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Android 3.0 Is Trickling In, But Are the Apps?
jhernik writes "As tablets based on the new Honeycomb version of Android appear, critics have questioned Google's moves to enforce a standard Android platform, and said there may be as few as 20 'real' apps for the devices. Motorola's Xoom tablet is due to appear in the UK next week, along with the Eee Transformer, but their ability to compete with the recently-launched Apple iPad 2 may be hurt by the shortage of tablet-optimised Android apps. Meanwhile, reports that Google wants to standardise Android hardware are causing alarm."
The Android platform automatically scales apps like that already. It has to because Android supports lots of resolutions (unlike iOS).
Have never understood all these "lack of tablet-optimized apps" BS... it all seems like FUD to me. Most iOS apps I have seen are identical between their tablet and phone versions.
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) was developed with tablet type computers in mind and is not meant for smartphones. Android 2.x apps will still work, they just won't be optimized for the interface.
It's not BS. There can be a huge benefit when the developer actually customizes their layout to account for more screen real estate with lower DPI. Automatically scaling apps usually results in odd looking UI and wasted space.
It's when they don't have a version for the iPad that you really see the difference.
You can zoom it so it fills the screen, but it ends up being an app that only works in portrait mode, has clunky, poorly rendered buttons, and generally feels different to use. You can usually see the big jaggies around the edges of things and sometimes a button ends up being ginormous as it was sized for a small, hand-held.
If someone doesn't include the higher-res graphics, it's quite obviously an app meant for a phone.
Can't speak to Android, but I can say that an app meant for a phone doesn't always work as well as you'd like on a tablet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Google needs to start setting some standards. Real time low latency audio is one example. Android will have a hard time getting applications like audio mixers ala amplitube/garageband because of this. iOS has a 4-5ms latency, Honeycomb is down to a 45ms requirement that hardware manufacturers have to meet. No company is ever going to invest money in creating an application where there is no real guarantee of knowing what hardware will be available to even run it.
I don't think Google's trying to standardize hardware as much as they're trying to create a hardware baseline for software releases. It makes sense. There's no reason one should expect last years hardware to run next years software. You get caught up in that messy Microsoft sphere if you do that where you have to bloat all your software to make sure it works with old hardware and new hardware alike. This has been Microsoft's approach with Windows Phone 7 and, while WP7 sales have been lackluster, the hardware baseline itself has been working very well for them. There's less emphasis on comparing hardware specs in the phone and more emphasis on picking the model that you like the best, which is the way that the entire industry is moving relatively quickly.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
"However, there are certain new features that 3.0 brings, such as fragments, and action bars and stuff like that."
Check it out, Google's trying to redefine "fragment" in Android as a *good thing*.
Setting standards is fine, but the question is who sets those standards, and wether those standards will be set in the best interests of the community of developers and hardware vendors, in the interests of Google, or in the interest of users. Using access to Android source as a club to force OEMs to use Google search, to hamstring Facebook and other service providers, or to only provide the kind of phone Google sees fit isn't standardization in the interests of consumers.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
You obviously don't own a Xoom. Many apps are just tiny rectangles taking the top-half of the screen or so. Some apps scale, most I have tried are not scaling.
All of these "articles" are just looking at the "featured" tablet apps list, which are picked by marketing folks and is not the definitive list of Honeycomb-specific or Honeycomb-enabled apps.
For instance, my company updated its app to use Honeycomb features as appropriate, while maintaining backward compatibility with Froyo and Gingerbread (minSdkVersion=8, targetSdkVersion=11), but it's not listed as a "featured" app.
Have never understood all these "lack of tablet-optimized apps" BS... it all seems like FUD to me
Want to see the reality of the issue?
Go get a Nook Color and either jailbreak it or make a Honeycomb SD card to boot off or something. Make it so you can install non-tablet Android apps on it.
Now get the official "Google Reader" app for Android and run it.
On a phone-sized device, it's completely fine, because you can hold the device with one hand, and all the controls are within reach of the thumb of that hand. On the tablet-sized device, the UI goes from "nice enough that it gets out of your way and can be ignored" to "pretty darned annoying".
It's not just a matter of resolution or scaling -- UI design for something phone-sized is not the same as UI design for something bigger than phone-sized.
