Not sure I agree with this. I've been on android for a while, so I'm sure I'm biased, but stock AOSP Android is pretty much perfect for me. Very minimal and aesthetically beautiful, but still powerful and customizable.
With the Sidekick, PalmOS, and then Material Design, Matías Duarte has been consistently at the forefront of mobile UI design.
Jony Ive is probably the most brilliant consumer electronics hardware designer in the world, but I have yet to see any indication that he has any idea how to lead a platform UI design project. I had issues with Scott Forstall's style, but he was at least leading the charge somewhere.
In my opinion, force click, Siri, 3D wallpapers, etc, have not been major coups in terms of UI finesse. At best Apple is in a holding pattern right now, I haven't seen any indication that they're pushing the state of the art outside of the hardware. The animations keep getting flashier and smoother, but that's not really UI design.
I thought Ive's strong understanding of design methodology would be enough, but I think maybe software design requires a different way of thinking. I don't know.
When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there. The purpose of the design work is to make it usable.
This is a pretty subjective statement. It seems that a lot of Duarte's designs are somewhat derivative. Material extends MS's Flat design. I'm also not sure how much of that is Duarte, its a pretty open secret that Google makes use of some pretty high end digital agencies who aren't allowed to let folks know what they're working on.
WebOS was pretty tacky though an interesting OS design - actually implemented better by LG on their SmartTVs.
The Sidekick may have been his most interesting product but it was completely broadsided by the release of the iPhone and was n't anywhere near competitive to the Blackberry so I'm not sure how innovative it was.
If anything Duarte's had pretty good record for working on products with innovative features but never necessarily ground breaking on UI/UX
I've got to stop you there. WebOS was far ahead of its time, and especially considered in the context of a small startup going against established players, was brilliant.
It offered in some ways better and more intuitive usability than iOS, along with a great app development ecosystem and philosophy.
Palm's WebOS devices were a pleasure to use, in a time when that was a very rare thing for a mobile device.
Don't see much credit for that original work being passed around, but I haven't dug up the facts.
I liked the WindowsPhone 8 instance, pity that's being flushed away. Hope it will be stolen and resold to the public.
All UX/UI design on major platforms is "derivative". None is ground breaking.
I find it funny how you back up your claim by showing an equally derivative work (LG Smart TV)
Apps that follow it will all have a similar look and feel on a platform... however, you can still make both good and bad UIs within that (or any other) framework. It doesn't alleviate the need to work with a UI designer.
There are certainly a fair number of developers who will just download a Material-styled template. But please don't assume that you can't do much more.
Take a look at some of the showcase designs on the Material Design Lite site for examples: https://getmdl.io/showcase/index.html
Coming from someone who WANTS to love android for philosophical reasons and bought the google nexus, google nexus 5x. I always went back to iphone. The biggest issue is the device is not very good in comparison to the current gen iphone. It feels 1-2 gen behind in performance.
I still use a first generation Nexus 5. SNES/N64/PSP emulators run like a dream. Apps open/transition instantly.
What performance metric are you even using?
Apple's leadership in UI design the last couple of years has been a little lackluster. While they seem to be able to iterate, with a few missteps, I'm less sure about their capability to get a whole revamp done right.
The talent is surely there but the question is whether the leadership and willing to take the right risks is. It's going to be interesting going forward, I'm guessing they will have to introduce something widget/tile -ish in the next phone
Why? It is easy, intuitive, and used by millions of people.
Change for changes sake?
I had to help a friend to find a qrcode app on Sunday. Look for qrcode in the store, 842 found. Wow... None of them has a review or stars. How do you trust them? We kept scrolling for a while, nothing. Compare that with the Google store. It doesn't tell me how many qrcode apps are there but it gives me a rating for every single one. Then it's the usual hunt for the app with no ads and least permissions, but that's the same on the iPhone.
Well, perhaps they can license Live Tiles from Microsoft. There are definitely things to like there, and Microsoft's certainly not using them on phones anymore - at least not as far as real-world usage can show.
Right. Anything can be accessed so quickly a home screen should be more contextual than static app icons.
Agreed, but with a slight nitpick - Duarte was hired to lead development on Palm's webOS designs. PalmOS was the aging predecessor.
