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I hope Motorola sets a new course towards premium iPhone territory. I've always found raw naked Android much nicer to use than the silly re-skinning every manu

I hope Motorola sets a new course towards premium iPhone territory. I've always found raw naked Android much nicer to use than the silly re-skinning every manufacturer wastes time adding. Sense and blur are bad, but Sony's Timescape was absolutely the low-point.

raverbashing 14y ago
Yes One thing I learned from HW manufacturer is that they absolutely don't get SW development Zero, zilch, nada, NULL Hence, this results in wasting (a lot of) time with BS projects, lots of NIH syndrome, design by committee, etc I've heard and seem a lot of stories, I've worked in certain companies and I vowed never to work again there. They waste million of dollars thinking CrapCase and other "irrational" tools are ok. And that's why Cyanogenmod releases upgrades quicker than the manufacturers.
- esrauch 14y ago
  It isn't really a fair comparison; Cyanogenmod has no legal liability for releasing flawed upgrades.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    And Cyanogenmod doesn't have to get carrier approval.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    Do carriers? The contract I signed with AT&T was pretty onerous.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      Do carriers? The contract I signed with AT&T was pretty onerous. For you. For AT&T, it says they can come into your house and take any and all children of yours whenever they want. They wrote the contract and you have no choice but to agree, so they're certainly not going to go out of their way to be nice to you. (Their logo is the frickin' Death Star, after all!)
      - ceejayoz 14y ago
        That's my point. They've set up the contracts so they don't have much more legal liability for flawed upgrades than Cyanogenmod does.
    - esrauch 14y ago
      Even if AT&T isn't held to certain liabilities, if an OTA bricks peoples phones and they don't do anything about it it would be a media shitstorm.
  - RobAtticus 14y ago
    In addition, I haven't found CM to be perfect and awesome either. It has things I find annoying or frustrating, and I don't particularly think its "look" is much better than some of the manufacturer's. Just my opinions though.
- nextparadigms 14y ago
  I think most security vulnerabilities for Android phones come from the manufacturers messing with the core Android code, too, and not from Google. I really hope the "new Motorola" will use only stock Android from now on. It doesn't even make sense to me to do it otherwise.
  - click170 14y ago
    Citation? Or is this a hunch? I'd love it if that were true, sounds like an excellent rebuttal to the usual 'android gets spam' retort. As I understand it most of the time the problem is the user themselves, the app requested some permission and the user granted it.
- kisielk 14y ago
  I previously worked for a (small-time) handset manufacturer, and have done product testing for several others. I also have friends who work or have worked for some of the major names. None of the companies have any clue whatsoever when it comes to UI design, software development, etc. The majority of the process is usually centered around putting some kind of brand-specific skinning on the OS as a "differentiator". It only gets worse when the carriers request their own specific branding on a handset. Usually the designs are put together by one or two designers and the emphasis is often on visual impact as opposed to usability. Flash tends to win over function, and often times things are redesigned for no good reason between product releases. It's no surprise then that Apple is eating their lunch, at least they have a coordinated effort.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    Couldn't have said it better myself
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  >They waste million of dollars thinking CrapCase and other "irrational" tools are ok. Oh God, yup. The last place I interned for was using CVS, and the devs wanted to switch to Git. This desire percolated up a few levels, and a couple months later it's announced that we're switching to ClearCase. Two months before a major version of our product drops. Cue 3 weeks of mayhem as ClearCase manages to mangle everything, then the same people who made the ClearCase decision are furious that we are so far behind target and begin to "question the competency" of the devs at out site. Yeah, thanks but I'm staying the hell away from HW companies in the future.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    Why would the developers even go along with such a switch? Why don't they just create facts? Put up a centralized git repository somewhere and get coding?
    - redthrowaway 14y ago
      The repo was being monitored; lack of activity on it would have raised eyebrows. But hey, ClearCase is from IBM, so it has to be good, right? It was made by a team of experts, not some pudgy Finn. Clearly the codemonkeys just don't understand business, which is why we're building our web app in Java over their objections. Java is what Enterprise uses, and this is Enterprise software. Makes perfect sense.
      - nostrademons 14y ago
        Could you setup a mirroring system? Run a nightly cronjob that takes all commits to the git repository and syncs them to ClearCase? I've never used ClearCase, so I have no idea if this would work, but a similar system is used at Google where we have a wrapper around git that creates a Perforce changelist out of our commits.
        dagw 14y ago
