We like Android. But let’s be honest, even without that little 
tag, we know this is a work in progress. Having had a chance to use our Android phones regularly for several months now, we’ve come across all the issues one would expect in a massive rollout of a mobile OS. Sure, battery life is way better now than it was at launch, and I don’t have to reboot my phone to free up memory any more, but there are still plenty of things we’d like to see added, improved, or fixed.
With the long-awaited Cupcake update coming, we’ll be seeing a lot of new features, but these particular ones seem to have missed the cut. So, without further ado…
- Notifications are buggy and arbitrarily limited. For god’s sake, Google, you’ve got a good thing here, now make it work. I like notifications; they’re handy and versatile. But they only work maybe 70% of the time. When I get an email to my primary account, my phone is set to vibrate twice, ding, and blink its little light. Sometimes it does all three. Sometimes it just dings. Sometimes it vibrates once. Every combination of these things has happened, including nothing at all. Give me a break! I know some apps futz with settings, like the useful but terminally buggy SMS Popup, but if it’s that easy to break Android, it’s time to tighten up.
And while we’re on the topic,
- Why can’t we customize notifications a little more?
If I have two text messages, display the first line from both. Why not? Emails could pull a little of that information too — “1 new email, from John Biggs: ’solutions not excuses.’” What’s so hard about that? And lastly, we know the LED can show like a billion different colors. Let me choose one for my default. Why won’t you let us do that, Google? Why do you hate the rainbow? - Let us exit apps for real.
When I hit that home button, I have no idea whether my settings are being saved, the state of the app is being remembered in RAM, my game is being paused, or none of the above. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. I’m not saying it’s wrong either way, but let us really quit if we want to. How about if you hold the menu button for three seconds, it force-quits an app and clears it from RAM? Sure, sounds good, let’s do it. - Let me remove and organize app icons in the app drawer.
Yeah yeah, that’s why we have home screens, but just when I start to remember where seldom-used apps are in the alphabetical layout, I download something starting with “A” and everything’s shifted. I just want to move stuff around a little or delete stuff from the drawer, and then there can be a button to repopulate and re-alphabetize. I’m don’t use Amazon’s mp3 service enough that it has to sit there at the top of my drawer all day! I’m a big boy, I can always find an app in the settings menu! How about this: in the uninstall/info screen, just put a check box: “Show in App drawer [x]“ - When I dismiss my notifications, dismiss the voicemail for real.
I know it’s there, and it bugs me to have that little reel-to-reel icon up there like 90% of the time. When visual voicemail comes out, you can tweak it again. - The search box autocomplete is over-aggressive (and laggy).
When I hit enter in that box, I want it to search for whatever text is in the box, not whatever your algorithm has had time to select for me. I type in “Wilkie” and “Wal-Mart” comes up before “Wilkie Collins.” So if I hit enter too fast (and hey, maybe I’m rushing it) it ends up searching for something completely unrelated. Just have enter submit the text, and I can always select the menu entry with a touch.
- The contact list needs some minor, but important changes.
Just get an alphabet in there somewhere. All my friends late in the alphabet think I don’t like them because I have to scroll all the way from the top every time (sorry, Xavier. We’ll talk soon). The onscreen keyboard in Cupcake will make this a piece of… a breeze, we’ll say. Just pop that sucker up, I hit the J, and up come all the Janas, Janes, Jennys, Jeannettes, and Jims. Also, just have the little tab on the right visible from the start. Why wouldn’t it be? - The GMail and regular mail apps are unpredictable when they open.
Half the time when I open GMail, it’s the inbox. Great, that’s where it should go. But the other half of the time, it seems to pick a random email, and certainly not one I was in recently. Just have it go to the inbox every time, G. Same for the regular mail app. Sometimes it starts up with the inbox open, sometimes not. It has to do with whether you had an email open when you last closed it, but it leads to the button being a kind of mystery. Just pick one and go with it, we’ll adapt. - More “long touch” stuff.
Context-sensitive actions are awesome, and the long touch works great. We just want to see more of it! - Why not have ring profiles?
All I’m saying is, a quick switch between “Night,” “Work,” and “Out and about” or something, with different ringtones or settings for each, would be really easy and really useful. Locale kind of does this, and I use Bedside for when I’m sleeping, but this would be handy. - Key illumination.
When it’s dark and the keyboard has dimmed because I’m reading a web page or something, as soon as I select an editable text box the keyboard should light up again. As it is I have to type something random in there or wiggle the trackball, often deselecting the box. - Android Market needs a changelog section.
