8 ms·

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and

Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo! The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful. And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone app instead of unlocking the phone is becoming obscene. I often have my phone landscape while using it as a mini-tablet and in that orientation it's easy to do. Perhaps I'm paranoid but I think the screen now locks faster than it used to and I haven't been able to find the setting to slow it down yet, which exacerbates the problem, when you're lounging and intermittently transferring your attention between tv and internet browsing. And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day. The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're constantly fighting the brightness of your phone at night. The new notification have to be double tapped, which again is awkward, especially as they register the first tap and then "helpfully" tell you to make a 2nd one. But the first tap is behind a button press of the lock screen so it's actually a triple press. I'm also slightly perplexed as to the home button icon change, to a circle of all things. It actually offends me a bit, it's so tiny and yet completely devoid of meaning. It's different for Apple's circle button as that was a real button, Google's tiny circle just kinda floats there. And the "back" triangle changes orientation for no discernible reason other than the designer obviously wanted to animate something. The new phone app is strange, the buttons are too small, the volume of the button presses doesn't turn down as you turn down the speaker volume. And this is in a day and a half of use. It honestly feels like anyone testing it would have hit most of these issues. I suspect Google's designers then turned round to the testers and said "As designed. Material, you know. It's just a new way", rather than admit they'd screwed up. The worst part is, it's not added anything. I've not come across a single thing yet that I've gone, oh, cool! Not one.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day." Try the 'agenda' view which does exactly that. I was also going to debunk most of your other complaints because I know they're false but I don't have my Lollipop device with my at the moment.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  You probably mean schedule, and no it doesn't as it shows only 6 or so items per page and isn't good for glancing at. I can't glance at it and see I've a meeting in the morning, I've got to read it to see when the appointments are. There's a reason the old paper calendars work so well, cause you can just glance at them. The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now you're constantly having to scroll. As for the rest, how can you debunk what actually happens? If you don't have your lollipop device on you, that probably means it's not a phone...
  - keda 12y ago
    You can tap on the month to get a monthly view.
    - cjp 12y ago
      No you can't. Tapping on the month shows you the days in the month, not your calendar events for the month.
- iamben 12y ago
  Yup, agenda view is great for a full day. Settings in Chrome turns off the tab integration. On the lock screen you can slide up from anywhere on the screen (which then takes me to the slide code screen). The rest of the stuff - I guess some personal preference comes into it? But I'm thoroughly enjoying 5.0. Made a few tweaks to the default settings and it's great. Feels soooo much faster.
- jpdus 12y ago
  Well, the new calendar app is ridiculously bad. You can't get back the old "normal" calender view, lots of screen space is wasted in every window and the 1-month overview now is totally useless without any indicators. Compared to that, the new Gmail and Maps apps are almost good...
winsome 12y ago
Auto Brightness has been renamed and is available at Settings > Display > Adaptive Brightness. It just has to be turned on. And I know it's personal preference but I love the way chrome tabs are integrated into the app switcher. It allows me to focus on what I'm doing and not so much what app I'm in. Now each tab is like an app in and of itself. I think that's the way multi-tasking should be done.
theGimp 12y ago
The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs Go into Chrome's settings and restore them.
- hackmiester 12y ago
  I don't think users should have to tick the "behave in a less broken way" box.
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Except the new way works better, and casual users who are used to the concept of 'an app for everything' won't mind...
    - hackmiester 12y ago
      I don't agree. Users understand a browser, and that it contains tabs. I'm sure people will get used to the new way, probably, but it's not something that was in need of innovation. It was well understood. The new behavior is surprising to people who have used any phone browser before, and it will continue to be surprising to people who use their desktop browsers as a point of reference.
    - yuriks 12y ago
      Most casual users (family, non-tech saavy people) that I've seen don't even use the task switch button. They go to the home screen and then open whatever app they want, even if it ought to be in the task list already most of the time.
ToastyMallows 12y ago
