
Stock Android Isn't Perfect: Things I Can't Stand About Jelly Bean - e1ven
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-about-android
======
guelo
The back button in previous Androids was mostly fine with a few overloaded
functions that led to some understandable inconsistencies. It might get stuck
going backwards in the browser or it might dismiss a dialog or keyboard
instead of going to the previous screen, but the annoyances were minor.

To fix this they inexplicably added a second iOS-style header back button
(which is called Up even though it is normally shown with a left pointer). The
combination of two back buttons and the difficulty of understanding it, even
for developers who have read the long style guide[1], is an absolutely
baffling design decision. There is no way that users can intuitively learn
what these buttons do. Add the inconsistent implementations and it's a
usability nightmare.

[1] <http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html>

~~~
alanctgardner2
I actually really like this idea: If you're in an email and you open a
picture, you go to Gallery. Now you can a) Go 'Up' to the main Gallery
activity, or b) 'Back' to your email. That seems pretty intuitive, a lot of
the time I've been frustrated by the lack of an 'Up' option in apps.

~~~
ljf
That is what kills me in iOS, I regularly get an email with a few urls to
check. Heck even one is a pain: open email, see link, click link, browser
opens, check link, press home button, swipe to screen with email client, press
email, press email account was in before, scroll to email, press email, scroll
to point I was at in email before I was dragged away.

In android it just a single back button away, or if something goes wrong, when
I return to email I'll be where I was before, correctly scrolled in the email
I was reading.

I miss android!

~~~
nicholassmith
Not to say that iOS isn't a pain for rapidly moving between tasks, but if you
double tap the home button Email will still be in there so you should be able
to swap back quicker.

~~~
ljf
Excellent, I've never heard of that as a solution from my iOS using friends,
so I'll do that now. They were just as stumped as me!

~~~
nicholassmith
I had to sit and explain the process to both my girlfriend and my Dad
recently, I think one of the issues is it's a "you have to know it to know
about it" situation, it's mentioned plenty by Apple but given that the
products are pretty user manual free there's many things that you have to know
it to know it.

Hope it helps, you can show your friends and bathe in the satisfaction of
knowledge sharing. Also on iPad, 4 finger swipe to move between apps, 4
fingers up to show App Tray, full page pinch for home. Not hidden by any
stretch, but not widely known.

~~~
endemic
Yeah, these interaction features make the OS much more usable for sure, but
their obscurity isn't doing Apple any favors.

------
daleharvey
The back button gets picked on a lot, and it is confusing.

However I am much happier having a consistently placed back button that works
90% of the time than not have one at all.

When using iOS I constantly run into very common and simple workflows like
read email, check a link in email, press back to get back to email which
quickly become fustrating especially when apps have incredibly wierd
workarounds (like twitter embedding a terrible web browser to check links),
even simple things like deactivating the keyboard / going back from dialogs
and activities.

~~~
enjo
I have never found the back button to be confusing. The problem is that we
call it a "back button". To me it's the "anywhere but here" button. When I
don't want to be where I'm at I just start pounding on it until I arrive at
something I do want. Either something in my history or the home screen.

I actually really like the implementation of it.

~~~
batiudrami
It's a nightmare for usability, now that I think about it, but I also do this.

~~~
darrenkopp
It's a nightmare for usability when done wrong, though it's amazing for
usability when done right. For instance, a wrong way to do it is when I use
the task switcher to go back to Google Voice which opens up the last
conversation and when I hit the back button it dumps me to the home screen,
when what I _really_ wanted was to be dumped back into the inbox. This could
be solved by pushing an explicit intent or whatever onto the stack for the
inbox above the conversation so that the back button works as expected.

Where the back button works _awesome_ is where I open a link from Tweetdeck
and when I hit the back button it puts me back into Tweetdeck.

