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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."
A company passing blame on another company for its failings...
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
Does he mean things like motoblur?
And how many of those "problem" applications were malware, badly written, or just the bloatware pre-installed on the phone from the carrier?
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.
What are you basing that on? I would assume that the reason Android has a bigger marketshare than iPhone OS is because it's licensed to many, many manufacturers, whereas iPhone OS is only available on Apple products.
I don't think that has anything to do with it being "open."
If you read the article he does raise valid concerns about poorly performing apps that may degrade the user's experience. He's not merely complaining, he's also suggesting a possible solution:
"Motoblur collects information about customer use of applications and how that use relates to functions like power consumption. With that data, Motorola learns which applications drain power. "We are getting to the place that we should be able to warn you," Jha said. He envisions presenting a notice to users when they launch an application alerting them that using the application will drain 35 percent of the phone's power, for example, he said. The user can then decide to continue or conserve power."
And what about Motoblur which devours battery life with its constant updating of EVERYTHING?
What are you basing that on? I would assume that the reason Android has a bigger marketshare than iPhone OS is because it's licensed to many, many manufacturers.
By licensed you mean open sourced. Which pretty much proves the GP's point.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
From my (basic) understanding of Android and how it's multitasking it works: No.
This is nothing to do with the App store being open, this is more to do with Android App devs no doubt learning to code on a PC and not really getting to grips with coding for a mobile environment how Android multitasks in a unique way. In desktop development power consumption is rarely even thought about.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html
They need to go with it rather than try to workaround it. Nor at times do they seem to grasp what limited resources and a battery mean and how Google designed around these limitations.
If you encounter an App that behaves poorly, uninstall it, rate it low in the market and harass the developer. That's what the rating system is for.
Often you'll find many alternatives that achieve the same thing - inexplicably one app may hog battery in the background, one may not at all. It's lazy rushed make-a-buck development pure and simple.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
A Cliq, to be precise. And if I could, I would return the thing, but I only have 6 months to go on the thing and after that I can get another phone. And I can pretty much guarantee that the next phone won't be a Moto phone.
The problem isn't the app store - the problem is that Moto builds crappy phones, and is then unable to provide updates in a timely fashion.
Some of the problems with Moto phones are just that they choose underpowered processors or more limited memory, and if you get too many apps installed the phone just dogs down. There are times that I press something, it takes a good 30 seconds before the phone responds. If I uninstall a few apps, it goes much better.
Motoblur is the 2nd issue I have with those phones. While Moto denies it, I suspect that in part it is the reason why they have such difficulties providing updates to the phones. My wife has a Droid and that doesn't have Blur, and they have no trouble getting updates out the door.
The people that care about openness are an insignificant share of the market. Android is ahead because of increased hardware choice and cheaper handsets. That's it.
And the open sourcing of Android was accomplished how?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Many Joe AverageUser wants Flash, even if you don't. It was the major issue most of my non-techie friends had with the iPad, it doesn't have flash which many sites they want to see need.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
I always figured the Android market share was due to AT&T...
Posted from my iPhone
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nope. iPhones are on every carrier here in Canada but they still don't out sell Androids.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Let me guess, you have an iPhone... Anyways, stop with the FUD. Your parrot-speak is getting old and what you stated really only goes to show your ignorance.
And the open sourcing of Android was accomplished how?
Tell me I dont have to explain this to you.
The Wikipedia article should explain it (HINT: Android has been open source since it's release).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
and have ignored it. The original Droid (which I bought the day it was available, and still use) put Moto on the Android map, and yet they have done everything they can to vary from the things that made this device a huge success: No Motoblur, no locked and/or encrypted bootloaders, and a mostly vanilla Android experience. One need only read most any Android forum to see how many people regret 'upgrading' from the Droid 1 to another Moto device. I know I was originally excited to hear about new Moto Android phones such as the DroidX and Droid Pro, then being supremely underwhelmed with the devices' performance. The hardware was either improved or virtually unchanged, leaving the main difference: Motoblur, and loads of bloatware. Jha should get his own Motoblur house in order before he starts critcizing other apps for degrading the Android experience.
The openness appeals not so much to the consumers, but to the manufacturers and carriers, who can then offer Android-based products at a wide range of price points.
No please explain, I'm thick.
Do I just download Android from Google and do whatever I want with it?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
There are more Android PHONES, but iOS runs on iPod Touch and iPad as well. The are many more iOS devices that Android devices. Sigh.
I would assume that the reason Android has a bigger marketshare than iPhone OS is because it's licensed to many, many manufacturers, whereas iPhone OS is only available on Apple products. I don't think that has anything to do with it being "open."
How do you think it's available to many, many manufacturers? It's by virtue of it being open.
I mean droid or android, there is no way people would confuse those right? Motorola has fallen a long way and it looks like they are not done yet. They may go bankrupt instead of chose to actually compete in the marketplace instead of trying to bully people unfortunate enough to buy their products.
Pretty much. You can download the source code for Android here.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Sure, but that means something better than top, not some dumb-down interface that hides all the useful information.
There is no need for people to HAVE to view this information. People who want it will always be able to have it, so instead the design needs to be focused on how can a normal person NOT have it and be OK.
If we actually had any kind of AI that might make sense.
Well I don't know if you'd consider it AI or not but we have pretty good expert systems.
It's not about hiding anything from the user. It's making a system in such a way that the components used together do not have a propensity to harm.
Again, users that want or need to see will ALWAYS BE ABLE to do so. Stop designing FOR THEM. They can HELP THEMSELVES.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Choice is better. Every style of product always sells better when there is choice. Doesn't matter if it's smartphones, computers, clothes or even food like hamburgers.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Get rid of flash and force people to download an app instead. That way you can download 100000 different apps to access 100000 different sites. How about we get rid of a majority of your computers web browser functionality and we just switch to launching individual apps for each site you want to visit. If that concept is "new tech" then I would rather have the old.