> they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps To be fair you can turn this off, that's the first thing I did when Chrome notified me of this "awesome" change.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Can you? Oh, thank god! Actually, now doing that, that reminds me of another two WTFs? The new menu system is bizarre. You get loads of random animations of grey appearing for no apparent reason. Put your finger on something to scroll, "grey flash!!!!". Err? What did I do? Oh, nothing... And, this could be just not getting used to it yet, but I am completely flabbergasted at just how crap the new scroll limit indicator looks. It changes shape depending where your finger is pulling from, why? I keep thinking something's gone wrong because this uneven blob suddenly appears on the top of your screen.
  - ToastyMallows 12y ago
    It's kinda weird, does take some getting used to. I think the new buttons at the bottom (home, back, menu) are so ugly. I didn't think the needed changing, but I'm not in charge of UX, so..
  - tonyhb 12y ago
    The first thing chrome said is that tabs show in the task switcher. And that you can disable this in the settings. Then it placed a settings link right under the text to turn it off first-thing. Personally, I think people just don't like change. A lot of the things — camera shutter sound, out of bounds scrolling — they're not actual complaints. They sound more like "this is different and I'm not used to it". OTOH, some are definitely valid. I wonder if there's any easy way to roll out design changes for the masses which doesn't cause uproar. I swear this happens every single time.
PuffinBlue 12y ago
Agreed. Some more venting... Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events'. This = install aCalendar[1] and Simple Calendar Widget [2] Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? I don't want a profile pic so I don't know which account is which of the 5 I need to use, so I just pick pot luck or swipe through them all? Then there is that annoying hover button. 'WRITE SOMETHING' it screams out at you, 'Surely that's why you're here isn't it? You couldn't possibly just want to scroll through your inbox without accidentally tapping me!!!' This = install K9 mail.[3] YouTube - Enter menu drawer, close it, press 'back' > still takes me back to the home screen. Take a leaf out of Feedly's book and open the frickin' menu drawer! Chrome - Thankfully you can stop the annoying tab merge pretty easily. Notifications - now to get to settings I have to do three actions, two pull downs and hit a teeny tiny little button, or you know, waste a space on the home screen. Phone dialer - I actually like it. It's way faster to get to you contacts and has a much better layout than before. Still got that annoying floating button - 'DIAL SOME NUMBERS ASSHOLE!!!' Default keyboard - why is removing the key separators a good idea? Is there some data to back that up? To me it looks like a cluttered mess. Thankfully switching back to the old style is just a setting away, but it would be great if there was a more sane default. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat.acalendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calen... [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...
- _blob 12y ago
  The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them. The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).
brodney 12y ago
I'm pretty pleased with lollipop. Some of your complaints may be down to personal choice, but not all. For example, the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard. Some other thoughts: - Getting to settings is no different from before when I had to swipe down and then tap a button to see the settings button. Now it's two swipes instead. - Try schedule view in calendar for the overview you're looking for. - The double tap on notifications to open them I like because it means I won't accidentally open one. Things I've said 'oh, cool!' to: - Guest accounts - Brightness slider in the swipe down - Priority/None interruption settings for the ringer. I used to use Shush! but this works nicely and with more configuration options, albeit less granular timing. - Lock rotation in the swipe down settings - Flashlight in the swipe down settings Just another data point.
- dethstar 12y ago
  >the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard. I have a 4.4 device and a 4.0.something device and this happens in both (except is not a triangle)
e40 12y ago
I have a spare phone so I decided to throw lollipop on it. Wow, I couldn't believe how much I hated it, and I'm not one of those never-upgrade-it-because-I-don't-like-change folks. On 4.4.4, I've been hating the new calendar. Christ I hate the colors in agenda mode. They make it almost impossible for me to "see" the text without extreme concentration. The first time I became familiar with the constant-change-is-bad meme is with Quicken. They would force you to upgrade every 3 years (or so, I may have the number wrong), and for a while I upgraded every year. Nothing changed from year to year except everything was in a different place and they added more bugs. I finally moved to Moneydance a couple of years ago and have been in financial software heaven ever since. One of their selling points was "we don't change shit around for no reason!"
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
panarky 12y ago