        Could you setup a mirroring system? And then some manager will find out and fire someone for wasting valuable company time and resources hacking on some irrelevant side project or hacking the companies security system or something. Some places are just broken politically and no amount of technical cleverness can fix it. At places like that your only option is to learn to live with it, learn to play the political game or quit.
- joshu 14y ago
  i remember at a conference (ETech, a while ago) there was a geohackers BOF and some dude from a handset mfg said they wanted to work with us, and the way to do so would be to create proposals for them to evaluate, and then they would decide. they actually told a roomful of hackers to ask permission. fuck that?
idspispopd 14y ago
Android isn't bad at all, but you need to understand why it's so popular - it lets just about every phone maker produce incredibly cheap handsets. Despite the iPhone having a 22% share of smart phones it commands a significantly larger percentage of revenue, so high that Samsung, the android leader, won't reveal revenue figures for their android business. (Samsung reveal that their entire mobile division has 17B revenue, Apple's iPhone devision, excluding iPod/iPad is 23B.) Apple are very good at making premium products, they have a greater than 94% market share for computers over $1,000USD. They all but own the tablet space despite their significantly higher retail price. The only competitors that succeed against Apple are the ones willing to have razor thin margins producing commodity products - this is where Android comes in, the bulk of Android devices are budget conscious. Google tried the premium Android approach originally and it failed enough for them to abort the approach completely.
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  Haven't really aborted the idea: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/galaxy-nexus-now-on-sale-in-google-play.html http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/galaxy-nexus-now-on...
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  It took Apple a long time to connect good design with something that could take a big chunk out of a market. It won't be any different for its competitors. It's slowly happening with laptops. My Toshiba Satellite from a few years ago already looks great and has great usability. I'm sure newer models are even better. How many years did it take non-Apple laptop manufacturers to figure it out after Apple proved you could make a nice laptop that people would buy?
- huggyface 14y ago
  Android isn't bad at all Who are you replying to? The comment you replied to makes the arguable point that vendor add-ons are a problem. That is a debatable point as each iteration of Android has essentially usurped functionality pioneered in those skins. but you need to understand why it's so popular - it lets just about every phone maker produce incredibly cheap handsets Gah! Where are all of these "incredibly cheap" handsets? ZTE? Huwei? The overwhelming bulk of Android handsets (edit: I realize this is worded poorly, but I mean relative to sales -- the top selling handsets are predominately the top tier devices) are priced similarly to the iPhone. And why are you making uninformed comments about Android on a board where the overwhelming majority of participants are very informed on the market? And ignoring the fact that Samsung, HTC, and Motorola probably spend more on software developer, per handset, than a Windows Phone license, even if they went for Windows Phone licenses is that $5-$15 license fee going to really be the difference between "incredibly cheap" and not incredibly cheap? This Android == the low end nonsense is garbage. It is hubris of the worst kind. Terrible. Just terrible. I'm going full jerk now, threatening my glorious Avg:5 score, but save comments like that for Engadget stories.
janus 14y ago
Specially Android ICS. Removing Sense from my HTC Sensation and going to a rom that has an almost native ICS not only gave me a much better iphone-like experience, but it's also way faster the the stock android from HTC. WAY WAY faster and smoother
scopendo 14y ago
I'm curious why you say that Sense is bad - not doubting, just curious. I recently got the HTC One X and have been very happy with its usability and performance, but then I don't have access to a stock Android ICS phone so I can't make the comparison.
- huggyface 14y ago
  So-called skins have a very poor reputation primarily because of their influence on slow update times (whether real or overblown). From a pure usability perspective, it is really only hardcore "nerds" who have such an issue with skins: While they have less and less importance as Android itself refines, during earlier generations they were a critical element in bringing the platform to the mainstream.
  - commandar 14y ago
    My issue is that manufacturers try to reinvent the wheel and end up breaking things because they suck at software. Manual set up of Exchange accounts was flat out broken on my Droid 4 the first 3-4 months it was on the market, despite being something that works perfectly fine in vanilla Android. The breakage happened because Motorola decided to implement their own "corporate account" feature rather than just use the one that was baked in.
    - huggyface 14y ago
      It is only fair to note that Motorola added ActiveSync (Exchange integration) to their Android builds long before Google added it.
      - commandar 14y ago
        Sure, but Exchange support had been part of the AOSP trunk for over two years by time the D4 was released.
- megablast 14y ago
  I enjoyed the shortcuts HTC added to the HTC Desire, and easy way to get to last running apps, settings, some regular settings as well. I haven't looked at ICS, but HTC definitely add to the regular android experience.

