
Switching to Android - tortilla
http://www.chadfowler.com/2010/7/11/switching-to-android
======
TomOfTTB
If I might go off on a tangent about one of his points I’ve been thinking a
lot about this lately…

“Speech recognition is actually useful. Big surprise here. I can tweet, search
the web etc. with minor edits to my dictated text”

For those who don’t know Android has a built in Voice Recognition API so any
application can easily put use it for input while Apple has steadfastly
refused to include this feature because “it doesn’t work well” (Dragon has an
app but you can’t integrate that into an application).

This, to me, is a sign of what will cause Apple’s lead to crumble. Apple’s one
real weakness is they demand perfection but some things just can’t achieve
that. As has been pointed out by several HN featured articles Voice
Recognition may never be perfect. But it’s still useful. It can still hit 90%+
efficiency much of the time and for many applications that’s enough.

~~~
Sidnicious
I have never understood the appeal of speech-to-text on mobile phones.

I don't want to sit next to someone on the train while they enunciate a long
email or a text message to their girlfriend. Nor do I want to shout my own
internet musings at those around me. Besides, these days most of us are used
to editing as we write. Good PC dictation software makes that easy. On a
mobile phone, you'll end up editing it by thumb anyway.

\- - -

The problem with not demanding perfection is that once a feature ships and
it's "good enough", it's probably going to stay "good enough" forever.

Yep, Android's has lots of cool features that iPhone has not, but a lot of its
core functionality isn't fucking done.

~~~
commandar
>Yep, Android's has lots of cool features that iPhone has not, but a lot of
its core functionality isn't fucking done.

Like? I've had a G1 since launch, and I can't really agree with this
sentiment.

Yes, Android has had some very rough edges in terms of UI, but, if we're
talking core functionality, I've never felt like anything was flat out
unfinished. There've been a lot of things added iteratively over the last two
years that I wouldn't want to do without now, but everything has been building
on the same fundamental base that they shipped with 1.0.

I think it's hard to claim that the competition isn't also guilty of shipping
unfinished products. Take a look at the evolution of the iPhone -- all the
moaning about copy+paste, multitasking as an afterthought, the fact that
cross-app data sharing is still impossible under Apple's ToS, or the fact that
Apple fed people a line of bullshit for nearly a year that "if you want to
develop for the iPhone, make web apps."

~~~
callahad
If I was doing anything on my ADP1 when I got an incoming call, the phone
would become completely unresponsive and quite warm to the touch while it
tried to page out other activities in order to allow me to answer the phone.

Only about one time out of five did it actually finish whatever it was trying
to do in time for me to answer the call.

------
srgseg
Am I the only one that finds the Android UI (esp with HTC Sense) way better
looking than the iPhone UI?

I think this is beautiful: [http://www.androidspin.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/02/modaco...](http://www.androidspin.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/02/modaco-htc-sense-screen-2-21-10.png)

The iPhone UI looks dated to me.

~~~
nlh
Static bits of the Android UI do like pretty nice. The article hits on an
extremely good point that I haven't heard enough (but strongly feel myself):

Android's UI is just nowhere near as smooth as the iPhone's. "Clunky" is the
exact right word. Scrolling on the iPhone is perfect - you can tell Jobs
obsessed over making it zero-lag, perfectly smooth. That makes the whole UI
-feel- better. And for a lot of users - me included - that's a big deal.

Everytime I pick up an Android phone to play with it - hoping they've fixed
this - my immediate impression is "wow...this doesn't scroll as well, doesn't
move as smoothly, and feels like an ancient UI." It is - quite literally -
like Windows XP vs. Mac OSX.

I think if they figure out a way to NAIL the UI in Android, that will close
the gap significantly....

~~~
usaar333
I agree scrolling was an issue in the past.

However, using android 2.1 + JIT (sort of a pre-froyo) on an htc hero, I find
scrolling _almost_ on par with the iPhone. I imagine Nexus One's with Froyo
are near-perfect.

~~~
mberning
Nope, still not close. The 2.2 update did make a difference, but it is still
far from perfect.

------
lambda
"I’ve never met an on-screen keyboard I didn’t hate. Android is no exception."

Swype. In beta now, but I got in on the beta, and man, does it make on-screen
entry a lot better than any other on-screen keyboard I've used.

~~~
Groxx
Very interesting... (<http://www.swypeinc.com/>)

Requires touch-typing ability, as you hide a large amount of the display as
you swype, but easily stands to be much more efficient than repeated jabbing,
but it doesn't prevent specific, accurate input. I quite hope this takes over,
it's a great idea.

~~~
kleiba
Hmm, that looks a bit like Shapewriter for the iPhone.

~~~
grammaton
Which is also available for Android :)

~~~
Spakman
Are you sure? Their site tells me otherwise:

<http://www.shapewriter.com/android.html>

I _think_ I read something about it them stopping selling it for Android. Does
anyone know why?

------
antichaos
I prefer iPhone 4's form-factor, yet I use Nexus One as my primary phone
because of its seamless integration of google voice, free turn-by-turn
navigation system, and built-in support for tethering.

~~~
rimantas
iPhone has tethering built in since iPhone OS 3. Works very well over there
with no AT&T in sight.

~~~
axod
Can you get the iPhone to act as a wifi hotspot though or is it via USB?

~~~
daskrachen
It is bluetooth or USB only. I guess wifi would eat too much battery

~~~
axod
Wifi is much more useful though, I can plug my Nexus One in so battery isn't
an issue, then use _any_ device that knows about wifi - Nintendo DS, etc etc

------
jkincaid
If you don't like the stock Android keyboard (or even if you do) I'd highly
recommend trying out Swype. It's pretty damn impressive. Not perfect, but it's
definitely a strong alternative.

------
samaparicio
When we rounded up a few small business people, the things they pointed out
that they liked best about Android and iPhone were even more basic than Chad
Fowler's report

[http://www.ringio.com/2010/06/29/iphone-vs-android-
getting-o...](http://www.ringio.com/2010/06/29/iphone-vs-android-getting-over-
the-hype/)

------
joubert
Dude, iTunes music has been DRM-free for more than a year now.

~~~
jokermatt999
Amazon has double the bit rate though. That may not matter to some people, but
I'm not going to spend money on 128kps songs. I'm no audiophile, but there is
a difference at that low of a bitrate.

~~~
mattparcher
As of April 2007, DRM-free iTunes songs are 256kbps AAC. Amazon MP3 is 320kbps
MP3. Audio file formats are a highly-debated and subjective matter, but the
consensus seems to be that “AAC is higher quality at the same bit rate, so you
can use a smaller file to achieve the same quality as MP3” [1]. (Originally
DRM-free songs on iTunes cost extra, but now they are the default.)

[1]
[http://www.planetofsoundonline.com/articles/compression1.htm...](http://www.planetofsoundonline.com/articles/compression1.html)

~~~
jokermatt999
News to me, thank you. I skimmed Wikipedia to double check my figures, but I
misread it. In either case, I still prefer MP3 to AAC (though converting is
trivial).

------
starnix17
Other then the fact that he says iTunes music is DRM'd (I don't think it is
any more), I'd say this is a pretty fair review of the Android ecosystem.

Edit: This is completely irrelevant, but Chad Fowler looks way different with
shorter hair.

~~~
jolan
> he says iTunes music is DRM'd (I don't think it is any more)

No more DRM but they do stamp info about you into the metadata so you can be
tracked down if you happen to share the files. Amazon doesn't do this.

~~~
booticon
The last album I purchased from Amazon MP3 has "Amazon.com Song ID: " in the
comments field of the ID3 tag.