~~~
batiudrami
But, what the button is supposed to (as given in the article), is to take you
back to your previous screen - the home screen. The button on the top left is
supposed to take you back to your inbox.

~~~
darrenkopp
Perhaps, but if you are taken to a conversation regardless of how you launch
the app (ie, the previous state, which is standard behavior), then I would
say, no. Which is what is happening in the Google Voice application.

I should state that what actually happens in this scenario is this.

1\. View conversation, leave Google Voice. 2\. Re-enter Google Voice somehow,
currently viewing conversation. 3\. Hit back button, taken to wherever you
came from (previous app, home screen, etc) 4\. Re-launch Google Voice, now the
starting screen is the inbox.

------
vibrunazo
Such a shame, this is such a good article. A respectful adult discussion of
real problems. From which we could have a great conversation about these
issues, and better, brainstorm solutions. Which would be an incredibly fun and
productive thing to do. Even Matias Duarte himself replied to the article.

After reading the article I clicked on the HN comments, excited, expecting to
read insightful solutions I could never have came up with. But instead, 90% of
the comments here on HN, including the top voted ones, are just childish
attempts to show off how cool you are for cheer-leading for either iOS or
Android more. This is so sad.

This place is in _desperate_ need of more moderation. The ratio of active
users/mods seem out of control.

~~~
davros
I've got a chrome extension called 'Hacker News Collapse'. With one click (on
the parent comment spawning the low-quality discussion) I can hide the whole
thread and move on to more interesting discussions.

~~~
efraim
Also available as a user script, not saying that this is the same author
though. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/138037>

------
notJim
I have both a "new iPad" and an Android Phone (an HTC G2, which is stuck in
Gingerbread and is not exactly in its prime.) I am a fairly simple user of
both of these: I use a few apps (Twitter and Yelp come to mind, and an app to
read reddit) and the stock apps (Google Maps especially on the phone, the
browser on both.) Here is my perspective on the two: it doesn't actually
matter that much.

With iOS, everything looks pretty good and there's a lot of consistency. The
browser, I understand, is much better than the browser on my phone (I'm not
sure how it stacks up against Chrome for Android, which is not available to
me.) But then, iOS is kind of annoying too: the keyboard placement often gets
in the way of text fields, there is zero integration in between apps and no
way for an app to provide a common service, I have to log in to everything
separately. It's very difficult to move within a word (for example, if I typed
fold instead of food, it is difficult to change the l to an o.) Every app has
its own embedded web browser, which invariably has slight different controls
than every other apps embedded web browser. Settings are sometimes bafflingly
hidden in some other settings app, rather than being in the actual app you're
using. Those things annoy me slightly, but they don't bother me that much when
I'm using the device, because when I'm using the device, I'm focused on the
task at hand and the device doesn't confuse me enough that it breaks my
concentration. This is easy to understand because, as I mentioned, I do pretty
simple things on my iPad.

With Android, apps can provide common services ("Android intents") and they
integrate well with one another. There's a back button to move between apps,
so apps don't need to do things like embed their own web browser. There's a
little nub that I can use to move within a word, so correcting text is much
easier. I can use a custom keyboard that is better than both the iOS keyboard
(which is admittedly very good), and better than the built-in Android keyboard
(which is pretty good, but doesn't have very good autocorrect.) But the thing
with Android is that up until recently, it's been very plain and even ugly by
default. The default look of an app is pretty ugly (just white text on a black
background) so developers seem to try to implement their own style, with
varying degrees of success. When the back button works, it's a godsend, but
when it doesn't it's really fucking confusing. Animations are often choppy.
But mostly none of this actually matters that much, because when I'm using the
device, I'm focused on the task at hand and the device doesn't confuse me
enough that it breaks my concentration. This is easy to understand because, as
I mentioned, I do pretty simple things on my Android device.

~~~
paupino_masano
I tend to agree: each has it's own positive and negative points....

I own an iPhone 4S, Galaxy S3, and a Blackberry Bold 9900 - all for testing.
In terms of usability, I also put them in this order. Don't get me wrong: all
three have good UI points ( _ahem_ harder to find in the Blackberry sorry),
and all three have bad UI points (a blog waiting to happen for iOS too? e.g.
you can't see the message above if you've typed a long message in Messages in
iOS). But regardless: the 4S has much better usability guidelines than Android
AT THE MOMENT. Namely, regrading the things the article brought up (e.g. icon
sizes - come on...)