Just got a droid X2. You'd think with half a gig of ram and a 1GHz dual-core chip in there it'd be a little faster than my droid1. Well, it is now, since I rooted it and froze most of the preinstalled Motorola and Verizon crap, replacing it with "open store" alternatives. Before, you wouldn't believe how horrifically bad it was; doing anything from opening an app to merely trying to scroll the screen would cause delays of upwards of 5-10 seconds. Almost returned it myself.
(For others with this phone/problem, nuking the DLNA and BackupAssistant stuff seemed to help the most.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
That's a misconception.
Android phones have a bigger percentage of the marketshare of phones than the iPhone has.
But the total number of devices running iOS(iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, tv is 59% greater than the total number of devices running Android.
Motoblur collects information about customer use of applications and how that use relates to functions like power consumption. With that data, Motorola learns which applications drain power.
I wonder how many people know their phone is reporting this activity back to Motorola. I might have to check what my phone is doing, I'm in a part of the world where cellular data access is neither free nor unlimited (unless you are on an expensive contract, which I am not).
It would actually be interesting to see this information myself. I've just had a mooch around my phone and the "portal" available when connected to a PC and can't see any interface to show such data.
I wonder how much CPU time and battery power the included apps that I can't seem to uninstall and which keep restarting themselves after a while when I kill them with a task manager. I can tell you that the battery life on this Motorola phone has been laughable (quite frankly I consider the battery life specs on the sales information for this phone to be simply fraudulent) since I got it, before any extra apps were added by myself, and adding apps doesn't seem to have made it significantly worse (aside from the wireless tethering tool, but as that keeps the wifi and 3G radios at full tilt when in use I expect that to drain battery power far quicker than normal).
No, since Joe AverageUser still wants flash. They don't care what you think, they want what they want, and that is flash. Many humor sites use flash, many free game sites use flash, many sites use flash for many things and it doesn't matter how much you don't like it, they public loves it. This is why its still used by so many sites, because it works and the public loves it.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
If you people would just stop using your phone for apps, games, or hell, even calls, you'd clearly see the superior Motorola phones give you no trouble. Why, I've had mine holding down a small stack of papers for well over six months without ever a hiccup!
Sincerely,
Joe Motorola.
http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html This page provides you with instructions to download the android source, also instructions on building etc.
Shocking, the same third party issues that caused MS so many headaches for so many years also applies to phones. The difference is people can tolerate some complexity on their desktop. Apple figured out the vertical integration thing when it came to phones. People don't want a PC in their hand, they want a well-running appliance. The failure to grasp that will be Android's undoing.
That is pretty freaking amazing!
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Anything else I missed?
There's nothing wrong with antenna, you're just holding it wrong.
it doesn't matter how much you don't like it, they public loves it. This is why its still used by so many sites, because it works and the public loves it.
Minor correction, i suspect the public probably doesn't give a damn about flash in particular. Website designer love flash. The public just loves being able to access websites, therefore they need to be able to use flash whether they like it or not.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I have an iPhone and I can tell you it doesn't bother me one bit. I know from experience on my laptop just how big a cpu/power drain Flash usually is (this is usually the developer's fault, not flash it's self, but the effect is the same). It's only been once or twice in the last 2+ years I wanted to do something that required flash, and that was usually playing a video. My family has 3 iPhones and an iPad, and they've never asked me about it.
I can generally divide the Flash content I run across into four categories:
I know a couple of people with Android phones. Some are diehard Apple haters, and some of them really love their phones. But I don't remember any of them ever mentioning having or using flash. I have been using Flashblock on my computers for a few years and there are only a few times I ever have to load a flash movie.
Would it be nicer to have the option? Maybe. Would the cost to get flash running well on the iPhone have been revenue positive for Apple? I seriously doubt it. At this point, the world has been in "we have to work on the iPhone or we're doomed" mode for at least 2 years. I don't think anyone things the usage of flash is going to go up.
I will note though, as stupid as flash seems on my phone, it does make more sense on a tablet where the larger screen would make interacting with flash sites easier. I still don't think it would be a real problem though.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The point he was making is that it Android was open sourced by applying an open source *LICENSE* to the code. Without that *LICENSE*, downloading downloading Android from Google and doing "whatever I want with it" would be a copyright violation.
Dear AC (Hijacked Public). His (your) troll was obvious, he was (you're) trying to obfuscate between "open license" and "license". Having an open license does not make something closed, which was the GGP's attempted point. just because Android is license does not mean it cannot be open.
If I wanted to release my own Android phone on my own hardware, I don't need the OHA's permission to use Android.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Please re-read the part you quoted:
I would assume that the reason Android has a bigger marketshare than iPhone OS...
It doesn't say anything about the iPod Touch, the iPad, iTv... just the iPhone.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Flash video works pretty well on my galaxy s II. Handles 1080p YouTube videos like a champ too.
Who cares WHY it has a bigger market share? Who cares in generally really. The main reason you even have to consider such nonsense is the "winner take all" mindset of the fanboys of proprietary systems.
Apple can ignore me and it's fanboys can try to marginalize me so long as I have a means to escape either of them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I dunno.
You plug in the phone, a file mangler window pops up, you drag and drop some stuff, you unplug the phone.
That all seems remarkably more simple and straightforward than what Apple makes you do.
It's no longer 1999 and you're no longer competiting against the Nomad.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The openness of Android is a big part of why Android has better marketshare than iOS, so maybe they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
What are you basing that on? I would assume that the reason Android has a bigger marketshare than iPhone OS is because it's licensed to many, many manufacturers, whereas iPhone OS is only available on Apple products.
He was questioning Android's 'openness' being the cause of Androids market share by replying that it was because it was licensed to so many companies. If his point was as you say, then it was a semantically convoluted point.
You confused the hell out of me for a sec there - you seem to be arguing water isn't wet.
But I think what you are saying is that consumers don't care from open... That Android only has bigger market share because there are more manufacturers and devices to choose from. This may well be true, but you are putting the cart before the horse.
The reason there are more devices and manufacturers to choose from is because Android is open.
QED Android has a bigger market share because it is open.
Flash is like Microsoft and how Apple wants to be.
