[refulgentis]

Erm, how long has Android been around again? It's hardly a rev1 product, and the iPad was "rev 1" under this definition and doesn't have the same trouble, and had half the processing power.

I'm an iOS developer and an Android developer, and I'm honestly disgusted by the level of excuses that is made for the horrible UX on Android. It reminds me of 10 years ago, when the meme on /. was "The Year Of Desktop Linux is always Next Year(TM)".

[nlogn]

"horrible UX on Android"

This is more than a little hyperbolic. Sure, the animations may not run at 30fps all the time. Some animations running at 15fps != horrible UX. I am an iOS dev as well but use an Android phone and just completely disagree on it having poor UX.

[refulgentis]

It's just an overall lack of attention to detail, compounded with the need for the OS to work on 1000 different kinds of hardware combinations. It's near impossible to describe without sounding whiny or silly, because it's death by 1000 stones, not one killer thing.

Anecdotes:

- Whilst using my Nexus S, it rings. I pull it out of my pocket, only to discover I can't answer it because there's a keyboard over the Answer/Decline buttons. Later, I realize I must have pressed and held on the Menu button long enough while pulling the phone out of my pocket to force the keyboard to popover the Answer/Decline buttons. But why the heck is this possible even? It vaguely reminds me Joel Spolsky's article on the Windows shutdown menu - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html .

- I want to make it so there's momentum/inertial/bounce scrolling in a text view. This is impossible. Why? So phones that still have trackballs don't have whacky scrolling behavior going on for them. But the ListView has inertial scrolling. How the heck can I possible explain this to my client without sounding foolish or lazy?

- I want to animated a cell disappearing from a ListView. Again, impossible. The solutions mentioned on StackOverflow ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3928193/how-to-animate-ad... ) (BTW, the Android presence on StackOverflow is abysmal), in order, and summarized: 1) Rewrite the class yourself because Android is open 2) Some hacky drawing solution that isn't a good idea. 3) Wait till Adobe's dev tools get faster on Android. 4) Re-implement the class from scratch yourself.

I understand now that Honeycomb has much better animation facilities, but we're not seeing that on phones. And when we do, the problem with carriers + manufacturers holding sway means whatever apps I build won't see any improvements on phones until Ice Cream is released and manufacturers ship phones with it. We're talking June or July at this point, right? For basic animation. That was in iOS 1.0. In June 2007.

[ekidd]

Whilst using my Nexus S, it rings. I pull it out of my pocket, only to discover I can't answer it because there's a keyboard over the Answer/Decline buttons.

Huh? I'm running Android Gingerbread on a Nexus One, and when the phone rings, I see the usual "unlock" screen, with one option for answering, and one for ignoring the call. There's no way to get a keyboard, no matter which buttons I press.

Is your phone fully awake and unlocked in your pocket? Is there something weird about Gingerbread (or the buttons) on the Nexus S?

[nuclear_eclipse]

On any version of Android, dating back to the introduction of the virtual keyboard in version 1.6, long-pressing on the menu button will pop up the keyboard, which allows you to, for instance, bring up the keyboard in applications without needing a specific textbox to select. This allows you to have applications like ConnectBot, where the entire screen is a terminal emulator, and you can pop up the keyboard at any point and start typing without having to type into a textbox and then "send" the text to the terminal. On the home screen, you can bring up the keyboard and just start typing a search query without needing to press (or even have) the search button or widget.

And for the record, when the virtual keyboard is shown, pressing the back button will always dismiss it without sending the back action to the current activity, so in your case you could have pressed back to dismiss the keyboard, and then pressed the button to receive the call.

[refulgentis]

Exactly, completely understand where this is coming from - but why in the world is this a default!?

[pkulak]

This has happened to me. I'm a geek, so I knew that hitting the back button would get rid of it, but come on. Anyone else in the world would have missed the call while starting at their phone and listening to it ring.

[refulgentis]

Couldn't tell ya. :/ I'll have to test it and get back to you.

[phlux]

Well, I agree with you on some points completely. Though.the ipad was not rev 1 -- which version of iOS did the iPad run?

While honeycomb is android 3 -- it is a total rebuild.

However, to your point - the UX should be first in ALL of the android space's mind -- ESPECIALLY given that they dont have the design (UX/UI) powerhouse behind them that is Apple.

[refulgentis]

Do you honestly think they rebuilt scroll views and the web browser completely to get Android 3 launched?

I know from my visits to the Verizon store to play with one that they hype it up as "completely new OS", but other than making the hardware buttons software finally, it looks and acts identically. As technical people, I think we both know that this is a revision of Android, not a completely new OS.

More to your point - iPad ran iOS 3.2 - the 3rd revision of iOS. The Xoom is running Android 3 - the 3rd revision of Android.