Make it expandable or whatever, but don’t make developers haveto cram version notes into the app description. That way when I see an app has an update, you can just show me the update part.
- Sometimes the menu button just won’t wake the phone up. It’s not like it’s that hard to just hit the on/off button, but why does it sometimes just not work? Pretty shady. I don’t know, if I’m the only one, I’ll shut up.
That’s all we could come up with, but it’s by no means a complete list. We love Android, but we also want it to be all it can be, and these little changes and bugfixes would make such a difference. Obviously Cupcake is making the rounds and some of these bugs may be exctinct soon, but this is how we see it right now.
What about you guys? Any pet peeves, frequent bugs, or plain old feature requests? Sound off in the comments.
holy crap. that sounds like a windows mobile phone – and actually, a little worse…
Nah. Android is much more user-friendly. These are more pet peeves than serious issues.
You are fool to use an unaesthetic device.
You are a fool to use a phone that doesn’t do cut and paste.
android = deadpool
iPhone + Bloated Marketing Budget = Strank
Actually many of those things are addressed by the apps in the Android Market. Why would Google need to make those changes if Android developers already offer an app to meet such needs? That would essentially defeat the purpose of creating the Android Market and allowing outside devs to access it and improve upon the features/functions.
How about Google letting developers worldwide sell apps? I’ve had an Android port ready by a Polish Android developer since the launch of the Android Market. We worked extra hard to have it ready since we know about the “gold rush” upon the opening of the iPhone App Store. Where is my app now? Still waiting.
So now my Polish dev is taking matters into his own hands and starting an American company and is almost finished filling out all the legal papers. Why should someone have to go to such lengths just to sell software? Well, I guess it’s just Google being evil.
Because these are interface and system defficiencies, not extras. Apps are not there to compensate for OS oversights they are there to provide specific functions. If you need an app to improve the notifications you got yourself nothing better than a symbian or winmo.
I agree with JT. These are OS and UI inefficiencies… something that Google Android team should address. Users should not have to reply on 3rd party developers to correct minor flaws.
@Devin… what about the Market itself? How is the King of search able to produce a poor search engine for itself mobile OS?
I have to agree with JT these enhancements while possible to resolved via market apps; should be part of the default look and feel of android (out of the box). Android has progressed well but needs to more polished which hopefully it will achieve over time…
Another area where android needs to improve is the Market. It can be difficult to find apps when I’m looking for them. The following cover the majority of Market issues: http://androidguys.com/?p=4198
I was kind of going to point at that also, and I have not experienced OP’s email problem.. I am pretty confident that you are mistaken, or have a defective device.
The menu button – you are dead on – I am now in the habit of pressing the trackball everytime before hand to ensure menu button functionality…
Ring profiles? There are like 10 apps, I would just use one of them. As a matter of fact, I’ve found the dev community with Android to be so good that you can requests apps, that people will build and release for free, or just for the posting fee. I think a big part of what Google is doing with Android is trying to showcase the possibilities with 3rd party apps. Not everybody likes Apple and wants to pay 2x as much as they should for their hardware and then have to budget $50/month just to make the market worth surfing.
On the contact list – when you do a quick flick with your thumb or finger a slider tab pops up, which allows you to scroll through the alphabet. You can also press any letter on the qwerty to jump to that point.
There is a pretty decent visual voicemail app out on Android already for free. No more vmail icon.
The thing about Android is that in its current stage its not for someone who wants to pick it up and own the world. You have to be willing to actually use the search box in the market and see what your options are. I think there are some serious annoyances that make it feel like I wrote the whole
OS on the subway from my iPhone – but if you involve in the communities you can find that there is a lot more to it and solutions to most annoyances, as well as the ability to add a decent selection of other features to the phone that were never intended by Goog, tMob, or even Apple ont heir devices for that matter. Dude my G1 has a metal detector, ok?
I quit smoking yesterday. Any replies to this effing post will likely be met with serious anger. Thank you.
HOLY CRAP I SMELL iFAG
over all the list is pretty spot on.
Who wants to let Google control your every move and collect all the data, anyway…
While I agree with almost everything, the email notifications are how you say you want them in build 1.5.
Also, I am not sure where Google itself would add more long touch features. Basically everything they control as far as the OS does has that ability already. If anything, more dev’s need to utilize it. I remember contacting the team behind Locale about adding long presses to consolidate screen space for all the menus they have, and they said that the idea wouldn’t be obvious enough for most users when they tested it.