It's something that you can't really avoid. You can be "pretend snooty" all you like. No one really believes you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The version the OEM's use is the OHA version, which differs from the open-source (AOSP) tree. They pay money for licenses.
The awesome part is that when some joker returns his Atrix because its "too slow", you can turn around it buy it refurbished for half price!
Actually seriously, I just got an atrix not too long ago and from what I've seen the biggest problems have nothing to do with apps in themselves:
Large widgets (in terms of screen real estate) slow down the interface much like a large sprite will slow down your 3d game. Clearly this is caused by double-rendering if not other inefficiencies
Live backgrounds slow things down. Duh. My screen doesn't always turn on immediately when I press the on button to get out of sleep, and I've linked it to my pretty live background.
Really, when I scroll with my finger, FIGURE OUT WHAT I AM DOING BEFORE DOING IT. I cannot believe that that Apple got something as simple as finger scrolling right and yet Android (or maybe motorblur, whichever) is still rough around the edges this late in the game in that I can scroll down a webpage and suddenly have it think I clicked a link that my finger happened to cross over. Same with me tapping an app on the damned motorblur main screen, having it highlight, but not having it launch. I even cranked up the "responsiveness vs. accuracy" setting to full accuracy and this still happened. Even the browsers all color links as visited if you do a scroll starting with the link. And don't get me started with the flash ads for videos that have a pause or full screen button in the corner and yet tapping that button brings me to a web page instead. The firefox app also has some really funky tap functionality where it picks the link thats at the bottom of your finger, not the center of it, and sometimes gets confused if you have multiple links under your finger and won't ever pick the dead center one. Its as if android has no standardized "tap" functionality in their SDK or something.
I do like their neat battery manager that tells me that "Phone Idle" is my #1 drainer when its not my screen... but I have to question if they employed any tricks to help reduce that number (turning the NAND off... partitioning the DRAM, caching it, and turning off most of it... etc). For example, I found the automatic brightness to be too aggressive and too bright most of the time than is necessary. I really shouldn't have to download an app to toggle that on and off to save battery.
Oh yeah, they also disabled more than two fingers on the touch hardware even though the touch hardware supports it.
But its not an apple product, and I like the customization, the ability to watch flash vidoes, the speed (tegra 2!), and other things
The people that care about openness are an insignificant share of the market
The consumers that care about openness are an insignificant share of the market
Android is ahead because of increased hardware choice and cheaper handsets. That's it.
And that's because it's open and a significant number of manufacturers care about licensing costs.
The version the OEM's use is the OHA version, which differs from the open-source (AOSP) tree. They pay money for licenses.
Incorrect.
They license the Google applications which are not part of Android and never have been.
Hey, but thanks for trying.
Cyanogenmod is built from AOSP, they don't pay a cent to OHA (thus cant bundle Google apps).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Choice is better. Every style of product always sells better when there is choice. Doesn't matter if it's smartphones, computers, clothes or even food like hamburgers.
I don't think Dave Thomas would agree
He saw that one of the problems with KFC, and all fast food restaurants of the day, was that they had much too complicated menu’s. He then worked with Colonel Sanders to drastically simplify the menus, focusing on a few signature meals. This small change particularly helped turn around the KFC franchise; and, though it was a minor thing, helped revolutionize fast food restaurant menus all over the world. Even to this day, the staple of most fast food restaurants is their overly simplistic menus, focusing on a handful of signature meals.
Adding capabilities to Motoblur is one way that Motorola can try to set itself apart in an increasingly crowded Android market.
I would like to see manufacturers release pure Android phones and compete on hardware. It seems to me that a manufacturer could easily set themselves apart by advertising the pure Google experience, much like the Nexus phones do.
Why don't they compete to see who can release the latest update first? I know I'd be more inclined to go with the company that doesn't drag out updates (or keep you guessing) for months.
About the only hardware differences I see are screen design. Oh, and radios that won't work on anyone else's 3G network. I suppose can forgive the second one, since there are so many differences in network design, but still, it would be nice to see a Pentaband chip in something other than the Nokia N8.
Instead we get crippled, buggy phones that never get fixed because they think software development is cheap and easy to do.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
I am on my second Motorola Android phone- orginal Droid and now Droid 2 Global.
The first was not bad out of the box and better once I loaded a custom ROM on it. Rooting and ROMming the Droid was easy- basically a trivial process within a few months of release.
The Droid 2 Global has been a different matter:
Out of the box the MotoSlow garbage meant that the phone was slower and less responsive than my Droid.
Rooting was fairly easy but it took a while to get a rom and last I checked there was still only one that worked globally.
Fortunately the rom works quite well- better than the original, stock ROM, Motorola! It is faster and more reliable as well. I initially had force closes once a day, now I rarely get them at all.
My sister chose to get a D2G instead of an iPhone and is still happy with it but she has kept the MotoSlow on hers and we have compared:
My phone is always faster- sometimes a LOT faster- and more responsive when opening apps of any sort.
Motorola: if you really want to differentiate yourselves get rid of MotoSlow or at least make it optional with a more basic Android an option.
And make it easy to change ROMs.
The way you are going with MotoSlow, you will not last that much longer in the market. People have figured out what the problem IS really and it is most definitely NOT the open Android Market.
These people are selling broken guns and then blaming bullet makers for their own exploding barrels. I'm sure someone could make a quick Windows virus/security analogy if we wanted to further the example of how pointing fingers does little to change a broken status quo.
Android is sluggish and buggy. It is Google quality which means perpetual pre-beta.
Android fans would deny it until they die .... but the fact is the OS is buggy and the UI is visually sluggish compared to any other smartphone OS ... even the old WinMo.
And all those signature meals are hamburgers. Different choices of hamburgers. Again, choice.
Your confusing choice with complicity.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
The openness of Android is a big part of why Android has better marketshare than iOS, so maybe they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Openness has almost *nothing* to do with Android's market share. The number of people who care is inconsequential. And besides, iOS has, and has always had, a greater market share than Android. Some time this quarter (it may have already happened, it may happen next month) Apple will have sold its 200 millionth iOS device. Android will be lucky to have half that.
Who cares WHY it has a bigger market share?