Personally I'd love to see Android up it's game, and since Matias Duarte has
taken the reigns I think that we'll start to see it's usability become much
more consistent - hence evening the UX playing field. I also really REALLY
hope iOS fixes some of the annoying things in it's UI interface. Personally, I
look forward to a greater UX experience all round - thankfully, arguably, that
is already happening.

~~~
tommyd
"e.g. you can't see the message above if you've typed a long message in
Messages in iOS"

Lost my iPhone so can't check this, but I'm pretty sure you can drag the
visible bit of the message above down to collapse the keyboard and see the
whole thing.

------
CamperBob2
I'd say my biggest complaint with Android is excessive use of cryptic icons
with no way to tell what they do until I press them.

I'm pretty sure I forwarded some spam to some fairly important people the
first time I tried to use Google Plus on my Galaxy Nexus. I still have no idea
what I did, because I can't read hieroglyphics. I don't have time to look for
documentation or tutorials that probably don't exist anyway, so I'm basically
afraid to explore the app any further. An app that instantly and irreversibly
alters the state of a remote process is not a good place to rely on
discoverability, no matter if it's for social networking or nuclear reaction
control.

In general, things that are supposed to be "intuitive" need to be spelled out
for the benefit of us slow folk to a greater extent than the designers at
Google believe.

~~~
Ineffable
Pro tip: Click and hold any icon in a top or bottom action bar in Android to
see its label. Very useful with cryptic symbols. Not a solution, but eases the
issue.

~~~
bsphil
Holy shit.

That's handy to know.

------
jaredcwhite
It's easy to nitpick little quirks in a platform's interface. iOS isn't quirk-
free. I think a much larger problem is something this article only
occasionally hints at (for example in the icon sizes section):

Android's design aesthetic still sucks!

Is it skeu-oriented like iOS? Not often but sometimes yes! Is it completely 2D
minimalist like Metro-style? No, but sometimes yes. Is it
futuristic/robot/Matrix? Yes, sometimes, but not always.

Jelly Bean (and ICS) certainly improve upon past versions, but the UI still
looks like a big mishmash compiled from random submissions from a bunch of
volunteer open-source designers. Nothing wrong with that in theory and no
offense to volunteer open-source contributors, but we're talking about Google
here and their flagship platform. I can forgive spit and polish when I check
out Haiku OS or the latest bleeding-edge KDE distro, but Google and the
companies commercially shipping Android devices should be held to a much
higher standard. Laugh all you want about Apple shredding pixels in Passport
in iOS6 but at least they're putting huge resources into crafting memorable
experiences that delight users. What's delightful, memorable -- even whimsical
-- about Android?

------
emehrkay
As an ios user since 08, the nexus7 needs a lot of comparative polish.

* The keyboard doesnt always pop up when you're in a text field.

* What's the deal with font rendering in Chrome? Some links appear bigger than others (on hackernews and reddit).

* Hitting an actual link is like choosing a first square in Minesweeper, sometimes it works, but most of the time it either misfires or opens the enlarge modal.

* There seems to be inconsistent feedback that a link was actually tapped in Chrome.

* The built-in apps lack any real contrast.

* The default google apps only seem to play content from the play store. I cant get the book reader to open anything so I had to try 10 different ebook readers leaving me in a situation of read some here, read some there. Why wouldnt google want it to open epub like ibooks does?

* The software home button is very frustrating. Miss the spacebar, Im going to the home screen

* Who thought that power + volume down is the best way to take a screenshot? It is very hard to do

There are other little things that escape me at the moment. The device is
great though, and if I didnt have such a history with ios, id probably think
it was the best that could be offered. Luckily for us the gripes that I have
seem to be minor in the grad scheme of things. My main advice (to you googlers
reading) would be to choose a default setup that is what you guys consider the
best of the best and still let the tweekers tweak.

Oh and I feel that a small ipad would easily eat the nexus7's lunch

~~~
shardling
>What's the deal with font rendering in Chrome? Some links appear bigger than
others (on hackernews and reddit).

This happens in Firefox as well. They're trying to use an adaptive algorithm
to resize text intelligently, making "content" appear larger than nav bars and
the like.