The market itself needs a major overhaul though. its improved since the beginning (see spam/”first” issue), but its still a long way from where I consider Google to supposed to be.
Personally, I would really like to see tighter integration with their own services. I use Greed for a google reader…reader, and while it is good, I would like to see what google could bring to the table for a standalone application. As well as a gallery/picasa mashup allowing you to browse online photos as well as local ones, and send/download them as you see fit.
Compared to day 1, Android has already come along way, and I am defiantly staying around to see where it goes from here.
I wonder if the Pre will do any better?
looks like Android has come out with a bunch of issues that anyone working with Windows Mobile could have pointed out where important to get right. The fruitphone has avoided a lot of these by being more restrictive, but both WM and Android are suffering from being a more powerful developer platform… but at the same time being a little less slick – and the cost for Google to fix this may not be something they can justify in these tough times
I agree with several of your suggestions, but the contact list one confuses me. Pretty much everything you ask for is already in there. If you touch the scrollbar at the side of the contact list, then it pops up the letter of the alphabet big as can be, and as you scroll down, shows you which letter you are on.
If you type “”j” right now, it will bring up everything with a “j” in it. If you typed “x” or “xa” your friend Xavier would pop right up with not a bit of scrolling. You seem to be complaining that it lacks functionality which is not lacking.
probably the cupcake onscreen keyboard will solve my issue; it’s just that opening the keyboard to get to a contact is annoying, and the tab on the right is kind of a crap shoot.
I suspect it is a “what you are used to” issue. Having used a Sidekick, several BlackBerries, and a couple of Windows Mobile devices before using the G1, it doesn’t even occur to me to scroll through a list of all my contacts. I don’t think I have ever even explicitly opened the contact app. I just start typing the name at the home screen, and it automatically opens the contact app on the name I want. That is how I expect it to work.
To me, flipping the phone open and typing a few letters seems much quicker than opening an app, pulling up an on-screen keyboard, and then typing something in, or worse opening an app and then scrolling through a list. I find having to open a special contact app just to make a call annoying. However, obviously you have a different background with devices, and so have a different expectation. To me it sounds like you want it to work more like the iPhone, and to me the iPhone feels very cumbersome in this regard compared to the way other devices handle it.
That is the tricky part of UI design. You can’t make one design that will fit everyone’s expectations.
I fully agree with the notifications point, lacking for sure.
And ringer profiles are something I miss from my Blackberry days.
Also, why not add pictures to the main contacts list like the pictures in the Favorites. There plenty of screen real estate to add a small image. The IM status is a good start.
Actually the Pictures in Favorites issue has been solved with cupcake
I can see all your points – I am surprised you didn’t mention FLASH support and running apps off the SD card.
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
Well that’s why we have valuable commenters like yourself! Flash is definitely something, but I haven’t run into the memory ceiling just yet.
Flash support to me doesn’t matter. Those kind of heavy plug ins weigh down the mobile web far too much and I think that all of the big players not really trying to make a big deal out of it is a good thing. The last thing I want is for it to get trendy and have to wait for every stinking page I go to, to load a “welcome to our retarded mobile flash site” screen..
As fas as I can tell 99% of the people out there complaining on all of the forums about flash just want it to play the same games they’ve been addicted to since they got their first 14.4… Live in the now ppl; and if a company develops their website which isn’t viewable by anything except for flash in an age where the average business professional now spends over half their day on a mobile device, and the youth who have the money are in a trendy quest for mobile supremacy… well I don’t care to do business with or even give that company the bump for my visit…
I’d rather see someone successfully bridge the OS gap and let all developers only have to write their apps once, not once for each store. We are seeing some serious proprietarianism going down here with everybody launching their stores to be written on a different platform…
Once again I’d like to mention I recently quit smoking and my judgment is being clouded by extreme anger. Any replies will likely be met with the same :-) Thank you.
My personal favorite: if you use the notification drawer to read new emails, but use the home key without going back to your inbox first, this will cause email to stack up repeatedly so that, after a day of emails, I could potentially hit the back button about 95 billion times before ever getting to the home screen.
Also – the random notification style thing is probably because it seems to ignore any sound/vibrate settings if your text inbox (for example) is open when the phone idles or you put it on standby.
Some good points, but most of these seem to do less with the OS and more with individual apps.
The contact list DOES jump to a particular letter when you type it.
Menu button not waking the phone up. Could be a hardware issue.
LED customization? Why should the OS specifically handle this when future hardware may have a set LED color or maybe none at all?