Because the quality that gives it a big marketshare is obviously a very important feature for the product....which is what we are discussing...duh.
The main reason you even have to consider such nonsense is the "winner take all" mindset of the fanboys of proprietary systems.
No, the reason market position is being considered in this discussion is that the feature in question is predominantly responsible for it...pretty obvious isn't it?
Apple can ignore me and it's fanboys can try to marginalize me
What the hell are you talking about? Why are you trying so desperately to be victimised? I don't think anyone cares about you enough for you to have anything to worry about there...you need to relax.
The only thing that's clear, is that you should probably be sedated before you endanger yourself and others and that you've eaten a shit sandwich.
Your experience in no way reflects mine, but it was entertaining reading your rant.
And the open sourcing of Android was accomplished how?
Tell me I dont have to explain this to you.
The Wikipedia article should explain it (HINT: Android has been open source since it's release).
Unless you count the current version, that is. Or if you want the proper version, with all the Google services. Android isn't as open as most people here would think.
Not that I'm the AC you believe me to be but my point was that the GGP's attempted point is perfectly accurate in that Android is in fact licensed to many many developers. All the developers who want it and comply with the license, in fact.
Just like WP7, except add 'pay Microsoft' to the terms of the license.
This is as opposed to your read of the GGP as attempting to claim that the fact Android is in fact licensed makes it closed. I'm unsure how you got that out of it, because the word closed never appeared.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The post that started this thread incorrectly said "iOS", it wasn't until the linux geek's reply that he altered it to the awkwardly phrased "iPhone OS".
I dunno.
You plug in the phone, a file mangler window pops up, you drag and drop some stuff, you unplug the phone.
That all seems remarkably more simple and straightforward than what Apple makes you do.
It's no longer 1999 and you're no longer competiting against the Nomad.
What Apple makes you do is plug in your phone, then unplug your phone. *That* seems a lot simpler.
And everyone here that wants that one model of iPhone can have it, it is there for their picking and yet they don't want it.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Your confusing choice with complicity.
:) And you are confusing complicity with complexity. jk I'm sure it was a typo.
focusing on a few signature meals
focusing on a handful of signature meals
How about this then. Ok I'll grant that choice is good, but not necessarily that more choice is always better.
I have a Motorola Spice, which is a relatively budget smartphone that works well enough for its price. However my biggest complaint is that Skype doesn't work on it (and from what I've read, a number of other Motorola phones). It installs, it loads, and it even allows me to receive calls - but my voice is completely muted. The response from Skype is that this *may* be addressed in a future update.
Is this the fault of Skype or of Motorola? Or both? I support the idea of Android, or at least I want to. But there must be at least some level of standards in place.
The only meaningful way is to count similar categories - i.e. phones vs phones, and tablets vs tablets.
Yes much simpler. With the iPhone, You plug in the phone, Do nothing, And then unplug it.
It's called 'syncing'. File managers are for control freaks, I personally don't care for them.
Your right, it was a typo (I'm working while doing this so am relying more on spell-check to see if I get the word then making sure it really is the right word.)
Problem with your link is its still adding complexity, ie, multiple different flavors of jam. What I'm trying to say is, a hamburger is pretty much a hamburger where ever you get it. Its a bun with beef in it, and a few condiments. With your link about jam, think of it like this: You can buy strawberry jam from Kraft, Smuckers, store brand, Brand X, ect... its all choice but its all simple choice of strawberry jam. Different flavors of jam is adding complexity to the jam. In what I was talking about, an android phone for the most part is an android phone regardless whom you buy it from. Sure, like the hamburger, the 'condiments' are different, but it is in the end an android phone just from a different maker. And this is what helps it sell better, because there is choice, but not complexity.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
But I really think it's the apps we do not ask for, but are pushed down to us from our carriers that are the real evil. I'm fairly careful about what apps I have installed, performance was great until things "started appearing". Things I can't delete... Not coincidentally, that's also when i started seeing performance issues on my phone.
I don't think most Americans drive expensive German sports sedans. We drive decidedly crappier, cheaper cars and make quasi-informed guesses about the tradeoff we are making when we purchase. We can have the PC vs. Mac argument again...but I don't think anyone cares.
How do you think it's available to many, many manufacturers? It's by virtue of it being open.
Actually, no. It's available to many, many manufacturers because it is Google's business model to do broad licensing - which has nothing to do with being open source per se. Flash back a few years ago and remember that the reason that Windows Mobile was on many, many handsets wasn't because it was "open," it was because that was the OS maker's business model too.
Specifically regarding why Android is available on so many devices, it is Google's business model to get as many OEMs as possible to license (free as in beer but not the same as the version you can download from android.com) the Google-supported [can access the Android Marketplace, gets Google logos, etc.] Android versions and put them on their hardware. AFAIK there are no commercial devices which ship with the default OS based on the purely open-source version of Android.
The benefits of Android being open source are really to individual hackers, not OEMs.
"95% of all Slashdot
I have PCs, and Macs, and fix peoples PC problems, and their Routers and Droids and iPhones, and ... You name it, I am the geek with too many 'normal' friends.
All these comments say Motorola is to blame for crappy products, no updates, and crappy support. People this is a PHONE!!! there's no support! Not that there shouldn't be, but it is a fact of life. At least Motorola provided an update to the original droid to 2.2., and they even tested it first! What thanks did they get??? Script kiddies that got upset because it did not come out they day it was released. Even more that got upset because they said the hardware didn't support tethering. Sorry... it really doesn't. Motorola didn't lie. There are apps out that that fake out the Bluetooth to do pseudo tethering, but it's not done right. So Motorola did not back port broken tethering to a device that didn't have the right chip and some third party hacked it into partial submission. Again. Not Motorola's fault.
How many other vendors have provided ANY updates? very few. gee! Is my Droid loaded to the max with preloaded junk? no. Are many of the others? yes.
My droid works. It always has. It screws up with garbage apps that break it, and some apps drain the battery. Uninstall them. This is not a Motorola problem.
