My Android Experience
I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts on this extremely touchy subject for months. Even after all this time of refining my opinions and gathering facts, I’m sure this will still sound very much like an Apple fanboy. Nonetheless, I think posting my opinions on why I want to move back to iOS will be helpful to those among us considering moving to Android. (Looking at you Binks)
History
Over a year ago I remember hearing all of these fantastic things about Android being the rising star in the mobile space. I got so curious that I even splurged on a G1. It was being backed by Google and had a considerable amount of praise from Android users. I soon realized that this praise was something more akin to parents looking on in adoration as their baby took it’s first shaky steps. It wasn’t that Android was miraculous or special. It was just beginning to grow up and the Android community had misrepresented this sense of pride for a serious threat against iOS.
Realizing my mistake, I quickly retreated to my iPhone 3GS and continued reading news stories about the improvements that Google was making on Android. Finally, I heard of the Nexus One. Wow, a phone that Google was backing very heavily and did fantastic things as demonstrated at Google IO. Wireless tethering, music streaming (still not here!), the Android Intent API… This was going to be a huge leap forward for Android.
I bought into Android a second time. I was so excited about the N1, that I actually purchased it knowing there was an iPhone announcement coming days later. That is how insane I was. Fortunately, the N1 wasn’t all that bad. The UI was much snappier, the OLED screen was gorgeous and I was really enjoying the 3G tethering to my iPad. But now that I’ve had almost a full year with the N1 as my only phone I’ve started to notice the cracks in the OS and bugs are starting to make themselves known.
Android
The Bad
- Firmware upgrades are slow to arrive after announcement (if ever depending on your phone model) as a result of the update being staged for delivery over the cell networks.
- No strict UI guidelines means some apps are insane to navigate and can’t decide whether to poorly mimic iOS counterparts or not.
- The official Nexus One docks all suck and never align properly to charge.
- Google Listen has started to pause tracks at random intervals when in the car dock.
- Littered Google Marketplace with rip-off apps and malware.
- There are times that my Google Account access is suspended until I type in a CAPTCHA on the phone. This happens almost twice a month without explanation.
Of course, there are a lot of fantastic things to love about Android as well…
The Good
- Speech-to-text is incredible and extremely useful. (Unfortunately, this is almost required because the soft keyboard is awful)
- I love an environment that aims for no syncing. All my podcasts download on-demand.
- Android is hackable/customizable in a legitimate sense. Google doesn’t care if you’re “jailbreaking” or not.
- Google Navigate is a great free app despite the unintelligible computer voice.
- Lock screen pattern. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this feature. Drawing a pattern on screen is so simple and much more secure than 4 digits or a password.
Unfortunately, as fun as the goods are in Android, the bugs really outweigh the benefits for me. So I’m confident that I want to move back to an iPhone. I often wonder how much more frustrated I’d be with Android if I didn’t have my iPad with me as a back-up.
iOS
Naturally, there are problems with iOS too. And I’ll list the ones that stand out for me for posterity as I’m sure we can all see the positives for ourselves.
The Bad
- It is dependent on syncing to computers for most data transfers (Podcast syncing is a hassle for me)
- iOS is a closed ecosystem and jailbreaking is not condoned and is even dangerous given previous exploits that have spread through jailbroken iPhones.
- Carriers are much more limiting with iOS (tethering plans and 3G downloads are limited on iOS, but ignored on Android)
None of these are deal-breakers for me, but they are annoyances that I’m aware of. Some people might wonder why I didn’t include store approval processes and all the other major qualms that Apple is in the news for so frequently. I for one, welcome the tightly controlled iTunes App Store policies. Sometimes that means that developers have to struggle if they have some radical, cool ideas, but on the whole it helps maintain a relatively consistent experience on iOS and encourages a very high standard of quality apps. (This opinion does not apply to the Mac App Store which I will not discuss here.)