I don’t want to go down the list and pick everything apart.. you get my point.
I’d consider the “core” apps – mail, marketplace, etc, to be part of the OS – much the way Finder is part of OS X or Explorer part of Windows.
And yes the contact list does go there when you press a hard button, but a touchable one is much more usable when the phone is in phone mode. I’m not going to flip out my keyboard just to hit a single key.
I think Android suck a lot after reading this.
The ability to browse and downloads apps on the web? Searching is fine on the Android, but browsing through them isn’t fun.
The categories need to be updated too. It’s flooded with themes at places.
The battery life of the device is my biggest concern. I hope, for the sake of other Android buyers, that it’s just a G1 issue.
I completely agree with your first point. Not being able to peruse the app market on a PC, as I would with iTunes for the iPhone, drives me bonkers.
Check out http://www.cyrket.com/ . Works well with Barcode reader to scan the barcodes and open the app in the Market.
Jeez, Saurik is friggin’ magic.
The “windows” in the browser are nice, but kind of un-intuitive. Suppose I’m on a web page, then an email pops up, I go to read it, click on a link in the email, and then it opens in a new “window.” I hit the back button 3 times to get to the home screen, then open the browser, and it’s on the new window, and the back button goes to the home screen. Ideally, the back button would go back to the “window” screen, and allow me to close it and/or select another tab.
Honestly… I didn’t understand a word of what you were saying…
In the web browser, hit menu, then select “windows.” You get a chrome-recently-viewed-tabs style view of your currently open windows.
Totally. As far as I’m concerned, this kind of thing should be anticipated and left to the user’s discretion…. but that’s really the design philosophy that led to Windows Mobile as it is today. Taking the right choices away from the user (iPhone) is the way to go, but Google hasn’t quite gotten it on the mark yet.
I think it’s kind of annoying with the iPhone that you have to go through the home page to navigate pretty much anywhere, it only runs one program at a time.
I actually thought, for my personal tastes, Palm always had the best approach here. They had their preferred ways to do things, and worked very hard to optimize the experience right out of the box, but under the hood it was open to all sorts of customization. I think the Windows Mobile approach mainly fails because the right out of the box the device is pretty much unusable, and only after hours of painful tweaking, customization and third-party app installing do you have a halfway decent device. I think the iPhone and BlackBerry both fail for the exact opposite reason, because if you don’t happen to like the way something works, then tough. Your options are to get used to it, or get a new phone.
I would like to see Android follow in more the old Palm model (without the complete stagnation for 5 years), than in either the WM or iPod/BlackBerry model.
Realized you forgot to bring up the home screen stare of death…
Anytime you use a cache heavy application and navigate directly to the home screen, rather than holding home to bring up the app selector screen – you are forced to stare at a blank home screen until your little Android is done wiping its butt. generally this lasts for around 5 seconds to start, then as you get farther and farther from your last firmware wipe it extends out beyond a minute.
I don;t believe google has been willing to acknowledge this happening yet. If they have they don;t deserve credit for it though, because it has embarrassed me to many times, especially after so many other firmware updates.
Hold down the home button and you should get the shortcut bar with all your current apps that you’re using.
No, it shows the most recently used applications. Not necessarily the apps that are currently running.
Yea, that’s what I meant. I like how Android manages apps.
Here’s my two biggest pet peeves:
1) No bookmark synchronization or import capabilities
2) No music management software
There’s An App for that…. search “bookmarks”
I like my G1, but after reading this I am tempted to whine too.
Let me preface by saying “Android is Awesome!” Now, I have only used Danger OS (sidekick), Windows Mobile (T-mo Wing) and now Android, but I feel Android has been my best experience. Still have not had any freezes, lock ups etc.
Personally, a lot of your gripes, I solved with the Android Market with apps such as toggle settings for example … My only problems is with the menu button not unlocking the phone, and memory limitations for app.
PS: no more battery problems for me! I gave in and went extended and it MAKES A WORLD of DIFFERENCE!
What do you mean by ‘extended’? How did you optimized the battery life?
I got the extended battery. Now the phone can go 35+ hours without dying. Before I was getting about 5-8 hours. Barely lasted through a work shift …
Where did you get the extended battery from?
I got mine from buy.com $21.99. You can find them almost anwhere. Most people are using Ebay. Mine is the one with the flat back, there are those with the hump.
I love this! I completely agree.
I would like more syncronization from web Google to apps. For example, I want my Google notebook in app form rather than having to go to the web. And why can’t my browser call up my Google bookmakrs? Google toolbar does it in Firefox. I really like having all my stuff in one place, but it would be nice to easily view it via apps on my phone.