At least with Firefox, this fails when someone leaves a short comment and the
algorithm doesn't recognise it as content. Even if Chrome fails in a different
way, they're failing at the same (somewhat hard) problem.

Maybe it could fixed by, upon discovering content, ensuring that any similarly
styled/classed elements had the same font size?

~~~
vibrunazo
Is there any way to disable that? I already looked it up but didn't find it.

~~~
shardling
In Firefox, I believe that chaging the about:config setting
_font.size.inflation.minTwips_ to 0 might disable it -- that's the setting
desktop firefox has.

It's possible that tweaking some of the other inflation settings would allow
for more pleasant inflation, though.

------
HyprMusic
You all dismiss these as things as minor annoyances, but you're missing the
main point. It's these details that separate a brilliant user experience from
a poor one.

Apply may have less features, and it may be less flexible. But it provides a
nicer experience, because of these kind of levels of details. You pick it up
and it works, it really does feel like magic.

I use both, and whilst my Android is considerably more powerful and has tonnes
more features, the iPhone is just a pleasure to use (and I'm a Apple hating
Google fanboy, so this pains me).

~~~
enjo
It's funny, I have the exact opposite impression. I loathe picking up my iPad.
I get into the browser and open a youtube video. How do I get back to the
browser? Go all the way back home and hunt down the icon? Seriously?

I want to just check something real quick, I'll just pull up my home screen
and...crap... I have to actually hunt down an app? For real? I just want to
see <whatever>!

The navigation model in iOS, to me, is just broken. I think it's a polished
experience no doubt. I think it's snappy and smooth. I just don't find it very
delightful. It's work to me.

My Jellybean Nexus, on the other hand just makes sense. It flows, it puts
information where I want it, and does it all in a pretty seamless way. I'm
rarely lost.

For _me_ I prefer the Android experience on it's own merits.

~~~
msbarnett
Double-tap home. That last app you were in is the left most in the list. You
shouldn't be hunting for anything, ever.

~~~
tomflack
To add to this, four finger swipe up for the multitasking bar or four finger
swipe to the left/right to flip between apps. It's not discoverable - as far
as I know there isn't even a tutorial - but this is how large-screen devices
work best.

------
jellicle
For some reason no one has remarked on one of my biggest problems with Jelly
Bean - that Google no longer lets you opt-out of being tracked. There are two
location services, which used to be called coarse (uses names of nearby Wifi
networks and such) and fine (GPS). Google now won't let you use coarse without
also opting in to having your location sent to Google at all times, whether
you are using any application or not. So, for example, Google Maps doesn't
work unless you opt in to being tracked at all times. Google Now doesn't work
at all unless you opt-in to being tracked at all times. Etc.

In prior versions of Android, being tracked 24/7/365 was a separate checkbox
you could opt out of while retaining full location functionality when you
desired it, e.g. for Google Maps. No longer.

No one in the press seems to have picked up on this unadvertised feature
change of Jelly Bean.

~~~
guelo
I'm not sure if you're right about this change but it doesn't really matter.
Cops are all over location data from cell towers, the phone companies don't
even require subpoenas to give them access to it. And there's absolutely no
way to opt out of it except by not using a cell phone.

------
j_baker
The back button issue for me is the biggest one. The back button is such a
useful thing to have, but the inconsistency of its behavior is sometimes mind-
boggling.

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
I think Android is great, but this inconsistency is what spoils it.

I still get tripped up when I click the back button in the browser, and it
boots me back to the home screen and not the previous item in my browser
history. Never mind having the concept of 'windows' with _zero_ visual cue
that a page loaded in a new window, and not the existing one.

There wouldn't be much of a problem but the stock apps set expectations that
are rarely delivered upon anywhere else. You're trained to long-press an item
to perform an action on that specific item. This won't work in every app: in
some caes you might have to swipe it, iPhone style; in others, it's just not
possible.

I would still use Android over an iPhone, but there is plenty of room for
improvement.

------
mikeevans
My main disagreement with these is regarding Google Voice.

>If this is a texting app, why is it called "Voice"?