I wouldn't say force click is a coup... it's like Android's menu button in the way it hides functionality and non-standard UX. Heaven knows what's going to happen if I trigger it random app. Google was wise enough to drop the Menu button in Android
Were hamburger buttons an Android thing? I noticed them everywhere, including on the web.
You can get AOSP on a lot of phones, you just have to be comfortable flashing a custom ROM.
I don't understand why anyone would pay iPhone prices for an Android phone. Even if the hardware quality is similar (which it won't be, because Apple SoCs are at least a generation ahead of everyone else) Android app quality is much worse.
I'm saying this as someone who has only ever used Android.
I just can't see the justification to spending this much money on a phone Google will drop support for after 2 years, in addition to never fixing some issues that are present at launch (look up the Nexus 4 camera reset issue, which Google never fixed).
I'm using a Xiaomi Redmi 2 I picked up new from AliExpress for $125 USD with free shipping to Europe, and I'm running Marshmallow via CM. Works perfectly, in fact most of the time it's better than $300-400 phones thanks to not being loaded to the gills with Google Apps crapware (seriously I have no use for Google Play Music, Books, News, etc)
Edit: for people down voting this, could you explain why? I've left my opinion here and if you disagree with it, I'd love to hear why. I don't believe I've stated anything factually incorrect.
Plus, you can't just walk into a local Google Store and use the accidental damage insurance to replace your phone on the spot (or repair it within an hour or so) if you dropped it and cracked the screen.
I don't want to mail my phone in to a repair center and be without a phone for a few days. I want it fixed or exchanged in a short time while I wait, and I won't pay iPhone prices for a Pixel phone if I can't get that level of service.
Purchases of high-end items are not motivated merely the items themselves. They are also motivated by the level of service the buyer gets if something goes wrong. For example, if you bring your Toyota to the dealership for service, you'll be lucky to get a loaner car. If you bring your Lexus to the dealership for service, you'll almost certainly get a loaner car that's even nicer than the car you brought in.
If you buy an Apple product, you get a pretty big network of retail stores with free support and fast service turnaround. If you buy a Pixel, what do you get other than the phone itself?
FYI: I've been a long time Android user and can tell you that the process works different. And is actually not as bad as you think.
1) You call the hotline, they send you a link via mail 2) Clicking this link will place you in their shop with a promo-code 3) You buy the replacement phone 4) Once you've got the replacement you send in the broken one (or if you feel like it earlier) 5) Once they recieved the broken one, you get a refund on you purchase
Knowing this process so well is the reason I've bought me an iphone 7 now ;-)
Specs are very often on par (this Pixel is pretty damn close to a OP3, less RAM and less ) and the phones are 40% or more cheaper! It's just plain stupid.
My primary device is an iPhone 6 Plus, and I have to say, Nexus 6 and Android N is really impressive from both a hardware and software perspective.
That being, I wish Google decoupled device drivers from the Android image.
If they adopted the Windows on PC device driver model, it would be so great for users, especially those with older and less supported phones.
I seriously doubt it. I just changed my broadband provider at home. Our Macs, mobile devices and WDTV connected to the new wifi router immediately, but it took 2 hours to get the Windows laptop to connect to the internet. It found the wifi network fine, but no internet. This has happened before. Googling found dozens of hits for this issue, all with different solutions that worked for different people and each time it's happened to me on the same laptop different solutions have worked, such as: Delete the device in device manager and then scan for new hardware; ipconfig /renew; fiddling with Advanced driver settings.
This time I fixed it by reverting from the Microsoft driver to the vendor provided driver. The last thing we need on our phones is hardware, drivers and OS developed by different companies that don't talk to each other and don't do proper whole-system integration testing on all builds and upgrades.
Where are you basing this on? Out of some social media apps (Facebook and Snapchat) I have found that Android apps are on-par with their iOS counterparts.
Android apps are neglected next to ios. Examples:
* spotify is shit on android. They broke audio playback during system announcements (like google maps directions) and just didn't give a damn for two months. It's not like anybody uses spotify and maps in a car or anything.