Bottom Line
In the end, if you were to ask me what differentiated the two platforms from a consumer perspective it would be this:
Android is for power users with very specific needs and whom are willing to hack away to get them. It likely won’t be pretty or even stable, but if you want to build something insane free of any restrictions, welcome to Android.
iOS, on the other hand, is for consumers that have varying interests and really enjoy having fun, playing games, video calling and so many more things.
Are there exceptions to the rule? Sure. But generally speaking, this is what the platforms are known for among consumers. As much as I often consider myself of the geek variety that enjoys to tinker and tweak bits of their electronics, I’ve realized that I’m more comfortable with electronics that don’t require the constant reboots or experience the frequent lock-ups that I have with Android. iOS is a place away from my normal experience with computers; things just work and I don’t have to think about them. I don’t have to remind myself that cancelling a speech-to-text process in an area with limited connectivity is going to cause my phone to lock-up for a few minutes. (Seriously, this is a reproducible bug that happens all the time when I’m at home on WiFi and downloading something at the same time.)
I’ll miss some things a great deal on Android, but I’m sure that once I have my hands on a retina display and I’m in a FaceTime call or reading my news feeds in Reeder, I’ll forget all about it. Maybe in time I’ll feel comfortable enough not to carry my iPad everywhere too.
So that’s where I stand after a year of sincerely trying to make Android work for me. Hopefully that helps some people.
I think my thoughts on the matter have finally coalesced into something almost coherent. iOS maintains a high level of usability because of the fact that choices are controlled and limited. On a desktop/laptop, bad software means a moderately annoying experience. On a mobile device, anything less than perfect software and design means the experience is extremely affected. Not even Apple wants dictatorial control over what you run on your personal computer, because your computer can most likely run anything – no matter how badly made.
It’s when you automatically transcribe this freedom on a regular computer to a mobile device where problems start to appear.
That is so much more elegant of an explanation of the issues in mobile than something that always devolved into a fanboy battle.
UI matters so much in mobile because the experience of how you use an app is directly related to the design of the app. When you’re using a desktop/laptop app you can cheat your way through with shortcuts and scripts that plugin to the app you’re using. But in mobile it’s just your fingers. UI is everything.
In my opinion both Android and a large portion of the Android developers out there are missing functional UI design. Apple, on the other hand usually gets UI right and they have a lot of incredibly talented 3rd party developers to help build a comfy ecosystem.
So, as a matter of fact, I ended up buying a Nexus S the morning you posted this (hours before I saw it).
I still think the OS updates issue is a red herring – on the iPhone 3 it got about one real update. Sure it went to iOS 4, all the way up to 4.2 (4.3 now?). I maintain that it doesn’t really matter – it’s very hard to name a feature from iOS 4 that actually worked on the 3. Background apps? No. Gamecenter? No. The ability to change the background picture? No (I mean, come ON!), and performance undisputedly went down.
The ONLY improvement I saw was that SMS messages finally had a character counter, so you wouldn’t infuriate people on dumb phones with 14 part messages. And that should have been there since day 1.
I don’t think iOS 4 should count; which means there was really only 1 year of updates.
Now, should OS updates on ALL phones be better? Sure, I completely agree – I just don’t think Android is that much worse off than their iOS counterparts.
Admittedly, a particularly powerful toaster would have been a huge step up for me, so it is hard for the Nexus S to not amaze, but I’ve had a very positive experience. There are some quirks, but it crashes less and everything is faster. A few of the apps are stinkers (in particular, the official geocacheing app is terribly reviewed) but so far I haven’t found an iOS app that didn’t have a solid Android version (c:geo is a free, and quite good, geocaching app). Even all my banks, save one, have Android apps out.
I’m equally as bad at the Android 2.3 keyboard as I was at the iOS keyboard, the difference is that with voice transcription I can actually send reasonably long emails and such. It also feels a lot like the future when I can send a text with exactly 2 button presses (one to open voice, one for final send confirmation).