Because it's not just a texting app. It does voicemail and "makes calls" as
well. Otherwise, most of his other complaints are valid and inconsistent.

~~~
rtkwe
That and the horizontal complaint are the ones I don't really get. Horizontal
doesn't really make sense as a horizontal orientation. And orientation changes
with widgets on the home screen brings it's own issues. Take for example a
home screen filled with edge to edge one row tall widgets. How do you resize
that to fit into a horizontal orientation?

~~~
MBCook
The Google Voice one makes sense to me. I don't have an Android phone, but the
idea of having multiple texting apps that are slightly different seems
amazingly confusing.

The horizontal support was the only one that didn't seem like a problem to me.
Most Apple apps on iOS have horizontal support (Messages, Calendar, Camera,
Photos, Mail, Stocks, Calculator, Notes, Safari, Reminders, Contacts).

But Springboard (the launcher) doesn't have horizontal support. That doesn't
seem like a loss to me. If there was a second horizontal orientation, I've
have to re-organize everything. You can't rotate every icon 90 degrees because
there isn't enough space for the app titles in landscape.

A few other apps lack a landscape mode, but it doesn't seem like a big deal.
Settings, App Store, Weather, and YouTube (outside of video playback) don't
support it, but that doesn't seem like a big limitation.

~~~
cdawzrd
Google Voice doesn't come stock with Android. You can install it if you have a
Google Voice account. If so, you probably know which one you want to use for
texting. For example, I'm on Sprint and have GV integration enabled, which
means my GV number gets used for caller ID and voicemail instead of my Sprint
number. If I use the stock messaging app (or any other like Handcent), the
texts go out as SMS through Sprint, with my Sprint number. If I use the GV
app, the texts go out using the internet (3G or Wifi) and have my GV number. I
never use the built-in messaging app. I'm pretty sure anyone who installs GV
understands the concepts behind it and chooses to use either GV or SMS for
text messaging without any confusion.

------
roryreiff
As an avid iOS user, every time I try and pick up an Android I experience the
same types of issues. I wonder whether it actually is a lack of intuition, or
that I am so locked into the iOS way that it ends up feeling foreign right
from the start.

Re: the back button, I am curious how other mobile OSs handle this problem. An
obvious solution would be that the OS forces a particular behaviour, but then
again, you were referencing default apps with varying implementations. Having
never worked with the Android SDK, I wonder if the behaviour is forced on 3rd
party apps?

~~~
akjetma
As a person who's never had an iPhone/Mac, I experience the same foreign
feeling when I use an iOS device. I'm pretty sure this feeling is mostly due
to unfamiliarity and not superior design on either side. Although it is worth
noting that whenever I've borrowed someone else's Android phone it can be a
completely different experience from my own Android device, whereas an iOS
user borrowing an iOS device will know exactly how to operate it.

~~~
w1ntermute
Yep, I especially get this feeling when using a Mac, from the mouse
acceleration curve. It just feels _wrong_ , and I can only use a Mac for a few
minutes before my hand starts hurting.

------
sirn
This is not exactly Jelly Bean's problem but it's one thing I can't stand.
When you quickly scroll page and stop it using single tap, if that tap happens
to fall onto tappable element (e.g. links), _the element will be tapped_. Both
stock browser and Chrome has this behavior (which is extremely annoying).

Other thing is scroll bar, I can't understand why do all apps implements its
own scrollbar. From my quick testing of stock apps in JB (CM10), Messages app
has one, Email app has one and contact list has another one.

------
ZoFreX
A couple of notes:

* I think the inconsistent application switcher icon / app title display issue is due to intents. If you click an image in your GMail it uses the Gallery to display it, but you are still in the GMail app. At a technical level I understand what's going on but I think it either needs to make it clearer what's really going on (for example have the GMail title bar above the image, and have the intent embedded like an iFrame, as well as fixing the icon/screenshot issue), or spawn a new application to handle it (which, if the back button behaves as per the spec in that application, would be totally transparent to the user). Both of these approaches are similar to existing solutions in the desktop world so I think the familiarity would defuse the confusion.

* Icons - I like that the icons are all over the place, in style, size, shape etc. It's a common criticism from an aesthetic perspective, which I agree with, but from a usability perspective it makes it a hell of a lot easier to pick out my apps. I used to use Go Launcher with a theme to make everything a bit more iOS-like and one of the things it did was make all icons the same outline and size by generating coloured backgrounds on them. Obviously, this is far lower quality than actually having uniform icons designed by humans, but I found the lack of silhouette and size variation made them blur together more.

* Horizontal support - I don't know why, but some apps don't change based on the tilt sensor, and some do. My old Motorola had a dock and when I put it into it, it forced everything including the homescreen into landscape mode. If you have a custom launcher they usually have options to control whether or not the homescreen & launcher will go into horizontal mode or not, and on both devices I've tried this, if you allow the homescreen to go into horizontal mode everything else follows - including the dialler. This is the only point in the article that I would say is definitively incorrect.

------
jsz0
My single biggest annoyance is the last of support for calendar invites.
Android just doesn't know what to do with them. I have to save them, open a
file manager, view them in a text editor, manually create calendar events.
Things like that are why I still reach for the nearest iOS device whenever
possible. I'm still not thrilled at the speed and smoothness of web browsing
on Android either. On a Galaxy Nexus with either 4.0 or 4.1 zooming and
scrolling often lags. Finally will they ever update the IMAP/POP client? No
message threading? Not everyone uses GMail.