(Under iOS, what you're supposed to do is query the system about which UI paradigm is in effect, or specify for which UI paradigm your software is designed -- that's the "UIDeviceFamily" stuff. That way you don't have to make the decision based on checking pixel counts, leaving the door open for both phone-sized and tablet-sized devices with different pixel counts.)
Yes, the apps aren't as pretty or functional as they could be if they were fully optimized for the form factor.
However, saying that only 20 apps are available for the $500-1000 device someone is about to buy is just plain untrue... You can already use what you've got, and it'll get prettier and more functional over time.
I do own a Xoom and I don't have the problem to the degree that you're stating. Mind you, I probably use more apps that just use Android's normal UI drawing mechanisms, which is what scales just fine. There's no pixelation or anything. It is a little weird to have a list that fits on a phone screen taking up the whole tablet screen, but it doesn't look horrible.
There are apps that are ridiculous and won't scale. Some of those are for better reason (Pandora, for example, I can understand, as that's a little more challenging to make scale up to the larger screen without further work), but some of them are just stupid. Dictionary.com app has a clunky interface that takes twice or more longer to load and interact with anyway, and that probably looks like shit on the Xoom--I haven't tried, because I've honestly avoided apps like that on the Xoom and have tried to stick to apps that I know should have reasonable expectation of working without problems, and those apps work great.
In my opinion, except for some that the developers just need to get on top of, the problem of apps looking shitty on the Xoom is mostly the fault of the developers who think they have to use their own shiny UI or try to make it look exactly like it looks on the iPhone (which is the only one that I can see their point, as the same interface across multiple platforms is a nice idea, but in my opinion, it's an idea that leads to more bad than good) and therefore run slow on Android and not allow Android to scale it automatically. I despise Apple's control over the App Store, but that's a very clear and obvious advantage to that control and disadvantage to Android's openness.
at Android development, one of the 'good things' seemed to be that you can write your app - and then provide different layouts based upon the screen resolution of the target device. Should mean a developer can very quickly tweak their app to benefit from the extra space given, if it's run on a tablet. I'm not for one moment suggesting that adding some better layouts to a phone app will suddenly transform it into an app natively designed for a tablet - but better than just scaling up.
Couldn't agree more ... I have the wifi-only version of the iPad ... pretty much most places that I go have free wifi. I can't imagine paying for a cellular data plan for something that 90% of the time I'm connected to a wireless network.
About the only scenario I need to cover is that some hotels only have wired internet. But, that can be solved by bringing a wireless router with me that my iPad is already able to connect to.
I'd like a smart phone, but I just can't justify what it would cost to have one ... my wife and I figure if we changed our current cell phones for smart phones, we'd be paying at least $100/month more. And we're already paying for a crapload of stuff from our provider.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
BREAKING NEWS: Original iPad launches with 2,000 apps.
Shocking, I know, but Apple announced the iPad project in January 2010. They actually gave developers 4 months to prepare for the April launch. Google could have released the SDK months before the Android 3.0 launch (instead of 2 days), but even they admit Android 3.0 isn't fully finished/polished.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/02/best-ipad-apps-launch/
I think Google made a mistake in buying into the idea that phones and tablets have be different at all. There is a big difference going from a desktop/laptop with a mouse and no touch screen, to a phone/tablet with usually no mouse and always a touch screen, but after that, do we really need the distinction? Wouldn't it be better if software (apps and the OS) allowed for a smooth transition across screen sizes from 3" to 10+"?
I personally want a phone in the current dead zone (except for the Dell Streak). I find even 4.3" too small, but 7" is too big. 5", or even 5.5" is my sweet spot. What am I supposed to use - Honeycomb?, Gingerbread? Why the hell do I have to make a choice?
Future smart phones are all going high resolution. Anything with a screen size of 4 inches or more is going to have 1280x720, 768, or 800 pixels at a minimum. 1920x1200 will probably push down to 7" devices. Software should be able to handle a range of screen sizes and resolutions and reflow text and icons (and allow lots of configuration to choose font and icon sizes and number of icons) to make working across this range not a big deal.
And another thing, at this point I do expect that some reasonably specified current hardware (single core, 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, etc.) should be able to be upgraded many years into the future. Sure certain features may have to be disabled, and configuration sliders controlling animation may have to be turned way back, but I don't want the core Android to turn into some behemoth that won't even run on hardware that is a few years old. I'm ready to hop off the iPhone train and a big reason is that Apple screwed my phone (3G) completely with iOS4 and isn't even trying to fix it anymore (no more updates for that phone). I'd rather Google didn't emulate Apple on that front also.