The biggest problem I had with the iPhone was that the two best things about it – the lock screen calendar and SBSettings – were both jailbreak apps. My calendar fetish is now satisfied with a home screen widget, and something similar to SBSettings is on one of the homescreens as well.
One thing I think you missed completely is notifications. The iOS notification system is quite clearly a complete hack job. The only choices are a little indicator on the app icon, or a popup message that completely interrupts whatever it was I was trying to do (and, on the 3, would quite possibly crash the app… but that’s another issue). Android’s “notification drawer” and top-line icons is very slick, and a great UI feature. One place to see the continuing operations (file copies, music streaming apps that are running) and get notifications (see text messages when I want to look at them, not when iOS decides to bombard me).
The iOS notification system was born from their “no background applications” roots, along with their complete app/OS separation. You need to scroll around all your app screens to see what’s going on with it; and if you get a notification sound when you’re away from the phone it’s very likely you’ll have to scroll around to see what it is that just updated.
I would put the Android notification system up there with the Blackberry system; this is an area where iOS clearly lags in a frustrating way.
Well, I’m glad it’s working out for you so far. Though, I seem to remember a long honeymoon period for me too. lol
It’s not worth arguing over most of your points because I can certainly see your perspective. Although I should mention that I did have notifications on the list of things to talk about…
The reason I decided to leave it alone is I wasn’t sure how I felt about either implementation to be honest. On the one hand, Apple push notifications are well adopted in most apps and have a crude, but effective toggle switch to turn on or off in the settings of the phone. Yes, they can be annoying at times if you are watching a video or playing a game, or even if you are spammed with a dozen notifications at once for several apps. But I have to say, I love the 3rd party notification apps and their APIs. I use them quite often.
On the other hand, you’re absolutely right about the Android notification system being less intrusive and more useful overall. It handles multiple simultaneous notifications well and allows you to deal with them one at a time in any order you see fit. However, there are things that did bother me about it too…
If I was in a fullscreen app for any length of time, there wasn’t much notice at all for any kind of notifications happening. Especially if I had sound turned off. But, I can live with that and I understand that can be dealt with eventually through some clever UI innovation. The bigger problem for me was there wasn’t a single 3rd party notification app that I found that could do everything that Boxcar or Prowl could do for me on iOS. And the reason for that, I suspect, is everyone who cares about Growl notifications and the like are probably all with iOS devices.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that people with Macs who are really involved with the culture of Apple and it’s popular developers, can’t ever leave that ecosystem without feeling as if their phone (in this case) is a very alien computer from the rest of their digital life. It just doesn’t interact well with the rest of their world.
And sure, you can blame that on Apple’s restrictive policies on interacting with data in iTunes if you wish, but I just see it as a lack of interest or understanding that it is even an issue.
I remember Google IO last year where they were demonstrating a feature to stream music from your personal iTunes library over he internet to your Android phone. Where is this feature a year later? Nowhere to be found or mentioned because I’ll bet no one who owns an Android phone cares.
I’ve come to understand that I really enjoy the Apple ecosystem and it’s not worth fighting other gadgets to work in that same ecosystem if things like the iPhone already exist.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to hearing how your Android experience develops. Because there a lot of apps that I can’t wait to start using again on iOS. A good RSS reader like Reeder and Simplenote or on the top of my list aside from some very fun games. Not to mention a decent IM client.
Actually, if you have some suggestions for Android apps, I’d be interested in hearing about them.
I have seen a few news stories lately talking about Google Music; the consensus seems to be that it is done, or is very nearly done, but that the real hold up is negotiations with music companies. This is a strong endorsement for Apple’s “don’t mention it until it’s already done” policy.
If I had to guess, the companies are playing coy to see who will come out with a better offer – Google, Apple, or Amazon (who apparently just went ahead and did their thing with no agreement whatsoever – it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out).
I think the ecosystem is a good point. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s easiest to dive in fully and completely. Where apple-ish things meet non-apple things, the outcome tends to be… not so great. Just look at iTunes on Windows – it mostly works, most of the time, but most Windows users see it as a necessary evil, not quite the best tool for the job. But by all reports the Apple version is more than adequate.