I am not saying there is not better hardware out there, but there is plenty of WORSE hardware out there, and I would go so far as to say MOST hardware out there is no better or worse, and most of the other vendors provide fewer updates, even worse support and bloatware you can't uninstall.
The iPhone is better hardware, and an easier to use interface, but you have to drink the Apple cool aid to have it. I like Apple's stuff, and I buy it, but their phone is missing some stuff I don't want to miss (like Google Maps and GMail integration).
Anyway.. I am not trying to say Motorola doesn't suck, but basically they all suck to some degree, and Motorola is not anywhere near the bottom of the pile.
2 cents.
How do you think it's available to many, many manufacturers? It's by virtue of it being open.
Actually, no. It's available to many, many manufacturers because it is Google's business model to do broad licensing - which has nothing to do with being open source per se.
I explicitly avoided saying 'open source' because open != open source. It's 'open' insofar as there is no barrier to entry and OEMs can do pretty much whatever they want with the software, you don't have to go and pay the OS developer and get involved in license agreements. The fact that they can customize the OS without having to worry about the OS developer and licensing agreements getting in the way makes it a lot easier for OEMs to differentiate which makes it an attractive platform.
Don't get me wrong I like choice. But I think we're just off on semantics. I think choice by its nature leads to complexity and a lack of choice leads to simplicity. It's not much of a leap to argue that the choice of Android devices vs the lack of choice in iPhone devices makes the Android 'ecosystem' more complex than the Apple's. In other words, the lack of complexity with respect to choice diminishes what choice really is. The more hamburgers I have to choose from the more complex their differences become. Sesame seed vs not. Wheat vs white vs rye vs sourdough. And that's just the bread. Angus or ground beef. Fast vs Dining. Condiments mean more choices means more complexity. McDonald's doesn't offer bacon on their burgers (I haven't eaten a McDonald's burger in years so that may have changed) because doing so would increase the complexity of (pre)making them even though they have bacon at breakfast. It's difficult to have complexity without choice and it's difficult to have choice without adding complexity.
Personally, I don't think having 10 near identical items is really a choice. In your example of differently branded strawberry jelly there must be some difference or there isn't a choice. If the product is similar then it comes down to price vs quality vs quantity vs shelf-life vs 'pretty picture on the label' vs 'easy to open lid' vs 'squeeze bottle' vs 'insert product differentiation' which leads to complexity. Without that complexity what choice is there really?
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I thought Android already had half that? Here's the first link I found when googling: http://yourmobilesite.net/100-million-active-android-devices-is-android-taking-over-the-world/
So the Android platform's open nature makes the overall user experience inferior for exactly the reasons Steve Jobs said a completely open platform such as Android's would? Shocking. As a geek I love Android's open nature. As somebody whose friends call them anytime a PC or gadget has trouble, I can't recommend Apple strongly enough.
Its a poor carpenter that blames his tools. Complexity in apps require better engineered phones. Benchmark these phones against the competition; do the competitors make the same claims?. Feature bloated apps are hardly going to go away; if anything they will continue to drain performance. The thing is to over engineer not under power the phone. or your competition will. Sad to see this attitude.
The openness of Android is a big part of why Android has better marketshare than iOS, so maybe they shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Keep enjoying all those subsidized phones flooding the market. Apple will continue to expand its position owning the lion's share of profit. When Telcos stop subsidizing those freebies handheld manufacturers will start consolidating their lines to only a few options, or they will have to get out of the Android market and jump ship for Windows 7.
But you won't have any Google Experience apps, and users probably won't really like a phone without Maps, Gmail, and the Marketplace (although Amazon is helping there). The base OS may be open (except for Honeycomb), but that doesn't mean all of what people think of as Android is open. Oh, and you'll still have to go pay others for patent licenses or risk being sued.
Well I think comparing smartphone statuses to getting information on a multi-million dollar aircraft carrying 600 people is exactly equivalent.
Thread closed everyone!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You cannot avoid a necessary evil. The only other way out is the iphone approach -- disabling multitasking!
That's not at all what the iPhone does though.
From day one, it has supported multitasking - for system apps.
These days, they ALSO support real multitasking for user apps as well. I can have a navigation app in the background guiding me by voice while I play music and browse the web or run apps (hopefully I'm not the driver in these cases....)
The difference is, that all works because iPhone channels multi-tasking into stated intents - that is, the app has to specify FOR WHAT PURPOSE it needs to multitask. This lets the system constrain what it can do and more intelligently monitor what it's doing so that if it gets too wild with system resources it can be unloaded.
That's exactly the right start down the road we need to travel. It doesn't matter what the user runs, the phone will still have battery at the end of the day (or multiple days). 99% of users will run apps in the background that they consider valuable. Over time we'll figure out the right way to let more and more apps run in the background properly, but we the model has to be one of "first, do no harm" - where we are talking about harm to the naive user.
Windows Phone 7 happily also seems to be taking this route.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fair enough and my apologies if I misinterpreted your original post. I still think that if you look carefully, you'll find that commercial devices tend to carry the stock Android + the more restricted OHA bits (Google apps & marketplace) ... and even though they may not be handing Google cash for these things it is no more fundamentally open from any perspective other than business model than Windows Mobile was.
"95% of all Slashdot
even though they may not be handing Google cash for these things it is no more fundamentally open from any perspective other than business model than Windows Mobile was.
Fair enough, I suppose that's the real point then isn't it, assuming licensing restrictions (whatever they may be) and licensing costs aren't overly incumbent for a company choosing something like WM then the barrier to entry wouldn't be that much different between the two.
The fact that submitting an application to the fragmented Android Market requires no inspection or vetting by gatekeepers means that very poorly written software will get in
Yes. However the fact that you can get poorly written software to perform some tasks is better than the state on the iPhone, where those same tasks simply cannot be performed unless you have a development kit.
Programming on Android is hard as it is due to the extreme OS versioning and hardware fragmentation
I don't find it hard. Stick to the documented APIs and test your application with multiple display resolutions in the emulator, and it seems to me you'll be fine. Unless you're trying to modify the behaviour of system apps (something which, if you tried to do it, would get your app banned from the iOS app store).
and the multiple states that an Android application must cycle through (often leaving dangerously dangling application threads)
Really? What's so hard about saving state and killing background threads in onPause() and restoring it in onResume()? Yes, there are apps that don't do this correctly. That doesn't mean it's hard.