raverbashing 14y ago

Yes One thing I learned from HW manufacturer is that they absolutely don't get SW development Zero, zilch, nada, NULL Hence, this results in wasting (a lot of) time with BS projects, lots of NIH syndrome, design by committee, etc I've heard and seem a lot of stories, I've worked in certain companies and I vowed never to work again there. They waste million of dollars thinking CrapCase and other "irrational" tools are ok. And that's why Cyanogenmod releases upgrades quicker than the manufacturers.

esrauch 14y ago
It isn't really a fair comparison; Cyanogenmod has no legal liability for releasing flawed upgrades.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  And Cyanogenmod doesn't have to get carrier approval.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  Do carriers? The contract I signed with AT&T was pretty onerous.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Do carriers? The contract I signed with AT&T was pretty onerous. For you. For AT&T, it says they can come into your house and take any and all children of yours whenever they want. They wrote the contract and you have no choice but to agree, so they're certainly not going to go out of their way to be nice to you. (Their logo is the frickin' Death Star, after all!)
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      That's my point. They've set up the contracts so they don't have much more legal liability for flawed upgrades than Cyanogenmod does.
  - esrauch 14y ago
    Even if AT&T isn't held to certain liabilities, if an OTA bricks peoples phones and they don't do anything about it it would be a media shitstorm.
- RobAtticus 14y ago
  In addition, I haven't found CM to be perfect and awesome either. It has things I find annoying or frustrating, and I don't particularly think its "look" is much better than some of the manufacturer's. Just my opinions though.
nextparadigms 14y ago
I think most security vulnerabilities for Android phones come from the manufacturers messing with the core Android code, too, and not from Google. I really hope the "new Motorola" will use only stock Android from now on. It doesn't even make sense to me to do it otherwise.
- click170 14y ago
  Citation? Or is this a hunch? I'd love it if that were true, sounds like an excellent rebuttal to the usual 'android gets spam' retort. As I understand it most of the time the problem is the user themselves, the app requested some permission and the user granted it.
kisielk 14y ago
I previously worked for a (small-time) handset manufacturer, and have done product testing for several others. I also have friends who work or have worked for some of the major names. None of the companies have any clue whatsoever when it comes to UI design, software development, etc. The majority of the process is usually centered around putting some kind of brand-specific skinning on the OS as a "differentiator". It only gets worse when the carriers request their own specific branding on a handset. Usually the designs are put together by one or two designers and the emphasis is often on visual impact as opposed to usability. Flash tends to win over function, and often times things are redesigned for no good reason between product releases. It's no surprise then that Apple is eating their lunch, at least they have a coordinated effort.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Couldn't have said it better myself
redthrowaway 14y ago
>They waste million of dollars thinking CrapCase and other "irrational" tools are ok. Oh God, yup. The last place I interned for was using CVS, and the devs wanted to switch to Git. This desire percolated up a few levels, and a couple months later it's announced that we're switching to ClearCase. Two months before a major version of our product drops. Cue 3 weeks of mayhem as ClearCase manages to mangle everything, then the same people who made the ClearCase decision are furious that we are so far behind target and begin to "question the competency" of the devs at out site. Yeah, thanks but I'm staying the hell away from HW companies in the future.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Why would the developers even go along with such a switch? Why don't they just create facts? Put up a centralized git repository somewhere and get coding?
  - redthrowaway 14y ago
    The repo was being monitored; lack of activity on it would have raised eyebrows. But hey, ClearCase is from IBM, so it has to be good, right? It was made by a team of experts, not some pudgy Finn. Clearly the codemonkeys just don't understand business, which is why we're building our web app in Java over their objections. Java is what Enterprise uses, and this is Enterprise software. Makes perfect sense.
    - nostrademons 14y ago
      Could you setup a mirroring system? Run a nightly cronjob that takes all commits to the git repository and syncs them to ClearCase? I've never used ClearCase, so I have no idea if this would work, but a similar system is used at Google where we have a wrapper around git that creates a Perforce changelist out of our commits.
      - dagw 14y ago
        Could you setup a mirroring system? And then some manager will find out and fire someone for wasting valuable company time and resources hacking on some irrelevant side project or hacking the companies security system or something. Some places are just broken politically and no amount of technical cleverness can fix it. At places like that your only option is to learn to live with it, learn to play the political game or quit.
joshu 14y ago
i remember at a conference (ETech, a while ago) there was a geohackers BOF and some dude from a handset mfg said they wanted to work with us, and the way to do so would be to create proposals for them to evaluate, and then they would decide. they actually told a roomful of hackers to ask permission. fuck that?

