I bought an Android phone 4 months ago because I thought I was going to sell an Android project and wanted to research the UI. I set up the phone, I hated it, and never really used it again.
Said Android project never landed and now the phone is gathering dust on my shelves. I only ever use it to test websites in the Android browser (and only when doing — extensive — browser testing, it’s not part of my standard testing procedure).
Sometimes I think: maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I tried to use it. I tried to love it. But I couldn’t.
My intention is not to anger Android fans. I don’t hate Android. I love the concept of an open platform that people can tinker with and use to create whatever they want. Apple’s walled garden is flawed in a lot of ways (no demos, censorship, no fair competition if Apple already created [your app functionality]).
But if I look at Android as a designer I see a lot of faults. It’s UI is inconsistent: there’s HTC’s UI stacked on top of Android’s default UI, then whatever developers came up with in their apps.
As a user I can’t help but notice that Android is extremely slow, not only in rendering UI and switching screens but also in browsing. Why sell a phone that runs an OS it can’t handle a 100%? The Desire S is certainly not on the lower end of Android phones.
By almost any measure my iPhone is a better phone: the only thing I like more about Android is the notification system and being able to make your dashboard/home screen useful (iOS is particularly bad). But mostly it looks like somebody tried to rebuild iOS but failed at a lot of points.
The only reason I’m keeping it is to be able to test Android apps for clients and/or test new apps that are Android exclusive 1.
The nice thing about software is that it can improve. However, as a customer I’m locked out of Android improvements.
According to my twittering Android friends HTC is not likely to issue an update.
If I want Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) on my phone I have to install a custom ROM, made by hobbyist coders, probably not very stable, which in turn voids my warranty. And if I do that, my device is not representative of the general population’s Android phone anymore, making it a bad testing device. Catch 22.
Maybe Android is a cool OS now – but if I want to see that apparently I have to buy a new €600 device. I just want to plug the phone into the computer and update it. This device is six months old. Why can’t I do this?
If you bought an iPhone 3GS 2,5 years ago you can still have iOS 5. Some features have been disabled, but you get most of the goodies.
- To my knowledge there are no super sweet “Android only” apps out there: if it’s a good app, it has an iPhone equivalent.↩