~~~
Evbn
Sadly, gmail embraced, extended and extinguished mail. K9 Mail is the
unofficial community fork.

------
ljf
One pet peeve of mine is when you set up a new Android phone. I've only done
this once, but from Google Play it's pretty easy to find all the apps you've
installed before. But after clicking one and installing it, you return to the
app list at the top.

I know they meantion a different use case in the article, but this literally
turns what should be a quick and pleasent task of getting your new phone
going, into a killer. Maybe there is a better way of doing it, from their
website? Whatever they should make it easier and clearer.

------
barrkel
I can stand these pretty easily :)

The back button annoys me most in email apps - I think it's the stock Email
app - when you scroll through all your unread email, and instead of doing an
"up", it decides to go back through all the messages your just read.
Meanwhile, it upsets me in other apps where, when I open a file from a file
browser, and press back, it doesn't take me back to the file browser; it takes
me "up" in the application that opened the file.

So this is the heart of the inconsistency. Sometimes I want up, and sometimes
I want back. It's context and app dependent. I don't really see a way to do it
right without letting apps fiddle with the stack.

Re icon size difference: I actually find this difference helpful in
distinguishing one icon from another. On iOS, most icons are rounded squares,
and are less visually distinctive. I had to go completely overboard with
classification folders to make it easier for me to find stuff on my iPad.

A lot of the other points are QA polish. I don't disagree with many of them,
but they don't really bother me either. On the multiplicity of messaging apps,
I don't really see that as a problem either, since I don't use any of the
Google ones apart from the SMS app when I'm forced to; I use WhatsApp instead
(yes, insecurity, I know).

~~~
georgemcbay
> "I don't really see a way to do it right without letting apps fiddle with
> the stack."

Apps can (and often do) fiddle with the stack, at least as it applies to their
own Activities. Of course, they do so inconsistently (even Google's own apps
do so inconsistently).

In any case, Google clearly recognizes the issues with the back button and
have been trying to fix it (see, eg:
<http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html> ), but their
attempts to fix it have also been clumsy.

For example what they call the "up button" (both in the API and in their
designer docs) visually looks like a back button. Trying to distinguish
between "back" and "up" is great, but then making your "up" button look
exactly what any sane person would expect a "back" button to look like is
goofy. Not only is this confusing for users, but it is also confusing for
developers, resulting in different apps handling the situation differently
even though the app developers have tried to do what they think the right
thing is.

So the solution is in many ways more confusing than the situation before they
tried to fix it.

~~~
Shooti
This was asked in one of the Google IO 2012 videos that was recorded, and
their response is that it originally looked like an like a triangle to the
left of the icon in Honeycomb, but nobody noticed it was there.

------
bsphil
Spent a lot of time nitpicking small issues, but he does pick it up with
better points after the back button rant and latitude.

The horrendous lack of support for landscape views, G+ photos being stuck in
my gallery (with a Picasa icon on top of it), soft button rotation, crappy
contact pictures, and the 4 separate text messaging systems from Google.

