Motorola CEO Blames Open Android Store For Phone Performance Ills

angry tapir writes "Motorola's CEO blamed the open Android app store for performance issues on some phones. Of all the Motorola Android devices that are returned, 70 percent come back because applications affect performance, Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said during a webcast presentation at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology conference."

Comments

Wow there is a first..

[Sassinak]

A company passing blame on another company for its failings...

"Top" needs to be standard on smart phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of the black box nature of smart phone, developers of smart phone applications are never held accountable for the resources their application consume. It should be standard to be able to see the amount of CPU, RAM and network I/O each application is generating so that hogs which cause performance, battery life or network overages can easily be spotted. As far as I can tell, neither Apple, Google or Microsoft has taken seriously exposing this type of data as a standard part of their phone software stack. Hence, we are left in situation similar to when the food industry was not required to put a break down of the nutritional information of the food The smart phone users have apps contributing "fat" and "sugar" into the smart phone's diet without any hard numbers to evaluate that impact.

Motoblur

[mjwx]

Does he mean things like motoblur?

Yep, the original Droid/Milestone was lighing fast running 2.1 and 2.2. When moto started to shoehorn in Motoblur they all of a sudden got really slow.

Same with HTC Sense but HTC are at least smart enough to chuck in lots of extra RAM to handle their bloated interface. I've been running Cyanogenmod on my Desire Z since 3 days after I got it and I've been more then pleased with how fast it is, Cyanogenmod uses ADW launcher which has a crapload of features (so much so it suffers from Kitchen Sink-itis) but is still very very fast.

I used to be a fan of Android on Moto, but between locked bootloaders and crappy social network based interfaces that slow everything down have completely changed my opinion on Moto. They are floundering because of bad design decision in using Motoblur, not because of Androids openness.

After HTC and Samsung, I'd rather buy a Huawei phone simply because they used the vanilla interface.

Re:He raises a valid concern and offers a solution

[Kitkoan]

Only problem is, Motoblur is the application that will drain 35 percent of the phone's power and you can't get rid of it. Its sluggish and a power hog.

Wrong Direction!!!!!!!

[SuperKendall]

"Top" needs to be standard on smart phones

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the horror and despair for humanity I see in this single phrase.

It's like saying back in the caveman days that what we really needed was a better rock to carve . No, we needed to move on from the cave and invent fire and dwellings.

We need to move BEYOND what we have have, what we know. We cannot keep producing computing devices for humanity that require as standard anything like Top. We need to have systems that actually exhibit some of the AI we've been working for decades on, and not have to have every user know what a process is, or indeed manage anything.

Sorry, but our baby cannot stay a baby forever, because a 50-year old baby you still have to treat like a baby is mentally damaged. We have to let computing be usable by everyone, not working fully only for the anointed and requiring mothering because we cannot tear ourselves loose from that model.

Re:Wrong Direction!!!!!!!

[0123456]

We need to move BEYOND what we have have, what we know.

Sure, but that means something better than top, not some dumb-down interface that hides all the useful information.

We need to have systems that actually exhibit some of the AI we've been working for decades on

If we actually had any kind of AI that might make sense. Generally speaking, in my experience when you try to hide the details from users you end up with an interface that's Artificially Stupid, not Artificially Intelligent.

Re:Wrong Direction!!!!!!!

[MBCook]

Bingo. Apple is right on this one, you shouldn't need anything like this. The fact that you do says that something is broken.

That was one of their arguments for why multi-tasking took so long on the iPhone, and why it's not true multi-tasking like on a desktop (or Android). They wanted to avoid this exact problem. Of the people I know with Android phones, this is one of the things they complain about. They ship with crapware that can be very difficult to uninstall or just exit so it doesn't keep sucking up your CPU/battery. Just about a page above this comment is one from someone who rooted the phone on day 3 to remove junk and get it to perform smoothly.

Windows Mobile had programs like top because the OS couldn't manage resources well. My Dell Axim x50v (which was WM 5.5, I think) came with a little program pre-installed by Dell to let you quit applications through a tap on a shortcut on the top menu bar. And do you know why? For convenience? No, because it was necessary. There was no other way to quit apps (except digging through settings to find the task manager and force-quitting them). If you didn't stay on top and manage them, programs would use all your CPU or memory, and things would slow down (or not open). It was terrible.

The fact that Apple can do basic tests to make sure your post-to-twitter app doesn't use 100% CPU all the time is a good thing in my book. I realize you can side load things, but I would like to see Google try to do the same. Certainly I think Amazon should. As a consumer using an appliance (which is the way I use my iPhone), I want to be able to buy apps without having to worry about that kind of thing. Ensuring "manners" from apps, that they generally function correctly... that's the kind of thing I want out of my app store. I hope some of the stores out there (Amazon, carriers, etc) decide to do that. It seems it would be in their interest (as the article attests).

Re:Then again...

[node 3]

Nice, I missed that.

The sad thing is the average slashdotter will still think Android has surpassed iOS, as far too many have been saying here for over a year now. Android isn't even *close* to iOS's market share, and as Android's growth has settled down, it's not certain that it ever will.

That won't stop the endless postings that somehow people are flocking to Android because of "freedom", as though the average phone buyer gives two shits.