These days, they ALSO support fake multitasking for user apps as well. An application can hook into an API for an already running Apple service such as audio or GPS but not start it's own where it can process its own data. When you close an IOS application, its current state is saved to memory for fast re-opening.
Good thing you took the time to learn about IOS multitasking. It makes evangelising it a lot easier and less embarrassing when someone else corrects you.
IOS multitasking is what I call "I wish it were multitasking"
Why "limited"? Because iOS multitasking isn't really multitasking in the traditional senseâ"it's certainly not what you get on a desktop computer, or even what you get from Apple's own iPhone apps. Apple claims that it only allows for certain functionality
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But you won't have any Google Experience apps, and users probably won't really like a phone without Maps, Gmail, and the Marketplace (although Amazon is helping there). The base OS may be open (except for Honeycomb), but that doesn't mean all of what people think of as Android is open. Oh, and you'll still have to go pay others for patent licenses or risk being sued.
This is true, but Google app's are licensed separately to Android the OS. So you can do almost anything you want with Android Google App's are the property of Google.
However.
Not sure of the exact terms of the license but you can download Google apps from Google like you do with Cyanogen Mod.
Check the bottom of this page.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
under: "Settings" -> "About phone" -> "Battery use". Perhaps more akin to 'powertop' than 'top', but it shows what share of battery power is being consumed by what applications. It's incredibly easy to spot a resource hog and choose to uninstall or not run it!
;)
In my experience, usually at least %60 of drain is from the display alone (well, %50-ish if you're running an instant messenger in the background).
Why the heck do people complain about the lack of something... that IS ALREADY BUILT IN?!?
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
It's not hard to develop apps for Android. And do you know what happens to apps that affect performance, crash or whatever? They get downvoted into oblivion and ignored.
I don't find it hard. Stick to the documented APIs and test your application with multiple display resolutions in the emulator, and it seems to me you'll be fine. Unless you're trying to modify the behaviour of system apps (something which, if you tried to do it, would get your app banned from the iOS app store).
About the only thing "hard" about Android is making layouts that scale properly for different DPI screens and also the rotation behaviour. I have never had to change actual program logic to cope with one device differently from another and I expect that's true for virtually every application except those like games. I doubt the situation with games on Android is any worse than it is for iOS either, given that different iPhones run at different speeds too.
... he just means that market apps can't compare to the awesomeness of bundled apps, like their bundled Blockbuster app, the crippled Skype VZW-only app, or the VZW Navigator app, which were hand picked by them. Besides, why would you want free apps when you can pay and get less?
I8-D
Wish the problem wasn't just some random, cheaply written software. On my Android Phone, Skype really grinds everything to a halt. I am sure this will improve when it is under MS control.
How can people like Arial as font?
It's quite unreadable to see a bunch of vertical bars and have to guess what "Ill" means!
Come on, that's not a font, that's a horror
Or maybe a barcode?
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
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.
Programming on Android is hard as it is due to the extreme OS versioning and hardware fragmentation
In part, the fragmentation issue is due to manufacturers such as Motorola who fail to support their hardware by issuing timely updates. If we had a situation were for a given generation of Android we saw continual patches and upgrades, much the same way as with many desktop OS versions, perhaps we wouldn't have quite this mess.
And no, I don't entirely blame the manufacturers but Moto has one of the worst records for failing to update their hardware so I'm not particularly sympathetic to their claims here.
It's not hard to develop apps for Android. And do you know what happens to apps that affect performance, crash or whatever? They get downvoted into oblivion and ignored.
The Skype app, which mangles performance, and the Facebook app, which voraciously wolfs down battery charge, haven't been downvoted into oblivion and ignored yet. How long should we expect to wait for this to happen?
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Normally id be on your side
However. My impression is that if most android users were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was open, they'd be largely thankful.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
No one doubts that. But for some reason Flash on Macs just suck. When you have a few windows open (and I usually have them open for days and only reload them some times, like online magazines etc.) the flash plugin suddenly uses up one core to 90%
In other words, my Powerbook becomes unuseable if I use Safari (I dont like to close 50 ore more tabs and restart it). Thanx to Chrome I now can just kill the Flash Plugin.
So, why does Adobe not fix that? What is the fucking Flash doing all the time "in the background"?
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Are they collecting data on what apps their users use ?
Are they sending it back to Motorola for analysis ?
Does it mention anything about this in the customer documentation?
Normally id be on your side
However. My impression is that if most android users were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was open, they'd be largely thankful.
And if they were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was because it was now allowed to contain 27% more aluminum than before by the Federal Government, they'd be largely thankful too.
Uninformed people agreeing to be happy when they're told something does not make the point correct.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
it is "too incomprehensible" as to what Top is even doing, for 98% of the people across the planet!
I agree with you a process manager identical to that on a PC with a full-size screen isn't the best design for a handheld device. But in what way would you reorganize the information?
You are no better than a spammer.
You are no better than a pick pocket.
I disagree with your tone here. Just because someone happens not to know the best solution doesn't mean that making available the second-best solution is tantamount to a crime.
People can call Apple control freaks or whatever but the more that Android goes on and the more I think Apple did things just right. I'm still on Android simply because it works good enough and I can't stomach the idea of paying hundreds of pounds for a phone or have an expensive contract but if the iphone 5 comes out soon and it's completely awesome then I may very well change my mind. I just don't like the idea of not knowing what I'll get in regards to performance if I get another Android phone and no I don't think I should have to root the thing to make it work right. I enjoy hacking about on my desktop that I built myself but for a phone that I pay good money for either outright or through a contract then I expect the thing to work especially if I root it, have a problem and then no one wants to hear about it because I rooted my phone nor do I want to unreachable because I need to take time to find how to fix something myself.
iOS deals with this differently (just as an example). Apps which consume too much memory when in the background are culled while the user is not using them
Android does this too. First it kills apps in the background that have not installed a service, and then it kills services.
and they have enforced strict restrictions on background processing (initially it was banned, now it must be done explicitly)
And under Android, any application that doesn't want to get evicted from RAM had better explicitly start a service.