* most bank apps on android still don't take advantage of fingerprint auth to avoid typing long bank passwords. Four word passwords with punctuation are super fun to type on mobile.
* fitbit: Until about 6 months ago, pushing back from various subscreens would take you out of the app instead of navigating back to the main screen. There's clearly no-one who matters at fitbit that cares about android. It also doesn't particularly reliably connect to the device. Graphs and data desync from each other. I have not seen this on ios.
* there really isn't any reader on android as nice as GoodReader
* games come second, if ever -- eg kingdom rush frontiers
I agree with this as an Android user. The lack of device support from Google is appalling. And all my nexus devices (4, 7) have had major hardware flaws that never get fixed - once you're past the warranty, you're SOL. The 7 had many touch screen problems, and a very flimsy charger port (which broke under warranty, then broke again after - so I can't charge it anymore :|).
If you want decent hardware on Android, you have to go with Samsung. But their support for devices is even worse than Google - my Tab S just got Marshmallow. And touchwiz really hurts the Android experience.
Compare to Apple - I still have a first generation iPad that my kids use, and it's still going strong. It's a bit dented, but that thing is a tank.
Can anyone confirm if this is true? I thought the general advantage for i[a-zA-Z0-9]\+ is a well defined small N number of targets, which allow great optimization. Generally, the parts on apple things are a bit older than the competition but they pull off more (at least in user's eyes) compared with Android due to that optimization.
> the parts on apple things are a bit older than the competition
Not sure where you got that impression, maybe you're thinking about Apple's laptops? Apple get the best and the latest from TSMC, which at the moment is 16nm finfet and next year expected to be 10nm finfet. Intel is the only company with a better process, and they don't make smartphone SoCs. And Apple has hired all the best Austin-based talent for their design team, poaching AMD and others heavily.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9837/snapdragon-820-preview/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-i....
Heck, in many cases the A9 leaves the Snapdragon 820 behind, and that hasn't even shipped in a Nexus phone yet (the Pixel will probably have the 821).
But just look at the benchmarks. Apple SoCs slaughter Qualcomm and Samsung chips in mobile benchmarks.
Yes, they're highly optimised for their workload, but the point is that Apple is much better at doing this than everyone else making mobile SoCs.
I am not in the US, so I don't know, sorry.
I have the 2014813 model, which supports the same LTE bands used in Europe. I also had 4G service in Japan, Korea, and China on a recent trip to Asia.
Overall I would definitely recommend the phone as a solid mid-range handset. The only thing that sometimes annoys me is lack of 5GHz WiFi.
2) Some Xiaomi phones do not even come with unlocked LTE bands, depending on your region; try to confirm what bands are available before you buy.
Good thing that offline web apps will start making most native apps obsolete in a few years.
Frankly, I don't get all the hype about iOS' user experience - every time I've had to use an Apple device, I've found just about every task much more cumbersome.
That said, every so often there's something I need to do or want to do that's a little bit outside of the default setup. Little things that matter to me nonetheless. Things like keyboard layout, default apps, home screen layout, icon spacing, etc.
On iOS the keyboard thing seems to be solved now with addon keyboards but even those other minor preferences or layout tweaks are often limited or impossible on iOS (unless you manage to jailbreak your device). On Android they're usually just a setting change, app install, or (rarely) an APK install from an independent developer away.
This isn't meant so much as a critique of the Apple way of doing things. I'm well aware that my needs and wants aren't necessarily the norm or in line with the majority. Spending efforts addressing every possible use can cause just as much harm as good in a final product.
That said, once I have multiple options that both "succeed" well, I start to choose based on which one "fails" better (ie: which one makes it easier for me to change or fix the rare thing that doesn't just work the way I want it to).
People are always going to find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use, yet to you this is proof Android is better?
>People are always going to find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use, yet to you this is proof Android is better?
I use an iPhone 6S daily at work, so I'm not one of those people and I don't deign to speak for them or anyone else. As far as my experience is concerned, yes, Android is better.
Some things are still better - unified music controls, backups, and night shift especially. And the hardware/firmware is undeniably fantastic.