I love this phone, more than any other I’ve had, but I agree some enhancements (flash, ahem) to make it ever better.
How about the missing integration with Google Voice? It is embarrassing to have a third-party app from a one-man team (GV) and nothing from Google/GrandCentral!
considering that they are still lacking support for some of their public released applications (namely docs), not to mention the implications of releasing what would essentially be a voip app, I’m not surprised by this at all.
However, there are several apps on the market that provide this functionality.
I agree with all these… the menu button not waking the phone up thing kills me.
Also when I’m on a phone call the screen fades and locks right when I have to hit 0 or something to talk to a person… I need that keyboard sometimes!
Good list tho
So I’m NOT crazy! I thought I was the only one!
For that problem you have, get Shake Awake. Keeps the phone awake during calls. kind of buggy though.
I second your point. It’s impossible to deal with an automated telephone system on Android because the dialpad won’t stay active long enough. I find myself tapping the screen repeatedly in non-active places just to keep the dial pad open a few seconds longer.
It’s easier to move the trackball.
Definitely the ability to exit apps! Sometimes my apps freeze and there’s no way to return to the app without it still being stuck in that frozen position. I can see it running when I type ps in the term emulator, but without the ability to kill… so frustrating!
You just press home or back and wait a few seconds. You should get a Force Close dialog.
I was unwilling to change from t-mobile to at&t. So, when the time came to change my old Treo 650 with Palm OS, I went with Android instead of iPhone.
After having used Android for several months, I’ve to say it is not in the camp of “don’t make me think” devices. After using Treo for a few years, I find Android annoyingly not intuitive. It forces you think, forces you to get around things, and to get used to inefficiencies. To get the same result, you almost always have to tap more times on Android than you had to on Treo.
The one real thing I miss from Palm OS is it used the virtual and digital keyboards interchangeably. At any point in time, you could use one or the other depending on your preference. There was no case when you had to use only the physical keyboard. With Android, it is pretty much always the case — you HAVE to open it to type something. Why?
I have to admit I did not read the manual much. I expected it to work by default. It did, kind of. I installed various additional free apps; none made my life with Android tangibly easier. Some new apps actually got in the way. An additional contacts app made me touch buttons a few more times to get to the call log.
From the above:
1) Agreed with “let’s exit those apps for real”.
2) Agreed with “sometimes menu buttons don’t work”.
Notifications and default colors do not bother me much.
Additions:
3) Make the Digital Keyboard more functionable than it is. Do not force me to open the phone to type unless I chose to do so.
Example: If you have to dial an extension after you dial a number, you are forced to open the keyboard to do that. There is no option to keep using the digital keyboard. Why??? Treo mastered that long time ago.
While driving, after dialing the main number, you have to open the keyboard and type an extension or (long) international number with two hands, there is a higher risk of an accident. Ok, ok, we are not supposed to be on the phone while driving, let’s face it — we do. Let’s make driving safer and calling or IMing more efficient by letting the user use the digital keyboard to type all he/she needs while holding the gadget with the same one hand.
4) Contacts — by default it is the most primitive app I have ever experienced on a smart phone/pda. When you receive a call from an unknown number, after you finish the call, Android does not prompt you to add the caller’s contact, you have to go through several steps to add that number, more often than not, I lose it. Treo Palm OS used to make it seamless – received a new call, one click after, added the name, all done.
5) Contact search: If you have a long list of contacts, and need to find one out of many, you HAVE to open the keyboard to search, no way to do that right from the screen.
6) It appears you have to buy a GPS app ($2.99) to let you find directions from where you are. With the default app for maps, Android shows you where you are as a dot on the map (that is helpful, but I still do not know what the exact address of that dot is). When asked for directions, it makes you enter the start address — well, give me an option to say the start address is where I am now.
Inefficiencies of default contacts and gps/map apps are my major issues.
The rest I learned to deal with I think.
7) I find the screen is too deem. It strains my eyes.
Minor:
7) There is no native jabber app for IM, you have to use Meebo to get around that.
8) I have not found a way to take short videos in addition to pictures with any of the default apps. Why not? Let me decide if I want to use up all android’s memory while shooting a video of a very low quality.
On a plus side:
My 17 months old son loves Russian cartoons streamed from Youtube. This has been an unexpected hit. :)
Videos coming in cupcake :)
For #3, you can slide up the dialpad from the bottom (I think this is improved in cupcake)
#6, there is an icon to the right of the address field that lets you input “my location”
No, you’re not crazy. That menu key doesn’t always work, I thought I was the only one too.