That gets rid of the need for top or application manager or any such program
Memory is not the only resource. Data transfer allotment is another. Battery charge is another. Should the user of a phone have the ability to see which applications have used the largest portion of the subscriber's 2 GB per month data transfer allotment or the largest portion of the phone's battery charge?
The reality is, Android hasn't beaten iOS when you count iPod Touch and iPad devices.
The other reality is, Android being free as in beer, leads people to a better phone experience than their standard feature phone.
I'm an iOS fanboy. However, after using WinMo and BlackBerryOS, I really don't think there's a real "loser" when it comes to the iOS/Android fight. I think iOS is incredibly beyond Android, but, let's not lose sight of how good Android is too.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Android apps don't work that way. In fact most don't even have a quit option. The phone simply kills them off when they are in the background and it needs more memory for a foreground app.
Memory is not the only resource that needs to be managed. Please see my other comment.
Most of us come from the long lineage of the PC (by which I mean personal computer, not IBM clone) and we tend to approach these handheld computers from a similar angle. We saw the evolution of increasing memory and increasing processor speed and eventually increasing display performance and capability. We also saw the push to make things smaller while remaining powerful. And in every case, we ran into limits and we begrudgingly accepted them.
Handhelds come with their own advantages and limitations but they also have their own usefulness which is not merely portability as many seem to believe.
They are computers, no mistaking that. But they exist within an set of parameters which are quite different from the PC. Meanwhile, the pool of developers for these devices come from...where? PCs of course, and they tend to write for these mobile devices as if they were PCs which includes following many of the bad habits formed in the PC programming community which includes wasting memory, system resources such as file handles, processor resources and more. For the PC, this isn't so bad -- they are plugged into a wall outlet the majority of the time and RAM and hard disk space is cheap. But what about mobile computers? Not so! They are running on battery most of the time, the memory is limited as are the other system resources. But just as in the PC world, programmers for these handhelds write as if their program is the only program running on the device and that power and storage are limitless.
How do we protest bringing the old culture of thoughtless and inconsiderate programming into the mobile device arena? Apple has an approach and as much as it angers people, it's actually working to a great degree. Should Google/Android take a similar approach? No. That's just not free enough. So what then? Well, perhaps the user needs more information with which to judge and manage a program. We know large programs use lots of memory and resources. But that's not the whole story is it? Even a very large program can be written in such a way that it is resource conscious and sips at the systems processor power using only what is needed keeping waste to a minimum and maximizing the end user's battery life.
In the Linux laptop world, we have a program called "power top." With power top, we can determine what processes are draining the battery the most and then the user can make an informed decision about whether or not to kill the process. While the "reviews and comments" about apps on the android app store are helpful, they are based on opinions of often non-technical people and so they are often speculative and baseless. If among the stats of a program was included a "power top rating" or something similar, users could be made aware of how much of a drain the program might be and make an informed decision about whether or not to use it and when.
Not only would this help to shape a user's understanding and expectations for their mobile devices, but it would give an additional metric by which applications can be judged and measured which is specifically relevant to the needs of mobile computing. (Which I remind you all is significantly different from PCs!) With such a metric available to the user, programmers would then begin to compete more on that basis as well as their traditional "speed and capacity" metrics. In short, this would be the difference between being the best "star player" and the best "team player" where, in the mobile market, the best "team player" is the most valuable player.
Just because an app is popular doesn't mean you shouldn't down vote it. Doing so will put pressure on manufacturers to fix any perceived flaws. Personally I don't see any reason that either Skype or Facebook should perform any worse under android than they do under any other smart phone OS. I know that Skype wants to run automatically at startup which is an annoying feature but it can be disabled.
You can't control the user experience.
For once, Wall Street called this one correctly. Lots of analysts predicted that all handset vendors that do not control their entire platform like Apple does, run the risk of a bad user experience.
Apple and RIM have control over the entire product - hardware, operating system, and even application approval and distribution. This results in a controlled, predictable, end user experience - and that's what their user base wants.
Let's be honest. Lots of Android customers on Verizon were only Android customers because they wanted a modern smartphone, and couldn't get an iPhone without switching to AT&T.
I'm certain some of those customers are thrilled with the "openness" of the Android platform, but I'll bet most don't care. They just want a widget that works with a minimum of fuss.
I predict many of these "types" will switch to iPhone eventually.
-ted
I have an android phone. I used to have an iphone. I also have the latest ipod touch. I can tell you right now that iOS is not beyond Android in many ways. There are so many stupid things with iOS that drive me nuts. Usability things. For instance. When I first got my iPhone, I went through and added all of my contact's birthdays so that I would remember family birthdays (I am horrible about that). Well, there was no way to move those birthdays from the contacts TO the calendar without jailbreaking my phone. I know Apple has finally gotten around to fixing that, but at least on Android a developer can access the calendar!
Also, I absolutely love widgets. It's nice being able to see my stocks on my home screen without opening an app. Or seeing my next three calendar events without either A) Having it ON my lock screen or B) opening the calendar.
I also like the ability to expand my storage capacity via micro SDHC. I know Apple doesn't like that for business purposes (but I love how they throw around how green they are), but its damn useful to be able to use my phone as a storage device sometimes.
I think the stock AOSP mail client is better than the iPhone one too (though it is buggy).
Last but not least, you can't beat a user serviceable battery.
The reason that I got the iPod is because Apple does make great music players, and I like to be able to play games while I travel. I don't want my cell phone to be dead when I get done with 6-10 hours of flying, so I like to have my music and games separate from my phone.
I will admit that there are things that Apple does much better than Android, but it is not a hands down victory like you would want everyone to believe.
The N900 has top. Nobody bought it.