I certainly would never miss anything Growl or Prowl related – there’s just nothing I’ve found that is comparable (and well supported) for Windows.
I too have not yet found a decent IM client; but again this is one of those “not really a downgrade” points, since the 3G didn’t allow me to move into and out of conversations in any sort of a convenient way, even the good IM apps were largely unusable.
I think a lot of this might just be honeymoon period + low expectations – like I said, it wouldn’t have taken much for this phone to be an upgrade over the old one.
I’ve been so underwhelmed by the Android apps available that I can list all of the one’s I’ve downloaded from memory…
Google Listen is what I use for podcasts. But it does bug out and cause bizarre errors every now and then. Like pausing a show for no reason or refusing to download an episode.
Skype has a terrible UI and the menu system is hard to get used to. Try to sign out and you’ll see what I mean.
c:geo is also what I use for Geocaching.
Dropbox for obvious reasons. Though it’s rare that I use Dropbox on anything besides a computer.
Soundhound for music identifying. Works exactly like the iOS counterpart.
Google Maps with Navigation is great if you can get past the terrible voice.
Google Latitude decides on a whim whether or not it wants to track you in the background or not. I’ve never been able to figure out why it’s so sporadic.
I really love the Audible app for accessing my Audible library.
I use the official Twitter app. I dabbled early on with others but they felt very amateur at the time. I probably need to revisit my Twitter client choices on my mobile devices because I use the official one on the iPad as well.
Mint.com has a great app on Android. I especially like having a widget to look at my account balances at a glance.
That’s pretty much everything I have installed on my phone. Everything else I jump to the iPad for which I always carry with me.
I don’t find Android to be that bad. A lot of the problems that you’ve experienced sound like they come from your particular phone, not from the Android OS. I mean, I have a Samsung Galaxy phone and – although I have grown to hate Samsung gradually over time for one reason or another – the keyboard on my phone is fantastic (it should be noted that my screen can fit it and my fat thumb quite easily).
Also, I’ve never experienced that CAPTCHA error (in what context does it arise). Also, I am impressed by the UI of most of the apps that I use. Whenever I borrow Katie’s iPhone to look something up on it, I always get thrown about how I cannot access the menus of her apps as easily as I can in mine. In general, the layout is really good.
My favourite thing is that everything re-orients nicely on my phone, so when I hold it on its side (which I always do) then everything shuffles to an appropriate and easy to access placement.
The only grievance that I agree with wholeheartedly about Android is the Marketplace. When you compare it to the iTunes App Store, it is garbage. I don’t even use the Marketplace by itself, but I look things up through Chomp because it seems a bit more reliable in skimming the legit apps from the trash.
Thanks for the recommendation for a geocaching app. Even I hadn’t looked too much into that.
Also, for podcasts, I use DoggCatcher. It allows me to sync nicely with any Revision3 or YouTube feed with their convenient search feature, but it isn’t free. I’ve got GMote on their so that I can queue up shows on my computer/TV without leaving bed, Dropbox is really useful, TuneIn Radio has replaced any other method of listening to CFRB 1010 or Q107.
Anyway, sorry for the quick and somewhat half-assed comment. I read through this all fairly quickly while studying for my last university exam ever.
Wow. c:geo is damn slick.
If it is the case that a lot of these problems are a result of the Nexus One itself, than Google definitely bet on the wrong phone to back. Twice.
The CAPTCHA error happens to me for no reason at all that I can discern. It just states that there was a login error with my Google Account and I need to enter a CAPTCHA now which is impossibly difficult to read in what I suspect is a 50px wide window by 20px high.
My Nexus One doesn’t like switching orientations either. This must vary from phone to phone because mine will not rotate unless it is in very specific apps. So I’ve just disabled rotation altogether because it’s annoying to have it pick and choose.
But again, I’d like to stress that Android has some fantastic features. It’s just that iOS features are still better for me.