I don't understand all the vitriol. Lollipop arrived on my Nexus 5 last week, and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is significantly longer, and the new UI ... ugh, this sounds almost cloying ... the new UI makes me happy, it gives me joy. It's beautiful, it's intuitive, it's functional, it's natural. What more could you want? I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPhone owners feel. To bring this experience to the unwashed masses of Android users is a very good thing.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  I had an iPhone, switched to Nexus 5. Nexus 5 already produced joy in me, it really is a great phone and as an ex-iPhoner I really think Android is prime time now and almost as good as iOS (my only issue is that some of the built in apps are a bit rubbish and Google Hangouts, the default, sucks as an SMS program). But I'm getting no joy from Lollipop. Apart from all the interface issues I've hit, it seems fairly bug ridden.Some notification sounds suddenly turned themselves on (GMail), other sounds are really loud. Another example right now the lock screen on mine is showing a picture of a video I cast on BubbleuPNP last night. For absolutely no reason. I can't stop it. That's totally not cool. I don't want a blurry video still as my lock screen picture. How do I clear it? Is that intentional? Or a bug?
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Probably some setting you chose. When I first booted up Android 5, it asked me whether or not to display notifications on the lock page (I chose no). It could be that you chose yes and your app (BubbleuPNP) keeps pushing that video to your lock screen...
- VieElm 12y ago
  I don't want joy, I want to be able to see my schedule this month and my schedule today, at a glance, so I don't lose my job.
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    You can change the view to give you a summary of all the events for each month... You click the top right menu button, and select 'schedule' instead of 'day' or '5 day'.
towndrunk 12y ago
"Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're..." It's still there under Settings. It's now called "Adaptive brightness"
deciplex 12y ago
FWIW I like what they did with maps, finally. I hated the design they came out with about a year ago or so. It was awful and I basically stopped using the app except when absolutely necessary because I always felt like a dumb idiot trying to use it. Nothing was discoverable. I never got used to it. Much better now. Part of this, is that even if you come up with a design that is better than what you have, it ought to be a lot better, because you're also asking people to get used to a new design. If it's just incrementally better, you're going to piss people off because you're asking them to relearn how to do something again, for no apparent good reason. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to be annoyed by that. And of course, if it's worse, or if it's only arguably better, or if opinions are very much mixed, then you failed. This is something Google doesn't seem to know institutionally, or rather I guess they just don't care. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Microsoft, who care about this too much.
- collyw 12y ago
  I have the opposite experience. I liked the maps that came with my phone a year and a half ago. It keeps getting upgraded. I lost the zoom buttons (pinch to zoom is very dangerous when driving, so basically a major feature loss for me). And recently the whole thing goes so slowly on my older phone that I have usually found the destination before the phone has managed to load the screen. Recently I founds that I can uninstall all the updates, and I am back to the basic version that came with the phone. Far nicer. Less screen space, and search history is not as integrated, but at least it is usable in real time. If only I could go froward by two or three updates, then there is probably a version that did everything I want.
  - c22 12y ago
    You can zoom with one hand by double tapping and then sliding down or up on your second tap.
    - collyw 12y ago
      Well thats pretty much what the article boils down to. How am I expected to know that. The interface changed, the buttons were gone. And only now do I find out about a gesture to do the same thing.
dnr 12y ago
The lock screen is indeed infuriating! Does anyone know if there's a way to restore the old behavior where you could enter your pattern lock immediately after pressing the power button? The extra swipe serves no purpose at all, given that I've already pressed the power button, and have a pattern lock.
- christop 12y ago
  Yeah, even if you disable showing notifications on the lock screen, you still have to swipe away an empty screen to get to the pattern. Annoying.
upops 12y ago
Brightness is by default adaptive brightness. The slider in the menu is for relative brightness; it's still adapted.
revelation 12y ago
My personal favorite pointless change is the clock app. Now, mind you, it looks exactly the same if you disregard that they changed the widgets design, but thats system wide. But they did manage to move the bin for deleting an alarm from the right to the left. That's all. Let's just switch it the fuck around!
ajcarpy2005 12y ago
You can turn off the 'feature' of having Chrome tabs appear in the Android app switcher in the Settings. I too think that for power users especially, this is a bad idea. Maybe if they just had like the 5 most recent tabs...just maybe.
jrobbins 12y ago
> The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. TIP: Pull down with two fingers to go straight to the quick settings shade.
JeremyNT 12y ago
> And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day. I find the new calendar baffling. Luckily, the old AOSP calendar is still available on F-Droid.[0] [0] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp+calendar&fdid=org.sufficientlysecure.standalonecalendar https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp+calenda...

