ago
  From iphone x onwards the back button is implemented as a gesture.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    What's the gesture?
    - macmccann 3y ago
      Swipe from the left side of the screen to the right side
      - lostmsu 3y ago
        Ugh. They just had to be different, hadn't they.
        klooney 3y ago
        Pixels work that way too, now
        lostmsu 3y ago
        On my Samsung the main gesture for back is right edge to left swipe.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  What I find strange is not the back button, but the lack of a forward button.
pjmlp 3y ago
It has improved over time, however it is clearly Java written by C++ developers, like we were doing back in 1996.
grumpyprole 3y ago
There used to be lots of issues with rotating the screen, many apps would lose UI state almost as if everything was torn down and rebuilt. Never looked at the code but guessed it was never designed to be an iPhone.

lostmsu 3y ago

What's strange about the back button? It is one of the things that makes me not consider Apple devices since they lack it.

xenospn 3y ago
Didn’t Google get rid of it as well?
- lostmsu 3y ago
  There's a gesture now, but the consistent OS response is the important bit.
- serial_dev 3y ago
  You can configure on Android (at least I can on my Pixels and Motorolas) whether you want gesture navigation or 3-button navigation. The gesture navigation is similar to what iOS does (not the same), and the 3-button navigation is basically the old version of the Android navigation. This article could help you understand where Android stands today https://www.makeuseof.com/three-button-navigation-vs-gesture-navigation-android https://www.makeuseof.com/three-button-navigation-vs-gesture... I'm a Flutter developer working on iOS and Android apps, my 2cts is that the Android back button experience is more predictable (both with the gesture navigation and with the 3-button navigation): on iOS, the back swipe doesn't always work and sometimes I need to track down where the on-screen back button or back icon is. On ios, sometimes instead of swiping horizontally, I need to drag the panel down, and even though it's easy to figure out based on the screen which one will work, it's one more way of doing things, whereas on Android, I can just hit the back button in most scenarios.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    The 'back' gesture is a piece of shit. I'm forever accidentally setting it off when trying to swipe to the next photo or drag something from near the edge of the screen, it's lost me browser tabs I'd just opened. Swiping left/right is too common an action to be an OS-level gesture. Edit: since having the above whinge I've found the option to turn down the sensitivity. I'll see if that makes me a bit less 'old man shouts at cloud'.
msh 3y ago
From iphone x onwards the back button is implemented as a gesture.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  What's the gesture?
  - macmccann 3y ago
    Swipe from the left side of the screen to the right side
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      Ugh. They just had to be different, hadn't they.
      - klooney 3y ago
        Pixels work that way too, now
        lostmsu 3y ago
        On my Samsung the main gesture for back is right edge to left swipe.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
What I find strange is not the back button, but the lack of a forward button.

pjmlp 3y ago

It has improved over time, however it is clearly Java written by C++ developers, like we were doing back in 1996.

grumpyprole 3y ago

There used to be lots of issues with rotating the screen, many apps would lose UI state almost as if everything was torn down and rebuilt. Never looked at the code but guessed it was never designed to be an iPhone.