

Android Team “Laser Focused” On The User Experience For Next Release - 16g
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/android-team-laser-focused-on-the-user-experience-for-next-release/

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jlgosse
I'm more than pleased with how Android looks and behaves on the Nexus One.
Obviously it can only get better from here, but I really hope that Google
tries to avoid going the exact same route of Apple with their iOS. Apple has a
lot of desirable features on the iPhone, but also many quirks that I can
never, ever get over.

On top of this, I'm not a huge fan of how they're doing multi-tasking, and the
introduction of "wallpapers" make the new iOS look ridiculous. They should
have stuck with what they had before, in my opinion.

~~~
cmelbye
I think there's some confusion over how Apple is implementing multitasking.
Apps continue to run in the background, and when you re-open them you'll be
back to where you were. The operating system will begin to terminate the apps
when it is low on resources. In addition, there are certain services that work
a little bit differently, like VoIP, music in the background, tasks that need
extra time to run, etc. As far as I'm aware, this is very similar to the way
that Android implements it.

The wallpaper feature is there if you want to use it, but Apple has included
some darker pattern wallpapers if you prefer a low key background behind the
icons. Of course, one could always whip up a plain black background to use
too.

~~~
masklinn
> Apps continue to run in the background

No they don't, that's the point. The first multitasking you talk about is
basically app hibernation, it gets a CPU priority of 0 (no CPU at all but
stays in memory), the rest are OS services the application subscribes to, and
then the OS manages the rest.

Apart from Task Completion (maybe) the application never _runs_. With some
services (location, background streaming/music, local notifications) a
callback may run (on a timer or all the time), but not the whole application,
far from it.

> As far as I'm aware, this is very similar to the way that Android implements
> it.

Nope, the UI part is handled the same way (by freezing it on switch) but in
android there are no OS services, instead a backgrounding application works as
a server daemon (faceless) and the UI is a client communicating with the
daemon. Faceless daemons don't get frozen, because you can't "switch off" from
them.

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pkulak
Now we just need someone to build a phone without vomiting their own crappy
interface all over it. The Nexus One is great, but can't we have a bit more
choice than 1?

~~~
thwarted
Wanting choice and keeping companies from customizing their product to
differentiate them seem to be goals that are at odds with each other.

However, I've used a number of android based phones and I still find the Nexus
One's interface to be the best and cleanest.

~~~
pkulak
Yeah, I'm not mad at Google, I'm disappointed with HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

~~~
thwarted
You're disappointed because HTC, Motorola and Samsung provide choice, or
because the choices they provide suck?

I'd like to see some stronger innovation, but that some subset of the choices
suck just provides a solid reason to pick the better option. Even a bad
example is an example, in that we all learn what doesn't work, and we can
cherry pick the best things from a number of different sources. The wider
ecosystem in carrier-customized Android interfaces means finding out faster
which featuers ones are not strong.

~~~
masklinn
> You're disappointed because HTC, Motorola and Samsung provide choice, or
> because the choices they provide suck?

I'm guessing #2, and they don't merge their (hypothetical) improvements
upstream to improve the whole platform.

~~~
dagw
Why would they merge their improvements upstream. That would only lead to them
losing their (hypothetical) competitive advantage. Handset manufacturers don't
care about the android platform they care about their own implementation of
the android platform. The battle isn't iPhone vs. Android, it's Apple vs HTC
vs Motorola vs Samsung vs SE vs LG vs Nokia vs... Samsung is just as
(un)likely to help HTC or LG as they are to help Apple.

~~~
masklinn
Absolutely.

And that, in essence, is probably the biggest issue I see with Android in its
fight against the iPhone.

It's even worse than Mac vs PC as at least Windows (at a given revision)
looked and behaved pretty much the same on every machine. The theming was
light (especially early on, when there was no support for it) and
manufacturers added crap, but didn't replace whole subsystems just because.

I also find that to be an incredibly stupid strategy (but in prisoner's
dilemma terms considering all the player are bastards...): the first worry of
the players in the mobile phone space should be to drive Apple out of it as
fast and as soon as possible, avoid their repeat of the iPod and their
conquest of a majority marketshare.

Therefore the long term strategy should be to collaborate and make the common
platform as good as possible as soon as possible (on all aspects) in order to
push Apple out of the market, using hardware to differentiate themselves, and
when Apple is stuck into a small minority box (or entirely driven out) they
can go back to bickering among themselves and releasing custom shells and
stuff.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Actually, if you look back at the early days of Windows 3.0 and 3.1, it was
_very_ common for OEM's like Compaq, HP, Packard Bell, etc. to include their
own proprietary "skin" on Windows (usually as shallow as just a replacement
for Program Manager).

On a separate note, I don't know why everyone always casts this as an Android
vs iPhone fight. Android doesn't need to "beat" the iPhone, the iPhone isn't
(by a loooong shot) the largest player in the smartphone market anyway.
(<http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/the-mobile-os-market/>) There's plenty of
marketshare for both iPhone and Android to take away from RIM and Symbian, not
to mention that smartphone market is growing very rapidly as a whole.