My biggest pet peeve when all the rest I can easily dismiss, is the pop email program that is default with the phone, When you delete it doesn’t delete from your phone. it disappears but then after a refresh they are back. Even after you get your emails off the server from your computer. Yes I can use K-9 and I have but the icon drives me freaking nuts. And I have yet to find an Icon pack I like. I also know I can make my own but I can’t seem to find an icon I like to use.
Everything else I can dismiss they don’t seem to bother me too much. Just that with the email.
My biggest pet peeve is related to the browser windows issue. If you are on the initial page of a website and then press Menu, Close Window is an option. But if you navigate to any links on the web page, then when you press Menu the Close option is not there. If you want to close the window you either have to press Menu, Windows and then press the little X (making sure you don’t just re-launch the web page), or you have to press back until you get to the initial page again. Very confusing.
Pretty good list. I actually like that the voicemail icon stays up because otherwise I’d forget all together that I have a voicemail (don’t get many voicemails I guess). Having owned an iPhone and a Blackberry (as many here have, I assume) I still like Android the best largely for its support of background apps and it’s notification system. There are still some rough patches, but I look forward to future versions.
PS. Sometimes the Menu key takes a few presses for to wake up the phone for me as well.
i honestly thought everyone would have migrated over to the PF visual voicemail app, to hell with listening to each voicemail one by one, i just delete the lame ones i dont want to listen to..
I was going to switch until I heard about T-mo switching over to VVM. I didn’t want to just learn one system and then give it up for the quirks of another.
Here’s another one to add. When you receive an SMS notification and hit “clear notifications,” the the same SMS notification continues to pop up randomly and when any other SMS comes in. Not sure the best approach to fix this, but when I click “clear notifications” I expect that I won’t be bothered with the same notification over and over again!
Is it bad I immediately knew what episode of TNG that pic above is from…and should I know better than to brag about that to my girlfriend?
Hearing things like this make me glad that I have held out until the second generation of Android devices come out. Of course, the Palm Pre looks compelling. I’ll be interested in reading about the software issues that platform might have.
Devin,
You can actually force an application to stop in Android 1.5 (or Cupcake if you prefer.) Go to Settings > Manage Applications, click the app, then Force Stop.
Note however that there’s pretty much no reason to reclaim the RAM used by an app. Apps are killed by the system when it needs more memory and each app has a maximum amount of memory it can use. Reclaiming RAM just won’t do anything but allow another app to sit in memory after you stop using it.
You should just not worry about it :)
The above poster works at google on the Android project, No?
Its pretty awesome that Android devs check the tech sites to see what people are sayin about the Platform, and they actually comment and educate… More companies need to do this, so they can find out what the people want and not what they think people want.. PS I love cupcake and cant wait to obsess over “donut” when that starts moving along…
We do appreciate feedback like the one found in this article indeed :)
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the input…
I’m more concerned about choosing whether or not the application is being “saved,” i.e. the email I’m in, the state of the game, that sort of thing. It’s weird not knowing whether I’m quitting something or putting it on hold.
Well ideally you wouldn’t see the difference and you would always feel like the app was “saved.”
Now, something that might help you is the difference between pressing Back and Home. Back lets you go one step back in your workflow, effectively destroying the current screen (”activity”). Home on the other hand leaves the app as it is and simply puts it in the background and take you to the launcher.
Sounds like your app has a bug. If it is not saving when its window goes away, it may or may not save when it gets killed.
I want a kill switch but I want to use it to kill bad apps e.g. one that takes up slows my phone down in the background. Before, I would just uninstall the app. I guess I can play around with “Force stop” but it takes like 5 steps to get there. Can’t we have a “shortcut” like Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A-B-Start (old nintendo reference)?
Romain,
I was going to mention that as well since Android is not like Windows where you have to force close apps to free up RAM/resources.
See you at Google I/O in a couple weeks! :)
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
Android is the wet fart of the mobile OS world.
Preceded by great expectations to deliver much relief only to leave you a hot mess.
It appears that Android is the perfect choice for the type of person who would run Linux on his/her desktop. I used to be, but nowadays I’d rather my stuff just worked, thankyouverymuch.
I don’t have the email issues but I don’t use gmail. I did have an issue where when I changed my time on the phone due to the clocks going forward it completely ruined the messaging look as they were out of sync.
not sure if this was fixed but I will wait and see next time.
