Kamis, 07 Juni 2018
Android's growth is remarkable. In just a year, they went from 15% market share to over 25%. I was even a part of that statistic last year when I owned an Android smartphone. No time to waste, lets get started. The first thing I hate about Android is the constant freezing and “Force Close”. Whenever an app freezes up or doesn't respond, you are prompted to force close the app. I wish I could say my experience was an isolated incident but it's not. Just by browsing some Android forums, you will read of many annoying incidents of force close. Even though Android is based on Linux, it feels more like a smartphone version of Windows Vista. Always crashing and freezing. The stock Android keyboard is terrible. I know there are plenty of better soft keyboards out there. One of my favorites is Swype. Why can't the standard keyboard be good, The soft keyboard on Apple's iPhone is much better than Android's. The predictive text on the stock Android keyboard is terrible. The point of using a soft keyboard with predictive text is so you don't have to go back and fix all the jumbled words.
One of the more serious problems with Android is their fragmented platform. Most apps depend on a newer version of Android which means you either have to upgrade your OS or buy a newer phone. Since most carriers take their time to release an upgrade, you are left behind while newer phones enjoy these cool apps. I suspect most carriers delay their upgrades in order to provoke people to buy newer phones. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised. Besides the different versions of Android, you also have manufacturer specific skins on top of Android. HTC has SenseUI, Samsung has TouchWiz, and Motorola has MotoBlur. Each manufacturer takes Android and turns it into their own unique version. This makes the experience on each device different. Accepting meeting requests on BlackBerry is simple. After you get an invitation, you can either accept or reject it. This is a problem on some Android phones but not all. 3 but this is another example of fragmentation.
For me, the problem was specific. The next problem I have with Android is its user interface. At first, I thought it was great. It felt like having a little computer in your hand. After using it for a while, I had a chance to objectively look at it. I found it to be very counter intuitive. After a while, it did become like a computer. I would often times have icons littered across my home screens. It reminded me of saving all your files to the desktop and quickly seeing lots of “trash” that needed to be cleaned. After I cleaned it, they were still unorganized in the huge menu. One could say that's my own fault and it may be so. Lets move on. Lots of Android apps function differently. When you hit the “back” button, you would expect to go to the previous screen. Keep hitting back and each app acts differently.
Did the application close, Some apps will close when you hit back all the way but not all. Now you have to open up a task killer to see if this app is closed or not. Each app behaves differently from the back button and also the menu button. Each settings for each app is different so there is nothing intuitive or uniform about the UI. Part of the reason I think Android has poor UI is widgets. Widgets are like micro apps that run on the “desktop” of Android. These widgets are memory hogs and they add to Android's messy interface. Lots of apps comes with widgets that you can put on your home screens. Android has some preloaded and HTC has many SenseUI widgets. These widgets are like early HTML pages. When the web was in its infancy, many people thought it was cool to build webpages with flashing text and neon colors. That's how I describe Android widgets. Some are plain, some are functional, some are ugly and some are just stupid. All of these widgets look out of place unless you follow a strict color scheme.