As long as the sales of Android phones keep growing anywhere near as rapidly
as they have been, Android will be _HUGE_ even if they never take any
marketshare away from the iPhone. ([http://www.fool.com/investing/high-
growth/2010/05/27/deciphe...](http://www.fool.com/investing/high-
growth/2010/05/27/deciphering-androids-smartphone-sales-figures.aspx))

~~~
masklinn
> There's plenty of marketshare for both iPhone and Android to take away from
> RIM and Symbian, not to mention that smartphone market is growing very
> rapidly as a whole.

Symbian is being eaten alive right now and fading fast, so that one's
happening, and the iPhone (and Android behind it) have decided to shoot for
the wider consumer landscape, not for RIM's entrenched "Enterprise" position.
They're slowly adding enterprise-targetted features (VPNs and the likes) but
that's secondary for now, they're not trying to battle RIM. Yet anyway.

But this is cast as a battle between iOS and Android because they are going
head to head in terms of demographics, purpose, abilities, mindshare. The
means are different but Google clearly aims Android at the target iOS opened,
and it's not like they're shy about it.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
My point being that there's plenty of marketshare for both platforms to
succeed. The competitors are currently larger, and really don't have a
compelling offering compared to Android and iPhoone.

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GBKS
Sounds perfectly reasonable and I hope they can pull it off. Google hasn't
shown the UI design sensitivity necessary to compete with the iPhone UI, but
they are determined and iterate quickly, so they can probably get to a point
where their UI will be better than what handset manufacturers can come up
with.

Openness is great, but being open without setting a high standard is not good
in the long run.

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kingkilr
Very exciting to see the major strides they're making. Unfortunately not all
the updates are getting rolled out to all users, which makes it harder to get
people "selling" the phone to their friends. I've got a G1 Dev phone and I'm
still stuck on 1.5-1.6 (or something similarly ancient), so I guess I'm really
hoping I can somehow swing an upgrade to a Nexus for myself :/

~~~
vetinari
Get Cyanogenmod 5.0.7. It is Eclair for Dream (ADP1 included) and Magic.

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amanuel
Someone needs to tell the Android Team that User Experience isn't a feature.
It is fundamental design decisions early on that determine what the user
experience is.

That's like arguing a poorly designed home will function better after a fresh
coat of paint.

~~~
ars
No, it's more like a gut and redo, while leaving the structural elements
alone.

And they say they are happy with the structural elements.

~~~
amanuel
I say kudos if they can pull it off. Ignoring the possible meddling of the
various device manufacturers, they have their work cut out for them.

I want to be optimistic here; it is just I've never seen such re-engineering
done before for any OS.

~~~
buster
UI redesign will most certainly take place on the homescreen, the launcher,
the dialer, etc. In other words: in it's own seperate applications, this
wouldn't conflict somewhere because it's done quite frequently. Android is
themeable quite nicely, so even changing the standard dialogs from one style
to another _should_ work. My own concern here is that some developers probably
have written their own UI code and some custom hacks. But we'll see about
that.

~~~
eelco
UI is about how things work first, about styling second. Themes are not going
to help you with the former.

~~~
buster
Correct. And i don't think they want to change how things work. The mechanisms
how to operate android are fine. Or do you have an example what fundamental
functionality should change?

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buster
With the WebOS UI designer and most features you want in the OS, this will be
an important step for Android. The OS is stable and mature with 2.2. Actually
i like the UI on the Nexus One very much, but i'm sure it can be improved from
good to awesome with the team focused on it. Somewhere on Google I/O was a
screenshot with Gingerbread on it, but i guess this will change.

edit: very early Gingerbread screens:
[http://www.sizzledcore.com/2010/05/22/android-3-0-screenshot...](http://www.sizzledcore.com/2010/05/22/android-3-0-screenshots-
gingerbread-ui/)

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masklinn
That's good.

Problem: what about Sense and Motoblur? Think HTC and Moto are going to drop
them just because the Android UI bas improved? yeah right...

~~~
glhaynes
Agreed: why would they drop them now, unless they were just startlingly worse?
They aren't interested in Android's success outside of their devices, they
want to differentiate themselves.

~~~
masklinn
Even if they _are_ startlingly worse (motoblur seems pretty universally hated,
and Sense seems to strongly polarize, some people find it very nice, others
find it awful and full of useless gradients and badly polished looks), I doubt
they're going to drop them.

And this is terrible for Android as a platform, in my opinion worse than the
issue of hardware fragmentation and maybe even worse than the handsets left in
the dust re. OS updates, because it means UI knowledge becomes non-portable
from one Android handset to the next, which is horrible.

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haily
The Android Team needs to aim pass the IPhone UX if they plan to win. The
Android platform needs to tighten their controls around the UI a little bit
more. The very least they can do is make it so that when people look at a
smart phone/device, they instantly recognize it as an Android powered device.
I think that will help the brand a little bit.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
As a counterpoint, how many people can look at a Symbian phone and instantly
recognize it as a Symbian powered device? Yet Nokia sells vastly more Symbian
powered smartphone than Apple sells iPhones:
[http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/5/21/smartphones-b...](http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/5/21/smartphones-
bloodbath-1q-2010-full-market-analysis.aspx)

~~~
haily
You're right. Symbian does sell more devices when there were no real
competition.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
They sell more devices than Apple does right _now_.

~~~
haily
You're right again. I guess the right question would be who is growing and who
is shrinking.

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openfly
I'd prefer if they were laser focused on removing dlavik and releasing a
native SDK that doesn't get bottle necked by a broken ass vm. This is a mobile
device people. Treat it like one.