I'm all for Google flexing some muscle against manufactures and carriers, both of which disappoint me orders of magnitude more than Google ever has. But a sufficient solution for me to the fragmentation problem is if they would push for a lot more Nexus phones and tablets available simultaneously. Just one phone at a time (and no tablets) isn't cutting it. At least one phone from each manufacturer on each carrier and a bunch of tablets would be more like it.
Your reading comprehension skills seem to be a bit lacking.
WTF? You're attacking a sincere, neutral, informative, contextual post?
You said:
Honeycomb is down to a 45ms requirement that hardware manufacturers have to meet.
Honeycomb is a specific version of Android. Furthermore, you attributed a specific latency to Honeycomb which simply doesn't exist. Thusly me pointing out the common confusion which you now seem to be compounding. So factually, your statement is completely wrong. To address your factually incorrect statement, I said:
That's a misrepresentation and a common misconception. The truth is, all 2.x and 3x, versions of Android are capable of competing with iOS's latency measurements.
So since factually your statement is wrong and my statement is correct and I specifically corrected your statement with additional details which explains why your statement is wrong and your complaint is being addressed, I fail to see why my comprehension skills are the least bit questioned. Perhaps its not my comprehension skills which require correction?
From here, you then take a completely unrelated turn in the same paragraph...which is not to say I'm a grammar Nazi - believe me, I'm not - its just that its confusing since it has absolutely nothing to do with your original assertion that my factually accurate and completely topical statements somehow prove a comprehension issue. This is especially true since you then continue to make an issue of something which I specifically address and yet insist its an issue when clearly its not. Which seemingly further suggests the comprehension issue is squarely between your monitor and chair.
You said:
The problem is with not being able to enforce strict hardware requirements on a plethora of different hardware.
To which I had previously said:
Those standards have already been set and are being met. They are on par with what Apple offers and likely will be offering for some time to come. The next generation of Android hardware will all meet the required specifications.
Perhaps, "comprehension skills seem to be a bit lacking", doesn't mean what you think it means.
And the opposite reality is the Browser or something like Angry Birds. Works FINE without any optimization needed. If written without some assumptions it works well in both environments (If you don't "optimize" it for phones, you'll have much, much less issues.). Yes, your example's a good one- but most of the apps are actually fully functional and non-problematic on the Nook Color with Honeycomb- I know, I'm running in that configuration right now.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You'll need to nack and see how many iPad-specific apps were ready when the iPad 1 launched, a fair few, I seem to recall, including Apple's iWork stuff.
Over 2000 the day before launch and over 3100 the day after launch.
I have a Nook Color and I also have the Google Reader app on it. I don't see the annoying factor you see. Then again, I also don't expect to use a tablet one-handed.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Of the apps I've used so far on my tablets, a Galaxy Tab and an Archos 70 (both running Android 2.2), I haven't encountered an issue when using an app written for the phone. That's not to say I probably wouldn't run into one if I looked for awhile, but the games and productivity apps I've used seem to scale very well between the two.
I can't compare to the iPad scaling, I assumed it worked the same way. Reading your comment above, I guess it doesn't.
So these guys at https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3434 are complaining for, well, nothing?
"I'm selling these fine leather jackets"
The very idea of "standardization" could backfire. Badly.
We have precedent for this, because Microsoft did the same thing with Windows, dictating ever stricter hardware standards and forbidding OS changes (though you were apparently free to install as much bloatware as you liked).
And the result? Hardware among vendors was effectively identical. The software WAS identical. And manufacturers well left with little to differentiate a Dell PC from an HP PC from an Acer PC. Change the beige plastic to black plastic? Add some trim? Dell and Gateway tried to make a go of it via the customization route, but faced increased competition from manufacturers who were left with just a single weapon in their toolkit.
What happens when dozens of companies are producing identical products? You end up with a commodity. And how are commodities traded and sold?
On price.
And so manufacturers did the only thing they could do: undercut each other on price, to the point where PC profit margins were things best measured in dimes, not dollars.
I predict the same thing happening to Android. With no significant differentiation, the majority of Android devices will end up being heavily discounted, or even given away as loss leaders by carriers and others attempting to lock subscribers into subscription plans. (Think Amazon and B&N.)