Good list overall, I hope the next update (Kringle?) tries to enforce more
uniformity in the UI and in Google Apps particularly.

~~~
mikeevans
Luckily, some of the complaints can be fixed with individual app updates,
rather than waiting for an entire OS update.

------
ZeroGravitas
Most of these are valid, but he undermines his own case with some of them e.g.
icons being the same size. That's a valid issue, but the Android guidelines
are correct that using every pixel of height would _look_ uneven. It is the
same issue with capital letters, A should generally be taller than T so that
they visually look equal in height. Dismissing this as "just eyeballing it" is
favoring OCD-style logical consistency over actual user interface consistency,
since icons with the same pixel height can look inconsistent to users.

Time for two of my favourite quotes _"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds"_ , and _"different isn't always better, but better is always
different"_ and to note that this is the kind of article that Gruber used to
write about OS X when Apple were rapidly evolving it in it's early days[1]. It
seemed to me even then that it didn't recognize the tension between improving
what's broken and keeping everything consistent.

[1]: <http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal>

------
dlikhten
FWIW: In iOS, all icons are varying size, just they have that little border
around it forcing all sizes to feel identical. Its a good trick.

BTW He forgot to mention: Why is it that on every fucking device out there the
back button and menu button are placed in different locations? Like samsung =
right, htc = left, google = left, samsung's evil twin = in the middle of the
screen.

------
jpxxx
Every time I pick up an Android based phone it's always the same miserable
first five minutes.

"Where are the apps? Is... Oh. Are these all of the apps or some of the apps?
Where are _all_ of the apps? Do I hit a button? Oh.. Oh, there's a browser.
But why is it where it... do I drag this or something?"

"How do I stop making it putting squares on the faces in the pictures? Why
would you do this? Is it in the Settings? Where is the settings? Is there one
settings app? Is it in a menu? Do I tap something? Is it one of these hardware
butto-OH where am I now?"

"How do I get this keyboard to go away? It shouldn't be up anymore. I hit
enter. Didn't I? What the hell is this key with the arrow? Wait, is this
"dismiss?" No.. do I touch the screen? Gotdamnit don't hit that I didn't want
to hit that."

Even on a Galaxy S3 last week, it was the same experience. There's too much
Old World UI in Android for my tastes.

~~~
w1ntermute
That's how I feel using an iOS device - death by a thousand papercuts. All the
apps are on the home screens, no dedicated back button...I can only use it for
a few minutes before getting frustrated.

And apparently iOS doesn't have _any_ public transit directions in the maps
app? In 2012?! _Are you fucking shitting me?_

~~~
taligent
Google Maps doesn't have ANY public transit directions in most countries.

So you guys from the US need to stop acting as though this feature is somehow
a game changer. It will almost exclusively affect US users only.

~~~
ranebo
I'm an Australian living in Japan and this absolutely is a game changer for
me. If anything I would think it affects many other countries more than the
US.

~~~
taligent
I am not saying it is useful only that it is not a game changer for most
people. Even in Japan you can use apps like Hyperdia for the JR and subways.

The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit and at the beginning
didn't have many cities and so many providers have apps available.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Even in Japan you can use apps like Hyperdia for the JR and subways.

That doesn't change the fact that Google Maps provides a complete, end-to-end
solution for getting from point A to point B, using any combination of public
transit options and walking.

For example, when I was in Japan, I was able to enter the addresses of the
starting and ending points, and then get a list of travel options, with the
total time and cost included for comparison. You can't get that if you're
using a JR/subway-specific app.

Moreover, you can't just tap on an address in another app and have it take you
directly to the Google Maps app anymore.

> The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit and at the
> beginning didn't have many cities and so many providers have apps available.

Yeah, and the original iPhone also didn't have any 3rd party apps. That
doesn't mean it's acceptable in 2012 not to have 3rd party apps. It really
doesn't matter what things were like before Google Transit launched. All that
matters is the current situation, which is that Apple fucked up big time by
allowing such a huge regression to get into a release version of iOS.

------
corporalagumbo
Great write-up. I'd love to do/see something similar for WP7.5 - if only it
had screenshot support.

