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Because OEMs like Samsung have done such an incredible job modifying and skinning Android that I'm sure we can expect great things when they're responsible for
by moxie 14y ago
Because OEMs like Samsung have done such an incredible job modifying and skinning Android that I'm sure we can expect great things when they're responsible for the entire experience from the ground up?
- gbog 14y agoHello, this tone is not the tone we readers wish to read on HN.
- chmike 14y agoIs this humor/sarcasm ?
- harryf 14y agoNaming designed for a specific use case... "Hey is this phone running Android?" "No it Tizen"
- dustin 14y agoLol - had to read it out loud.
- FaddiCat 14y agoI got a Nexus S specifically because I wanted stock Android... but is TouchWiz really that bad? What can you do on stock Android that you can't do on TouchWiz?
- oelmekki 14y agoI've got an s3 and a nexus 7, so I can compare both in the long term. Touchwiz is not a bad product, though it adds actually very few to stock experience. The main problem is that for such minor enhancements, you are condemn to be always late in android updates. We are now fairly aware that updates are not only about getting new features and bugfixes, but also are the main mean to avoid security breaches. If OEMs don't get that, what to expect if they build their own OS ? Not saying it will be bad, but they'll have hard time to alleviate my worries about that.
- FaddiCat 14y ago> Touchwiz is not a bad product, though it adds actually very few to stock experience. Not anymore, anyway. But TouchWiz added quite a bit before ICS came out. Off the top of my head: a customisable dock bar, resizable widgets, a paginated app menu, the app switcher you get when holding 'home', power saving toggles in the notifications drop down... Admittedly these days it's just a way for Samsung to put a unified, iPhone-like interface across all of its phones, but in the beginning it added a number of features missing from Android.
- codeka 14y agoYeah, a lot of what was in TouchWiz is now in stock Android. This is probably kind of subjective, but my problem with TouchWiz is it's butt-ugly. I mean, if you think stock Android was a mess (and it's not so bad now with Holo) then TouchWiz is to stock Android as a 2 year old's art project is to the Mona Lisa. It's a horrible mess of Holo, Gingerbread and just weird random stuff that doesn't fit with either.
- myko 14y agoTouchWiz is ugly. That's my major problem with it. The cartoonish icons take up way too much room in the notification window, unnecessary and useless animations slow me down. Mainly though it just isn't very good looking.
- 8bitpony 14y agoI'm not so sure. Google is stronger for software, whereas companies like Samsung, Sony, HTC etc. are better at hardware, which is my their marriage with Android has worked so well. The likes of Sense and Touchwiz do add some nice features, but they also add a lot of rubbish. It will take ages for hardware-focused companies like Samsung to catch up with Google's software experience.
- lepacheco 14y agoHe was being sarcastic =P From my experience with a galaxy s2, most of the software from Samsung is not that great (and can't be removed without installing something like cyanogen... quite annoying).
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoYou say that but I was playing with a (older) Nexus running vanilla ICS "as it was meant to be" the other day and moaning about something (I was attempting to add something to the home screen I think). A couple of the Android users in the office came over to see what I was moaning about. After 60 seconds of looking at it they both admitted that the thing I was moaning about was horrible but that it wasn't something they had to deal with on their Galaxy S3s. When they showed me the S3 it's mechanism was definitely more intuitive (at least to the three of us). While I'm not defending the skinning efforts of OEMs generally, I don't think the historical position of "it's all awful" is necessarily true any more. Sure there are bad things in there but there were plenty of bad things in early versions of Android. Just as Google learned there are signs that the OEMs are learning too.
- slacka 14y agoI second this. I've gone back and forth between the vanilla CM9 build and the Samsung touchwiz on my Galazy S2. While the CM9 feels faster and cleaner, it's all lacks some key features. For example the vanilla music player doesn't support displaying ID3 MP3 lyrics, a feature my windows mobile phone could do back in 2003. This feature is critical for podcast courses with embedded lecture notes. And yes, the widgets work better in touchwiz too. In the end, I always go back to the more feature complete touchwiz.
- andybak 14y agoTouchwiz is definitely the 'last worst' of the Androids and some of the feature tweaks are/were definite improvements. Having said that I've got a fairly close to vanilla Jelly Bean on my SGSII now and I can't think of anything I miss from stock.
- cheald 14y agoI'm curious what the issue was. It's worth noting that the S3 runs Jelly Bean (4.1), not ICS (4.0), as well.
- OGinparadise 14y agoNo offense but do you think Googlers awoke up one day, snapped their fingers and within seconds, Android was like it is today?
- joeshaw 14y agoYour comment only highlights another downside: they are starting 6-8 years behind Android, and now there are 2 entrenched players in the market.
- OGinparadise 14y agoYes and no. Android really picked up after it was, shall we say, inspired, by iPhone. Tizen doesn't have to wonder much, they can go and add the features shown to be liked by people. They can get "inspired" by both iPhone and Android.
- tuananh 14y ago> "incredible job modifying and skinning Android" I find Android UI even though not consistent but still much better than TouchWiz