But Apple's emphasis on poor contrast and lack of differentiation within the UI really hurts usability, and there's still a lot of unexpected behaviors, such as links opening with a web page telling me to install an app I already have.
Going to back to only having two real notification modes - noisy or silent - felt like a major step backwards as well.
But worst of all was the lack of consistency between apps. I get that some people think MD on Android leads to apps feeling too similar, but I prefer that. My phone isn't a piece of art, it's a functional communication device. I want my apps to use the same, practical design language that gets to the point and doesn't get in the way by trying to be "different".
Just got the moto g4 and for under $250. I have a really good looking color customized phone with stock android, that feels good in the hand, unlocked that I can take to any carrier. That is a killer.
Sadly, they only support Nexus (now Pixel devices), and this new iteration is very expensive.
The only way to have a good experience with email, calendars and contacts is to use Google Apps – which I refuse to migrate to. The stock apps have no support for IMAP IDLE, CardDAV, or CalDAV. You have to resort to 3rd party apps for these and they are without fail either slow, buggy, very unappealing visually, or all three.
There's no native caldav. I use a paid client called caldav-sync which is mediocre. For a while on android 5/lollipop, you had to install a second app (free from the same author) to prevent settings being wiped during OS upgrades/patches. When I upgraded to android 6 I couldn't figure out why calendars weren't syncing until I discovered caldav-sync decided to sync every 6 hours instead of every 5 minutes. The whole thing feels and works like a hack.
Using the gmail app as an imap client for fastmail is crap, particularly if you access the email account from a desktop. The Gmail app regularly desyncs from the state of your email. It has recently decided to announce old emails as new. If you move/delete an email in fastmail from the web client on your desktop, you have to manually tell gmail to sync or it won't notice, even hours after the fact.
I was hoping for a cheap nexus replacement and was also looking at the OnePlus 3. Dual sims are nice too. That's too bad that you don't like it...
In the end, though, I think the idea with phones like these is that they work "best" if you use the services that the manufacturer supplies, be it Apple or Google. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, Google everything, it's got a lot to offer.
These are things I find necessary for day-to-day stuff, but which are simply impossible on iOS. If you want good 3rd party integration, Android is your only option in many cases. You just have to find the good apps.
How surprising is it really that Android sucks if you refuse to use Google services? Where have you been the last 3-5 years?
I don't know what the right answer is but Apple has one phone and one OS, android has many phones and many looks to their OS. This could be part of why there will never be an iPhone killer aside from Apple themselves.
None of which is helpful when the battery is dead. The iPhone still wins on battery life. Maybe the new gen Androids will fix that. I hope so.
Edit: I added some data for battery tests in a comment below. Looks like my Android experience is out of date.
HTC10: 1859 LG G5: 1579 S7: 1492 iPhone 7: 712
The results would be closer on pretty much any other test, but it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison on anything other than talk time. Most review sites still find that this generation of Android flagships have longer web browsing times than the iPhone 7.
1: https://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/smartphones/iphone-7-fi...
My wife has had two iphones (5, 6). Both die much faster than my androids (many many hours). We use them about the same.
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mobile-phones/1402071/best-ph...
http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3
https://www.statista.com/statistics/280508/smartphone-batter...
Looks like Apple is middle of the pack among premium phones these days. My experience was with NEXUS 4 and 5, which would often be out of juice when I needed them.
This is the go-to line for every Android fan. How many devices out there run stock Android? Is it possible to buy a device with stock Android? How much comp-sci experience are you going to need to make your device run stock Android?
What difference does it make how good the OS is if Google gives it's OEM's free license to ruin it?
So, yes, you can buy a device with stock android. It just has to be a google phone, not a 3rd party for the most part.
Except now, two issues: 1) More a quibble, but I'd say that people around here pushing AOSP makes the term "stock Android" a bit less clear.
2) Article claims the new Pixels will have some other variant of Android, based on current stock Nougat but with additional support baked in for things like their new VR headset and Google Assistant.
Which strengthens FuzzyZeus' point: determining which version of Android a given phone comes with (and which it can support, both now and in the future) is an extremely muddled game, with the OEMs and now Google itself not doing anyone any favors.
Is this strictly true if google bakes their apps in (play music etc.)