idspispopd 14y ago

Android isn't bad at all, but you need to understand why it's so popular - it lets just about every phone maker produce incredibly cheap handsets. Despite the iPhone having a 22% share of smart phones it commands a significantly larger percentage of revenue, so high that Samsung, the android leader, won't reveal revenue figures for their android business. (Samsung reveal that their entire mobile division has 17B revenue, Apple's iPhone devision, excluding iPod/iPad is 23B.) Apple are very good at making premium products, they have a greater than 94% market share for computers over $1,000USD. They all but own the tablet space despite their significantly higher retail price. The only competitors that succeed against Apple are the ones willing to have razor thin margins producing commodity products - this is where Android comes in, the bulk of Android devices are budget conscious. Google tried the premium Android approach originally and it failed enough for them to abort the approach completely.

Kylekramer 14y ago
Haven't really aborted the idea: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/galaxy-nexus-now-on-sale-in-google-play.html http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/galaxy-nexus-now-on...
mkr-hn 14y ago
It took Apple a long time to connect good design with something that could take a big chunk out of a market. It won't be any different for its competitors. It's slowly happening with laptops. My Toshiba Satellite from a few years ago already looks great and has great usability. I'm sure newer models are even better. How many years did it take non-Apple laptop manufacturers to figure it out after Apple proved you could make a nice laptop that people would buy?
huggyface 14y ago
Android isn't bad at all Who are you replying to? The comment you replied to makes the arguable point that vendor add-ons are a problem. That is a debatable point as each iteration of Android has essentially usurped functionality pioneered in those skins. but you need to understand why it's so popular - it lets just about every phone maker produce incredibly cheap handsets Gah! Where are all of these "incredibly cheap" handsets? ZTE? Huwei? The overwhelming bulk of Android handsets (edit: I realize this is worded poorly, but I mean relative to sales -- the top selling handsets are predominately the top tier devices) are priced similarly to the iPhone. And why are you making uninformed comments about Android on a board where the overwhelming majority of participants are very informed on the market? And ignoring the fact that Samsung, HTC, and Motorola probably spend more on software developer, per handset, than a Windows Phone license, even if they went for Windows Phone licenses is that $5-$15 license fee going to really be the difference between "incredibly cheap" and not incredibly cheap? This Android == the low end nonsense is garbage. It is hubris of the worst kind. Terrible. Just terrible. I'm going full jerk now, threatening my glorious Avg:5 score, but save comments like that for Engadget stories.

janus 14y ago

Specially Android ICS. Removing Sense from my HTC Sensation and going to a rom that has an almost native ICS not only gave me a much better iphone-like experience, but it's also way faster the the stock android from HTC. WAY WAY faster and smoother

scopendo 14y ago

I'm curious why you say that Sense is bad - not doubting, just curious. I recently got the HTC One X and have been very happy with its usability and performance, but then I don't have access to a stock Android ICS phone so I can't make the comparison.

huggyface 14y ago
So-called skins have a very poor reputation primarily because of their influence on slow update times (whether real or overblown). From a pure usability perspective, it is really only hardcore "nerds" who have such an issue with skins: While they have less and less importance as Android itself refines, during earlier generations they were a critical element in bringing the platform to the mainstream.
- commandar 14y ago
  My issue is that manufacturers try to reinvent the wheel and end up breaking things because they suck at software. Manual set up of Exchange accounts was flat out broken on my Droid 4 the first 3-4 months it was on the market, despite being something that works perfectly fine in vanilla Android. The breakage happened because Motorola decided to implement their own "corporate account" feature rather than just use the one that was baked in.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    It is only fair to note that Motorola added ActiveSync (Exchange integration) to their Android builds long before Google added it.
    - commandar 14y ago
      Sure, but Exchange support had been part of the AOSP trunk for over two years by time the D4 was released.
megablast 14y ago
I enjoyed the shortcuts HTC added to the HTC Desire, and easy way to get to last running apps, settings, some regular settings as well. I haven't looked at ICS, but HTC definitely add to the regular android experience.