~~~
wluu
Guess we'll have to wait til WP8, which has native screenshot support.

According to this Nokia wiki entry, there's a way to get (unofficial)
screenshots to work in WP 7.5 if you have a device which is dev & interop
unlocked -
[http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/How_to_take_sc...](http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/How_to_take_screenshot_on_Windows_Phone)

------
schme
One thing that has been bugging me in ICS and JB is how small textfields
behave, especially in text-messages. I tend to write long sms's and
occasionally want to change a word from the middle. The 'knob' the author
mentions does a good job if I want to get back to the beginning, but I haven't
found a way to scroll back to the middle with it. Rolling the typefield itself
helps, but after doing that the knob is still very prone to getting me
straight back to the beginning/end. Navigation in textfields feels awkward. If
I'm scolding the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, do tell, I'd like to hear
if it's just me or does someone else feel the same.

------
lnanek2
Interesting viewpoint. I know Google has said they did usability tests and
found users didn't know what back would do a lot of the time and disliked it.
Google's solution was to provide up navigation instead, which stays within the
app. This is the < arrow at the top left of the standard action bar pattern
now. I guess the original post had a point that back navigation could have
been made more consistent as well, however.

------
laserDinosaur
My biggest gripe? The fact that they got rid of square menu boxes with icons
for long thin rectangular labels. Try mashing "Dismiss" on your alarm at 5am
when you need to hit a little thin bar on the screen. "Snooze" you pressed?
NO! I meant to hit Dismiss! I understand that some menus now have too many
options to fit into a grid of boxes, but it would be nice to have boxes for <5
options and rectangle labels for >5.

------
mikecane
Isn't Duarte -- formerly of Palm and webOS -- supposed to be the UI Dictator
over at Google? So how does this stuff happen?

~~~
mingramjr
Because the man is not perfect. Since his arrival Android has looked much
better.

------
sswezey
One I just noticed with the NS4G: there is no documentation on how to get to
Google Now, they talk about the Galaxy Nexus, but never mention its
predecessor. How do you get to it? The search button... swiping up does not
work whatsoever.

And I __HATE __how my contacts are white and everything else is a dark grey to
black theme.

~~~
Shooti
FWIW, they spell it out for "Devices with a hardware search key" in the
official changelog:

<http://www.android.com/about/jelly-bean/>

~~~
mikeevans
Can also just hit the Google search bar at the top of every home screen.

------
electic
I had a Jelly Bean phone and finally got rid of it because of this back button
issue. Hate to say it, Apple might not have all the features under the sun,
all the buttons, all the noises, all the icons, all the knobs, but whatever
they have is done right and at the end of the day, that is what matters.

------
CWIZO
Gmail on Android is especially bad when it comes to the back button: 1) you
are in some app 2) a new email arrives and you open it trough the notification
bar 3) you read the email and do whatever with it 4) hit back and you are
staring at the home screen. Arghhh this one is driving me insane.

------
tehaugmenter
I can't stand reading this guy's article. I've been an Android user for 3+
years. The functionality of the back button just comes natural to me at this
point.

The back button has always moved from an inner screen of an app back to the
main app screen. It's ALWAYS done that. If they were to "fix" it for people
who can't figure that out, they'd piss of every day android users.

Scenario: Text message received, using a web browser currently. Bob says: "Hey
did you remember to ask Joe about that thing?". What is your next move? You
respond to Bob, and you hit _BACK_, scroll to Joe's thread, and ask Joe about
that thing.

This is intended functionality. Translating that into a manual friendly
context is not really that easy. The majority of people these days don't even
read manuals. If you can't figure it out, then get an iOS device. I feel like
the back button is pretty straight forward (irony).

------
peterwwillis
Do Google devs all work in silos? Is there any unified vision for how a
'product' should end up? Or is it just a race to push features into a general
project plan and stamp a version on it?

------
richardjordan
Jelly Bean push to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus also led to a bunch of charging
problems which I'm not the only one to have, yet still cannot find solutions
to.

------
RivieraKid
Also icons in Action Bar don't have labels. The label appears after long-
pressing the icon but vthe ast majority of users doesn't know this.

------
89a
This OS is such a joke

