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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."
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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