{"id":904,"date":"2009-09-01T14:16:52","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T20:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/playing-with-android-quick-observations\/"},"modified":"2010-02-28T17:42:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T00:42:50","slug":"playing-with-android-quick-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/?p=904","title":{"rendered":"Initial observations on Google Android"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a huge fan of Google, it&#8217;s no secret. I finally found the opportunity to play with an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.android.com\">Android<\/a> device. I&#8217;ve used a first-generation iPhone exclusively since March 2008. I like <a href=\"http:\/\/al3x.net\/2009\/08\/10\/switching-season.html\">change<\/a> so I&#8217;ve taken a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.htc.com\/www\/product\/dream\/overview.html\">HTC Dream<\/a> for a spin (using <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.android.com\/sdk\/android-1.5-highlights.html\">Cupcake 1.5<\/a>) for the last two days.<\/p>\n<p>I have a few quick observations that may or may not have been covered elsewhere:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><strong>The hardware is awful:<\/strong>&nbsp;I don&#8217;t know why phone developers are so terrible. They have been for years. Apple shook up the scene with a top-of-the-line expensive device and now it&#8217;s mainstream. It&#8217;s been over a year, why does everything still fall short (design, speed)? Just copy everything and at least pretend like you&#8217;re trying.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The software is awesome:<\/strong> I&#8217;m jumping into the game mid-stride with Android so what I saw out-of-the-box is very impressive (push notifications, background processes, video recording, etc.). But it&#8217;s arguably right on-par with Apple at this stage. Things like the notifications bar (I can see I got an email and text message and missed a call) and widgets (I can see the weather or the score of the Rockies game on the home screen) are like a breath of fresh-air coming from the very tunnel-visioned iPhone.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Slow slow slow:<\/strong>&nbsp;I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s the device, the software, or some mixture of both but it seems memory and speed are lacking. I&#8217;ll sit and wait for 5 seconds at a time just to watch an application pop open. Perhaps the background processes need a way that help the user protect them from themselves (yeah, I should open up 10 things at once, sure).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Awkward clicking instead of tapping:<\/strong>&nbsp;as of the writing, no pinch to zoom makes weird zoom levels that require a lot more tapping than a simple pinch would. This is software and hopefully Google will decide it&#8217;s worth sticking it in. It&#8217;s important to keep in mind, not all Android devices will have touch screens (televisions?) so it&#8217;s understandable.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The browser is hard for users:<\/strong>&nbsp;zooming, changing windows, opening bookmarks: all things I do often and require at least two-too-many clicks.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><strong>Application offerings are so-so:<\/strong>&nbsp;I&#8217;ve found a lot of great applications (tools, games, widgets) and I&#8217;m really impressed with what&#8217;s out there. There is a lot to be desired and lots of empty space to fill. Now is probably a good time to become a big player in a growing space.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>No good media sync off-the-shelf:<\/strong>&nbsp;you have an SD card (awesome, removable storage!) but you lack the ability to sync with something like iTunes. You are forced back to the drag-dropping of files onto a drive. But if you don&#8217;t use this as a media device, no worries<\/li>\n<li><strong>The applications are as bad as the developer makes them:<\/strong> a huge criticism is the lack of polish on Android phones and in the applications. Sure, Apple hands you everything you need with their SDK, thus, you get a lot of nice UI elements for free. But, you get stuck with a closed system, an application &#8220;review&#8221; process, and a bunch of hoops. Android says &#8216;do what you want&#8217;. Think Facebook and MySpace: that profile page on MySpace looks only as bad as someone chose to make it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>More buttons means more depth:<\/strong> a lot of people look at the iPhone\/iPod touch and see two buttons: &#8216;power&#8217; and &#8216;home&#8217;. Though it may seem cluttered, the additional buttons on most Android devices (&#8216;menu&#8217;, &#8216;back&#8217;, &#8216;home&#8217;, scroll ball, etc.) means more application depth. I can quickly scroll around a list with the ball. I can click and hold the ball (or my finger) to bring up more actions. Each screen can respond to a &#8216;menu&#8217; button which allows you to stick things like &#8220;Settings&#8221; and &#8220;Refresh&#8221; somewhere where the user isn&#8217;t always faced with it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Virtual keyboard and touch-screen is so-so:<\/strong> the original Android device only offered a keyboard (arguably much nicer to type on, I forgot about mobile keyboards! The tactile response virtual (on screen) keyboard is nice but the overall size seems small and tight. Oh, and the way I use my thumb on Android seems to &#8216;hit&#8217; right below where I always intend to. Apple must do some calculating to shift those touches upward. (Put your thumb against a flat surface, the curvature means the top usually hits first and is immediately recorded as opposed to the overall footprint of the finger)..<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><strong>Integration with Google Voice is nearly perfect:<\/strong>&nbsp;it&#8217;s not seamless, but close enough. I can send text messages from either my cell or my Google Voice number. I can set my calls to do the same. Maybe this way I&#8217;ll get everyone &#8216;switched&#8217; over to my new, preferred number.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Additional Google integration:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t even know where I would to go change which Google Account is associated with the device. All I know is my calendar, contacts, and GMail are all there. No settings page, no picking ports.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As of right now, with a mix between the hardware offerings and software, I&#8217;d give the overall experience a 7\/10 (iPhone is an 8, Blackberry Pearl is a 5).<\/p>\n<p>It wouldn&#8217;t take that much to knock Apple off it&#8217;s throne; in fact, it&#8217;d be better for everyone. I&#8217;m rooting for Android but likely sticking to Apple. We&#8217;ll see if the costs outweigh the benefits in the next few days.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 10px;\">  Originally posted  at <a href=\"http:\/\/devinreams.posterous.com\/playing-with-android-quick-observations\">posterous<\/a>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I&#8217;m a huge fan of Google, it&#8217;s no secret. I finally found the opportunity to play with an Android device. I&#8217;ve used a first-generation iPhone exclusively since March 2008. I like change so I&#8217;ve taken a HTC Dream for a spin (using Cupcake 1.5) for the last two days. I have a few quick [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","category-internet","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}