I went from 1.0 to 1.5(I have AD1 version) and found it much more polished.
totally agree with the contacts. I wonder if someone else will develop a better version.
I think the market place is in need of a lot of work. top 100 lists, better search (IE search the search results), screenshots of app, paid and free market places instead of having to filter them. Oh and put themes in a theme category only…..
I love the phone more than my iphone but I think its only because I get a slideout keyboard.
If these were the worst things about Android then I think Google should be very proud. Not one of them seems a serious problem to me. I own an Android and my main issues with it are:
1. I need to be able to install apps to my SD card.
2. Home screen takes a while to load when I have been away from it a while and used many different apps in that time – better with cupcake but still room for improvement.
3. Market needs bookmark function and a separate category for themes.
4. Not Google’s fault but we need better, more useful apps – top on my list: Evernote and SugarSync, both of which have native iPhone apps. Google itself seems to favour the iPhone over Android sometimes, launching apps there before doing so on its own platform.
5. Again not Google’s fault but Amazon Music not available in the UK.
I have an android phone and some of the issues are not even that accurate to begin with and are not even BIG issues. It’s actually embarrassing to see such a dumb list up.
Take ANY phones and any mobile operating system and you will find faults on it.
Do I see a stupid list like this for the Iphone? Oh let’s see, I want to customize notifications more or I want more types of notifications. Wait, the iphone barely has any notifications. I want to be able to terminate applications. oh wait the iphone can’t even run anything in the background.
I want MMS to work well,
I want copy/paste 2 years ago,
I want a fairly priced plan,
I want to not be afraid of firmware updates,
etc, etc.. Yo could make one for iPhone as well – but this is an Apple fanboy site so…
Yea seriously, this list has minor inconveniences. The iPhone camp seem to have a whole lot more than ‘oh I email notifications are a bit off’. Hello, It’s a brand new platform. There is going to be little boo boos.
This list has MAJOR discrepancies. Some of the issues mentioned, I have never experienced, and I’m a G1 power user …. since day 1.
Waahhh…I can’t organize my app drawer. Yea real major. Relax man, they will come up with updates. The phone just came out 6 months ago. A major discrepancy would be not be able to copy and paste.
Techcrunch writers = facebook lovers, iphone nut huggers, and twitter lovefest-ers
This was really a companion piece to our “8 things we still hate about the iphone”….
Re: Menu button not waking up the phone.
I don’t use an Android phone, so it’s hard to be certain about this. But my experiences on the iPhone give me a hunch about what’s going on with the menu button.
As everybody knows (and often bitches about) the iPhone, does not allow background apps (except of course, if it’s built by apple). What is allowed, however, is for an app to stay running when you put the phone to “sleep” or whatever it’s called when you turn off the screen. And there’s one app–The New York Times–which is notoriously piggy when it comes to bogging down the processor, and nearly freezing the phone when you’re using it. It’s infuriating when you’re simply trying to read the NYT. Unfortunately, in addition to that, here’s what happens when I leave the NYT running when I put the phone to sleep. If I get a phone call after doing that, very often, while the screen comes instantly to life, the little slidey thing doesn’t actually respond. It’s like it’s frozen. Often it takes 10 or 15 seconds for it to respond. Sometimes, it’s too long, and I miss the call…
As a result, I never leave that app running when I put the phone to sleep. If I never leave that app on, I never have the problem.
All this to say, it seems very likely that having various and sundry apps running in the background would have similar effects on the OS ability to seize control and get that menu button to respond. Which is more ammunition for “Let us exit apps for real.”
My peeves are pretty minor: I think the user interface is just a little unsophisticated. It works well enough – I just think it could be tighter, a little more intuitive, and a lot slicker looking. The whole “drawer” concept is a little weird for me, particularly after using a Blackberry for two years and an iPhone for the last several months. Both are a little tidier looking and a bit more user-friendly for me. (And this was my first Apple experience this century.)
My one big peeve has more to do with the handset itself: Put the thing on a diet! God, it’s like carrying a freaking cinder block in my purse!
devin,
i tend to think of android 1.0 this way: its a linux kernel, framework etc for the qcomm 72xx chipset with a few demo apps thrown in.
the sense i get with google is they want to rely on vendors like htc to make certain changes/customizations to their phones. then it becomes a matter of perspective — google might think the vendor can fix it and contribute it back to the codebase but the vendor might think google shd fix it since its in their code or the vendor could be discouraged because google has rejected their contributions in the past. ahhh, the politics of OSS, its such a perfect world the fanboys live in.
since u r using a g1, think of it as a “homogolation” model like the world rally cars, except this is for the rough world of developers! how often do you get bleeding edge crappy hw if u r not a phone vendor? :)
I just got an HTC Magic on Vodafone and I think several of the issues here may be more specific to the G1, I’ve never had problem with the men u button or notifications inconsistency.