But look at it this way. Finally, Android will be "free".
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
To some extent you are right, but the iPad had a lot of third party applications available at launch. Apple provided the development tools necessary well before the actual launch of the iPad while Google only released theirs just before the Xoom came out.
What I think it comes down to is that the Xoom came out before the OS was really ready and they are suffering for it. Hopefully by the time another Honeycomb tablet comes out there will be more apps available, but I think this was a mistake on the part of Motorola and to some extent, Google.
Of course another big part of this is that Apple designed iOS for a tablet first, before they started designing an iPhone (tablet hardware was not available or cheep enough to build the iPad) so the OS and UI was already designed to scale up to tablet size. Google started from a phone and had to change a lot to take advantage of the tablet form factor.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It is BS because they've put a lot of thought into it. If the app looks like crap it's probably because the developer did everything they say not to do on this page:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
iOS apps can look like crap too when the developer doesn't do what you need to do there for screen independence.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
> There's no reason one should expect last
> years hardware to run next years software.
Really? REALLY? There are a MILLION reasons to expect new OS to support multi-year-old hardware. I'm using Apple as an example here, not because they're perfect, but because I have first-hand experience with them and I remember the stats off the top of my head.
Windows, of course, supports much older hardware and yes, Windows has some bloat due to the fact that it can run 20-plus-year-old software, but there IS a middle ground between "bloat up and run software for decades" and "one year and you're done."
Users should ABSOLUTELY expect good support for at LEAST 2 or 3 years, especially since 2 years is the standard length of a cell contract in the U.S.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Anyone can run Android; not everyone can sell it with Android branding. The branding is what Google controls, not the code.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Actually, I personally have three different apps in the Android market that fall into exactly this category. I wrote them with resolution independence in mind, and there is absolutely nothing I would change about them to work better on a tablet. They simply don't need it.
Changing the size of game assets has nothing to do with tablets or with using Android 3.0 features. Tablets and high end phones tend to have similar screen resolutions. For example, the iPad 2's resolution is 1024x768, only very slightly higher than the iPhone 4's 960x640. And Android games are almost never tailored to a specific size and aspect ratio, because (unlike iPhones) Android devices have varied in those aspects for a long time.
Finally, remember there have been Android tablets around for over six months. Developers have had lots of time and reason to make sure their apps work well on them. None of the things you're talking about require using Android 3.0 features.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I hope Google *does* do something to standardize hardware. Specifically, they need to define a standard connector similar in functionality to what every iOS device has.
The fact that you can make a set of speakers or a stereo dock with one connector, and have it work for basically every device out there, is a big win. I know there have been some issues with device thickness which required mechanical adjustments on dock devices, but the electrical connection is the same.
It's hard to overstate just how useful that is. Imagine how great it would be if you could get a charger / speaker set / remote control / keyboard / USB adapter (ever wanted a host port on your device ...), etc, and have it work for any device you buy, from any vendor. There might actually be enough of a market so that independent manufacturers would make devices that are meant to work with Android.
To make this work, it has to be done right. The connector spec has to include anything and everything that is likely to be useful, including some generic interfaces (like USB, HDMI, audio, charging, maybe even SATA ...). There has to be full OS driver support for every peripheral, including enumeration of handset/tablet capabilities and detection of attached devices and their capabilities.
I can't even tell you how annoying it was to walk around at CES and see thousands of devices meant to work with iCrap, and basically nothing that was meant to work with Android devices (that wasn't made by the manufacturer of the Android device). It's even more annoying to go to an electronics store looking for something like portable speakers - about 95% of them have iPod docks, but less than half have a miniphone connector to plug into a headphone port.
Get with it, Google. The software is about equal, but there will never be a "peripheral ecosystem" unless there are hardware connection standards.
- The Sigless Wonder
> There also are lots of apps that don't benefit from changing the layout, and simply scaling the UI up to the larger
> screen is exactly what you want. A lot of games, for example, are in this category.
No, that is not true. It is never true. We don't have to guess at this, we've already seen the iOS app platform transition from small devices only to a mix of small and large devices.