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day." Try the 'agenda' view which does exactly that. I was also going to debunk most of your other complaints because I know they're false but I don't have my Lollipop device with my at the moment.

mattmanser 12y ago
You probably mean schedule, and no it doesn't as it shows only 6 or so items per page and isn't good for glancing at. I can't glance at it and see I've a meeting in the morning, I've got to read it to see when the appointments are. There's a reason the old paper calendars work so well, cause you can just glance at them. The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now you're constantly having to scroll. As for the rest, how can you debunk what actually happens? If you don't have your lollipop device on you, that probably means it's not a phone...
- keda 12y ago
  You can tap on the month to get a monthly view.
  - cjp 12y ago
    No you can't. Tapping on the month shows you the days in the month, not your calendar events for the month.
iamben 12y ago
Yup, agenda view is great for a full day. Settings in Chrome turns off the tab integration. On the lock screen you can slide up from anywhere on the screen (which then takes me to the slide code screen). The rest of the stuff - I guess some personal preference comes into it? But I'm thoroughly enjoying 5.0. Made a few tweaks to the default settings and it's great. Feels soooo much faster.
jpdus 12y ago
Well, the new calendar app is ridiculously bad. You can't get back the old "normal" calender view, lots of screen space is wasted in every window and the 1-month overview now is totally useless without any indicators. Compared to that, the new Gmail and Maps apps are almost good...

winsome 12y ago

Auto Brightness has been renamed and is available at Settings > Display > Adaptive Brightness. It just has to be turned on. And I know it's personal preference but I love the way chrome tabs are integrated into the app switcher. It allows me to focus on what I'm doing and not so much what app I'm in. Now each tab is like an app in and of itself. I think that's the way multi-tasking should be done.

theGimp 12y ago

The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs Go into Chrome's settings and restore them.

hackmiester 12y ago
I don't think users should have to tick the "behave in a less broken way" box.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Except the new way works better, and casual users who are used to the concept of 'an app for everything' won't mind...
  - hackmiester 12y ago
    I don't agree. Users understand a browser, and that it contains tabs. I'm sure people will get used to the new way, probably, but it's not something that was in need of innovation. It was well understood. The new behavior is surprising to people who have used any phone browser before, and it will continue to be surprising to people who use their desktop browsers as a point of reference.
  - yuriks 12y ago
    Most casual users (family, non-tech saavy people) that I've seen don't even use the task switch button. They go to the home screen and then open whatever app they want, even if it ought to be in the task list already most of the time.

ToastyMallows 12y ago

> they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps To be fair you can turn this off, that's the first thing I did when Chrome notified me of this "awesome" change.

mattmanser 12y ago
Can you? Oh, thank god! Actually, now doing that, that reminds me of another two WTFs? The new menu system is bizarre. You get loads of random animations of grey appearing for no apparent reason. Put your finger on something to scroll, "grey flash!!!!". Err? What did I do? Oh, nothing... And, this could be just not getting used to it yet, but I am completely flabbergasted at just how crap the new scroll limit indicator looks. It changes shape depending where your finger is pulling from, why? I keep thinking something's gone wrong because this uneven blob suddenly appears on the top of your screen.
- ToastyMallows 12y ago
  It's kinda weird, does take some getting used to. I think the new buttons at the bottom (home, back, menu) are so ugly. I didn't think the needed changing, but I'm not in charge of UX, so..
- tonyhb 12y ago
  The first thing chrome said is that tabs show in the task switcher. And that you can disable this in the settings. Then it placed a settings link right under the text to turn it off first-thing. Personally, I think people just don't like change. A lot of the things — camera shutter sound, out of bounds scrolling — they're not actual complaints. They sound more like "this is different and I'm not used to it". OTOH, some are definitely valid. I wonder if there's any easy way to roll out design changes for the masses which doesn't cause uproar. I swear this happens every single time.