Personally I love my phone, I think several of the issues mentioned are down to personal preference. For example: I like the way gmail stays on the last page you viewed rather than going back to the inbox every time because I can switch between a browser and the email I’m writing easily.
The ring profiles thing definitely bugs me though.
I’m surprised by the lack of beef with the chat client. It sucks. You can’t edit your AIM contact list (besides adding new contacts and blocking), Google Talk will disconnect mid-conversation and randomly reconnect at some outrageous hour of the night (won’t stay logged in and has trouble reconnecting on unwanted logout), and I can’t copy text from a chat. There was something else I forgot, but it had to do with a lack of consistency with google specific app integration. Also, I don’t think the back button should ever take me from inside an app to the home screen, esp. if I’m not at an apps “first” page.
You can close apps in cupcake. I would’ve complained about the chat client as well. Or not being able to install apps to the sdcard (without a rooted/dev phone).
g1 loses also at hardware with its lousy display (only 64k colors, gradients are remorseless) and a weak video chip (choppy scrolling etc.). switching to ipod touch reminds me how brilliant apple done its job.
What would you say about Samsung I7500 with AMOLED screen, 3.5mm jack and 8 GB memory + SD card?
Less buttons. This is something for future phones. The hoe and menu buttons are redundant. Click on either and you have options to choose from. They should be one large button with options differing between short and long clicks. Switching from one browser window to another should be the short click and settings should be the long click.
The browser needs to be a more seamless part of the OS. For example multiple open windows should be treated as different apps with different options.
T9 or similar text input for the entire OS would be appreciated as all programs should be navigated with the thumb alone.
The Bar Control app, a drop down app list, is the road to the future.
All very good points and things I wish Android would have for my G1. I put my fandom aside for a little bit and whipped up a “bottom 10 list” of things about which I’m not happy with Android:
http://www.vanillacokehead.com/blog/?p=372
I thought my menu button working badly was a hardware problem, but apparently not.
Wow, seriously I thought that Android should be great just like Google itself (and it comes from Google)..
For me there are just 2 things that I would like addressed,
1 – Restricting times when your GoogleMail is sync’d. Its annoying recieving messages overnight…
2 – Birthday and Anniversaries in contacts. Why cant I unclude this with my contacts, to remind me when my contacts birthdays are???
1 Notifications are buggy and limited
Fixed for me in Cupcake/1.5
2 Lack of notification customization
Fixed in cupcake, it displays the sender in the topbar
3 Can’t “exit” apps
Task manager .99 cents, or there is a free app I think
4 Can’t organize apps from “app drawer”
Um, yeah, that’s just how android is setup, this is really a personal preference issue
5 Dismiss voicemail notifications doesn’t work properly
Fixed in cupcake (for me at least)
6 Search Box uto-complete is too sensitive
Slowness, at least, fixed in Cupcake
7 Contact list needs UI improvements
Agreed, but it’s much better in Cupcake
8 Mail apps are buggy
Fixed in Cupcake for me
09 Want more use of long touch
ok
10 Ring profiles needed
There are at least 2 apps for this
11 Key illumination
Doesn’t bother me
12 Android Market app changelogs
YES!
13 Menu button should wake the phone up!
Always does for me
Maybe you should have tried out 1.5/Cupcake before writing this article.
As he said :) I’ll add a few notes:
3 Can’t “exit” apps
Why whould you need this? It’s not WinMo. But if you want, app can be stopped in Settings/Applications (in cupcake).
4 Can’t organize apps from “app drawer”
It’s place for all apps. If 3 screens + folders not enough, you can use aHome with lot of screens.
7 Contact list needs UI improvements
There are apps for T9 search in contacts.
11 Key illumination
You can hit Menu twice.
12 Android Market app changelogs
Good idea, screenshots would be great too.
I’m just sitting over here loving that you used Wilkie collins to demo your auto complete issue. Thanks Devin! :)
Nice article. You’ve touched on some key points and done so pretty tactfully. Also, i’m drunk.
On keyboard illumination – what I’d like to see would be simpler: just any time the screen is illuminated and the keyboard is extended, it should be illuminated too.