Why am I buying a PC size screen to run the same exact app from my phone just scaled up? I am not. That does not sell tablets. What sells you a tablet is you get to run scaled-down PC apps, not scaled-up phone apps. The benefit is you get a PC class app in a device that is half the size and weight and double the battery life of even the smallest PC. The browser in the iPad is not a scaled up mini-browser, it's a full-size browser. It's not the iPhone browser scaled-up a bunch, it's the Mac browser scaled-down a little bit. With games, it is the same. You want the game to be a slightly scaled-down version of the PC or console game, not a scaled-up version of the phone game. You want richer textures, wider open vistas, and you want the game to work like it's full-size version, not its mini-version.
Layouts have to change dramatically on the larger screen. A 3-4 inch app is a widget, while a 10 inch app is a PC app. Widgets do all kinds of tricks to get around being so small, showing you long scrolling menus that then disappear to show the chosen item in a small view. A full-size app can show you the menu in 1/4 of the screen and the items you're choosing in a large 3/4 view. A widget can show you just a few buttons, sized for fingers. A full-size app can show you many more buttons, still sized for fingers.
What you're missing is that iPad is not a big iPhone, it is a small Mac/PC. It doesn't seem that way because iOS and touch are coming from the phone, but the full-size 10 inch screen is the defining feature of iPad, and that is coming from the Mac. And the OS X underneath is a PC class OS, the app platform is PC class native C. People are buying iPad to be a small Mac/PC, not to be a big phone. The apps have to be actual full-size apps, that is what not only attracts the users, but that is just what users end up running. Even if you already have a large collection of iPhone apps, you end up using the ones that have iPad interfaces and buying new ones that have iPad interfaces, even when they are replacing the functionality of iPhone apps you already own, even when you continue to use the iPhone apps on an iPhone.
> You've got some serious selection bias going on. The apps that someone has bothered to write
> a separate version of are the ones that benefit from having a separate version.
His bias is towards apps that are actually running on iPads. They are almost exclusively iPad apps. Almost nobody is using the iPhone apps on their iPads. It's just not happening. This was probably the biggest surprise of the iPad with regards to apps. Even when a user had a large collection of iPhone apps, they were going to App Store and buying replacement apps with iPad layouts, whether they were the same app/developer or not. In some cases, they were preferring a very new, basic iPad app over a sophisticated and mature iPhone app.
The iPad has a PC screen and PC browser and email and other apps. When you're using it, you're in a PC context. It's a small Mac, not a big phone. When you switch to an iPhone app, you context switch to a phone, and users don't like it. You go from big views with menus on the side to tiny views that you have to go "back" out of to get to a menu. You go from 10 finger-sized buttons at a time to 3 huge buttons at a time.
A lot of the same people who at first criticized iPad for being "just a big iPod touch" are now saying it's totally fine to run scaled-up phone apps on a XOOM. Running scaled-up phone apps is "just a big iPod touch". Running PC apps on a tablet makes it a mobile PC. That is what users want, because the people who are buying tablets in many cases already have a touch phone or iPod touch, they already have the mini-apps right there next to the tablet. They want you to put their PC into the tablet and make a mobile PC to bring along with the mobile phone, not put another phone into their tablet so they have 2 phones.
A lot of people here are talking about this stuff like it's academic. It's not. There is a year of experience on this, with 25 million users now, and they are running the full-size apps, not the mini-apps.
The difference between iOS and Android is huge in that respect. On iOS, it does pixel-scaling (simply doubling them) for non-retina-display apps. The result is that 1) you get huge pixels, and 2) you get a huge black border around the app because you can't get from iPhone to iPad screen size by multiplying by a whole number.
On Android, UI is generally designed fluid, and that's because there are many possible screen sizes. When running on tablets, the apps just reflow their UI. Worst case, you get a lot of wasted whitespace between controls, but still no pixellation. In many cases (e.g. file managers) it actually works surprisingly good.
Finally, remember there have been Android tablets around for over six months. Developers have had lots of time and reason to make sure their apps work well on them.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy.
On monday I bought an Archos 70 Internet Tablet (Android 2.2, 7", 800x480).
Now, there are many Android phones out there, that have a similar screen resolution, but a significantly smaller display.
Since most developers do not care about DPI, apps that look just fine on a phone with WVGA resolution look bad on a tablet with the same resolution, because the elements (buttons and stuff) are just to big.
I don't know if Android doesn't track the DPI of a display, but it should and developers should take that into account.