PuffinBlue 12y ago

Agreed. Some more venting... Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events'. This = install aCalendar[1] and Simple Calendar Widget [2] Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? I don't want a profile pic so I don't know which account is which of the 5 I need to use, so I just pick pot luck or swipe through them all? Then there is that annoying hover button. 'WRITE SOMETHING' it screams out at you, 'Surely that's why you're here isn't it? You couldn't possibly just want to scroll through your inbox without accidentally tapping me!!!' This = install K9 mail.[3] YouTube - Enter menu drawer, close it, press 'back' > still takes me back to the home screen. Take a leaf out of Feedly's book and open the frickin' menu drawer! Chrome - Thankfully you can stop the annoying tab merge pretty easily. Notifications - now to get to settings I have to do three actions, two pull downs and hit a teeny tiny little button, or you know, waste a space on the home screen. Phone dialer - I actually like it. It's way faster to get to you contacts and has a much better layout than before. Still got that annoying floating button - 'DIAL SOME NUMBERS ASSHOLE!!!' Default keyboard - why is removing the key separators a good idea? Is there some data to back that up? To me it looks like a cluttered mess. Thankfully switching back to the old style is just a setting away, but it would be great if there was a more sane default. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat.acalendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calendar&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calen... [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...

_blob 12y ago
The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them. The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).

brodney 12y ago

I'm pretty pleased with lollipop. Some of your complaints may be down to personal choice, but not all. For example, the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard. Some other thoughts: - Getting to settings is no different from before when I had to swipe down and then tap a button to see the settings button. Now it's two swipes instead. - Try schedule view in calendar for the overview you're looking for. - The double tap on notifications to open them I like because it means I won't accidentally open one. Things I've said 'oh, cool!' to: - Guest accounts - Brightness slider in the swipe down - Priority/None interruption settings for the ringer. I used to use Shush! but this works nicely and with more configuration options, albeit less granular timing. - Lock rotation in the swipe down settings - Flashlight in the swipe down settings Just another data point.

dethstar 12y ago
>the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard. I have a 4.4 device and a 4.0.something device and this happens in both (except is not a triangle)

e40 12y ago

I have a spare phone so I decided to throw lollipop on it. Wow, I couldn't believe how much I hated it, and I'm not one of those never-upgrade-it-because-I-don't-like-change folks. On 4.4.4, I've been hating the new calendar. Christ I hate the colors in agenda mode. They make it almost impossible for me to "see" the text without extreme concentration. The first time I became familiar with the constant-change-is-bad meme is with Quicken. They would force you to upgrade every 3 years (or so, I may have the number wrong), and for a while I upgraded every year. Nothing changed from year to year except everything was in a different place and they added more bugs. I finally moved to Moneydance a couple of years ago and have been in financial software heaven ever since. One of their selling points was "we don't change shit around for no reason!"

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

panarky 12y ago

I don't understand all the vitriol. Lollipop arrived on my Nexus 5 last week, and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is significantly longer, and the new UI ... ugh, this sounds almost cloying ... the new UI makes me happy, it gives me joy. It's beautiful, it's intuitive, it's functional, it's natural. What more could you want? I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPhone owners feel. To bring this experience to the unwashed masses of Android users is a very good thing.

