A year ago when iOS 7 came out, Apples dismal upgrade to their much loved simple mobile OS, all I had was not so kind words on how several things started to mimic the Android platorm. It took several websites and tutorials to learn how to change all the required settings to make iOS7 act like iOS again. When the upgrade for the iPhone 5 was slightly bumped with the overhyped and overpriced iPhone 5S and 5C, I decided to move to Android. More than one year later living with Android and three Android phones, what I really want to say is Android is crapier than iOS. It really is. It sucks balls. There are so many things wrong with Android that I could write about. In general, its UX is the worst Ive ever used. For starters, Android is not an equal experience on all its devices. To make the most out of Android, you really need the latest and best hardware just to make it run smoothly, and even then that doesnt guarantee a worry free experience. Dont even bother using Android on a budget low end or even midrange phone, unless all you plan to do is call and text and play a few mindless games, which defeats the whole purpose of having a smartphone in the first place. And just because you might have the most expensive Android phone, it doesnt necessarily mean you will be able to use all its features, like say storing your apps on your SD card, as the latest updates to Android actually block apps from accessing your external SD card and restricts the SD card to only storing media files. And to top off the list, to make Android even work efficiently and properly, you will need to root your phone (a.k.a. hack your phone) and void its warranty just to be able to install third party apps from Google Play Store that will turn off other apps running in the background (because Android apps can turn themselves on without needing your input), stop apps and even Google itself from accessing the web and phishing your private info, clean your RAM, clean your internal storage which is never enough, and a thousand other things that will drain your battery and your sanity. If a normal person knew what Google and other Android apps were doing in the background, it would be enough to make them start wearing tinfoil hats. Going back to the UX, there are so many things wrong with Android. Sure theres an option within settings to manually turn off apps, but thats just a placebo as they will turn themselves on as soon as you turn them off, and some wont even turn off as appsare allowed to override your commands. Theres an option to move your apps to the SD card, but depending on the manufacturer and Android version, the SD card is sometimes emulated and not really your external SD card, dont let its label fool you. The biggest gripe I have with Android are the three soft buttons at the bottom of the screen which are always there. They take up too much space, are easily triggered because of their position, for instance you just wanted to press spacebar but tapped on home instead thus erasing everything you typed because some apps will reset themselves once hidden in the background (defeating the purpose of multitasking), most probably a memory issue but irritating none the less. The black bar for the soft buttons is even more present when using larger screens and tablets. Not all manufacturers however choose to impose using soft buttons, and I strongly advise staying away from those phones without the three system buttons built into the hardware. Just the fact that one of these system buttons is 100% dedicated to nothing else but opening a menu to view your open apps, which you will be using to close apps more than anything else just to save battery life and make your phone run smoother on less than stellar phones, goes a long way in saying how crap Android handles apps and multitasking. This like everything else is just a placebo as it only shows you apps that you opened and not the ones running in the background. Sure other nerds will say Android is made that way to give software developers greater freedom on how their apps behave, but I like apps to run only when I open them and stop when I close them. To solve the soft button issue requires that you root your phone and install another third party app. Having the option to use soft buttons is truly just an aesthetic and superficial option as there is really no benefit to the consumer other than to flaunt a flat front designed phone, losing a large part of your digital screen to the soft buttons which are constantly there. On the iPhone all you need is the home button, so simple yet so profound. You can almost do anything with the iPhones home button that Androids three system buttons cant even do right. Contrary to what other nerds will try to make you believe, you actually have less control over how Android behaves than compared to iOS. Unless you are willing to root your phone or at least have the capacity to understand how to root and tweak your Android phones settings, youre basically stuck with just tweaking superficial settings, with some settings making you believe you optimised your phone but dont actually do anything such as trying to permanently turn off a background process. Sure you can skin and change they way Android looks and behaves, but when you try to change core features such as how often apps are allowed to access the internet or at all, youre screwed. The only way to make some of these things stick is to connect your android phone via usb to a pc and change the settings using the command line via Androids SDK. Although on the next system upgrade, all your tweaks get erased and you will need to redo everything over again, provided the system settings have not been restricted by the new update. On iOS 7 however, once you disable all the Android like features, you dont need to change them again, or at least until iOS 8 comes out. On an Android phone, I am constantly tweaking things just to make my phone run smoothly and nicely. Ive lived with android for more than a year now and Im still tweaking things on a daily basis, especially with each new update that comes out. On iOS after a few tweaks, thats all I needed to do and my phone worked. Ive decided that Im just too old to waste time tweaking my phones performance on regular intervals throughout the day or every time I need to use my phone. So my next upgrade will be an iPhone again, most probably the iPhone 6 Plus as Ive been waiting years for a bigger iPhone. In summary from purely a UX view point, in my opinion which is the better mobile OS? No not iOS, but Windows Phone wins hands down. Seriously its probably the most intuitive, robust, and easest to use mobile OS compared to Android and iOS. However Apples Store has the best content available online, no app on the Google Play was enticing enough to spend real money on except maybe the apps to fix Android, and Microsofts online store is virtually non-existent, so my next phone upgrade is definitely the iPhone. Sadly what I actually spent on my three Android phones was enough to get an iPhone 5S in the first place.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 16:56:16 +0000
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