mattmanser 12y ago
I had an iPhone, switched to Nexus 5. Nexus 5 already produced joy in me, it really is a great phone and as an ex-iPhoner I really think Android is prime time now and almost as good as iOS (my only issue is that some of the built in apps are a bit rubbish and Google Hangouts, the default, sucks as an SMS program). But I'm getting no joy from Lollipop. Apart from all the interface issues I've hit, it seems fairly bug ridden.Some notification sounds suddenly turned themselves on (GMail), other sounds are really loud. Another example right now the lock screen on mine is showing a picture of a video I cast on BubbleuPNP last night. For absolutely no reason. I can't stop it. That's totally not cool. I don't want a blurry video still as my lock screen picture. How do I clear it? Is that intentional? Or a bug?
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Probably some setting you chose. When I first booted up Android 5, it asked me whether or not to display notifications on the lock page (I chose no). It could be that you chose yes and your app (BubbleuPNP) keeps pushing that video to your lock screen...
VieElm 12y ago
I don't want joy, I want to be able to see my schedule this month and my schedule today, at a glance, so I don't lose my job.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  You can change the view to give you a summary of all the events for each month... You click the top right menu button, and select 'schedule' instead of 'day' or '5 day'.

towndrunk 12y ago

"Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're..." It's still there under Settings. It's now called "Adaptive brightness"

deciplex 12y ago

FWIW I like what they did with maps, finally. I hated the design they came out with about a year ago or so. It was awful and I basically stopped using the app except when absolutely necessary because I always felt like a dumb idiot trying to use it. Nothing was discoverable. I never got used to it. Much better now. Part of this, is that even if you come up with a design that is better than what you have, it ought to be a lot better, because you're also asking people to get used to a new design. If it's just incrementally better, you're going to piss people off because you're asking them to relearn how to do something again, for no apparent good reason. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to be annoyed by that. And of course, if it's worse, or if it's only arguably better, or if opinions are very much mixed, then you failed. This is something Google doesn't seem to know institutionally, or rather I guess they just don't care. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Microsoft, who care about this too much.

collyw 12y ago
I have the opposite experience. I liked the maps that came with my phone a year and a half ago. It keeps getting upgraded. I lost the zoom buttons (pinch to zoom is very dangerous when driving, so basically a major feature loss for me). And recently the whole thing goes so slowly on my older phone that I have usually found the destination before the phone has managed to load the screen. Recently I founds that I can uninstall all the updates, and I am back to the basic version that came with the phone. Far nicer. Less screen space, and search history is not as integrated, but at least it is usable in real time. If only I could go froward by two or three updates, then there is probably a version that did everything I want.
- c22 12y ago
  You can zoom with one hand by double tapping and then sliding down or up on your second tap.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Well thats pretty much what the article boils down to. How am I expected to know that. The interface changed, the buttons were gone. And only now do I find out about a gesture to do the same thing.

dnr 12y ago

The lock screen is indeed infuriating! Does anyone know if there's a way to restore the old behavior where you could enter your pattern lock immediately after pressing the power button? The extra swipe serves no purpose at all, given that I've already pressed the power button, and have a pattern lock.

christop 12y ago
Yeah, even if you disable showing notifications on the lock screen, you still have to swipe away an empty screen to get to the pattern. Annoying.

upops 12y ago

Brightness is by default adaptive brightness. The slider in the menu is for relative brightness; it's still adapted.

revelation 12y ago

My personal favorite pointless change is the clock app. Now, mind you, it looks exactly the same if you disregard that they changed the widgets design, but thats system wide. But they did manage to move the bin for deleting an alarm from the right to the left. That's all. Let's just switch it the fuck around!

ajcarpy2005 12y ago

You can turn off the 'feature' of having Chrome tabs appear in the Android app switcher in the Settings. I too think that for power users especially, this is a bad idea. Maybe if they just had like the 5 most recent tabs...just maybe.

jrobbins 12y ago

> The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. TIP: Pull down with two fingers to go straight to the quick settings shade.

JeremyNT 12y ago

> And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day. I find the new calendar baffling. Luckily, the old AOSP calendar is still available on F-Droid.[0] [0] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp+calendar&fdid=org.sufficientlysecure.standalonecalendar https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp+calenda...