That could be because nobody could even try it. About a year ago, I tried to find a store in my home town where I could try an N900 before buying one. None of the three stores that I visited carried it.
im not sure of the exact order of power users but
1 every time an app ping out via one of the transceivers
2 sounds (with high volume sound being worse)
3 any high brightness use of the display
4 anything that forces the cpu to go into max clock
will drain power so to fix this
1 limit pings to whats absolutely needed (updates to most programs should not be needed daily) and find out the minimum amount of pings needed for any "real time" apps
2 unless its a game not everything needs to cause a noise (and limit game noises to like 75% volumne at most) and default sounds to OFF
3 you want to have a flashlight?? stick 2 or 3 LEDS and a fracking LENS on the top end of the phone and be done with it
4 use common or lightweight runtimes whenever possible
5 HAVE A REAL TASK MANAGER AVAILABLE BY DEFAULT AND YES THE CARRIER PROVIDED APS SHOULD BE STOPPABLE (and removeable)
then lets talk about the "ap store" killing your precious devices battery oh if Google really wanted this to get solved quick they would have some sort of "power use rating" in the Ap Store so you could see that a given ap is a power hog.
(hmm i could see a pair of 5 segment batteries as the icon one for "this ap" and one for "average ap in this category" )
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Just like those of us running CyanogenMod don't have those Google apps. Oh wait, but we do. Because they're also downloadable, just not redistributable.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I downloaded the Walgreens app for my Galaxy S phone. Walgreens is a pharmacy for you non-US folks. It was actually pretty slick, you can find a location nearby and send prescription refills in by scanning your bottle. Not amazing, but handy.
Except I noticed my battery life tanked after installing. It turns out the app was polling GPS for location information constantly. When I checked to see what apps were using battery, the Walgreens app had used 85% of my battery and spent 8.5 hours on GPS. And no, turning off GPS at the phone level had no effect, it was off when I installed and remained off according to the phone. The app also had no way to stop this behavior. Deleted. Maybe it's been fixed, it's been about 6 months since this happened.
So, yeah, some seemingly innocuous apps can completely hose a phone. I can't believe I'm saying this but Apple certainly has a leg up when it comes to ensuring this stuff doesn't happen. Who cares though, im a happy iphone to android switcher and i'm not going back. At least my android phone had the tools to identify what the hell was going on.
I've got an HTC Desire CDMA and recently installed CM7. My battery life has almost doubled. I'm really liking Cyanogenmod a lot. It's as stable as the factory HTC Sense was too.
Current is 2.3.4 it is open. 3.0 is not the latest and is table only. The google apps are not part of android anymore than gnome is part of linux.
That's funny, I have a Droid 2 Global and it's great. Well, once I disabled as much of the crap that Motorola bundled with it and removed their terrible widgets. Suddenly I stopped having problems booting the shell and my battery life literally doubled.
Know what caused the worst CPU and power consumption? The RSS reader. A technology literally designed for occasional checking and low bandwidth consumption.
Magically, I can install a dozen widgets from other random third party vendors with no problems. Foursquare? Twidroid? Reddit is Fun? All fine, all on my home screen and auto-updating. Yet Motorola, with the ability to do literally months of integration testing, can't make an app that would be an easy exercise for any first-year CS student without FUBARing it all up. I don't even know why they bothered because Android comes with a news app ANYWAY that actually works. Pathetic.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Please, please tell me you're joking.
Even if you aren't joking, you can install syncing software for Android. And, you don't have to put up with that pile of FAIL that is iTunes.
God is imaginary
I don't understand why so many iPhone fanbois trot out the profitability of iPhone as a positive feature for users of the phone. It just means that iPhone buyers are getting ripped off. Yet, in any Android vs iPhone flamewar, there is always someone who trots this out as if it's the end of the argument. Baffling.
God is imaginary
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Phones are more or less just like computers these days and what's the main gripe of technical support when a user brings in a broken machine? A: There's tons of shit software (malware, spyware but also badly coded applications) installed on it.
This has nothing to do with what app download service you're using and has all to do with users and what they install.
~Syberz
Only the AOSP Android is an open platform in any fair sense. The OHA Android, which is to say, the only Android phone vendors are interested in selling, is developed under lock and key and only opened once the OHA members have had enough time to outrun the competition.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
To be fair I don't think we've ever seen a contract for Ice Cream Sandwich; the real problem is that the OHA members get months of lead time with the new OSs before they are "opened," which allows them to customize it to their phones and tailor their phones to the new features. Any manufacturer who waits for the "opening" of a new Android is going to be killed in the marketplace. Is Android open? Prove it: go download Ice Cream Sandwich right now. It exists, Motorola and Samsung can see it, why can't you?
Of course people buy the thing for the apps and the services, not the OS. Thus Google can supply an open infrastructure that is completely useless and unmarketable to consumers, unless you license their apps and use their services, which are as closed source as Win32. It's just a rehash of Apple's open Darwin/closed Cocoa strategy.
Android's an open OS, but it's nothing remotely like an open platform, particularly if you're in the business of making phones. Cyanogenmod survives only by virtue of its utter obscurity.
The sort of Open that Android practices is orthogonal to consumer rights, unless you're a modding geek.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
So if you have a great phone, there's two ways to put it in a million people's hands:
1) Market it and convince a million people that it's a good phone. (OR)
2) Shake hands with a guy at Verizon, agree to their bootloader, co-branding and pre-installed app conditions, and let them collect customers through buy-one-get-one-free promotions and contract subscriber inertia.
I agree with you completely, the second one works better.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
You can get an Android phone for free (plus contract) - you can get one pay-as-you-go. They won't run all the apps (well) that a top-of-the-line one will, but you have the choice to make the trade-off. You don't like Verizon's terms, but want a smartphone? You have a lot more options in Android-land than elsewhere. And, if you have the chops, you can get a phone that lets you install a community-created mod, too.
But the openness allows carriers and manufacturers to compete over a price-point spread that the iPhone doesn't. This is key to its popularity. Especially during a recession.
what if the dev only has 1 phone and it happens to be a high-end one (because most of us are gadget geeks too)...we may not be aware that it is too resource hungry on your G1.
This is another alleged advantage of iOS: fewer models of hardware to support. An iPod touch 3 and an iPod touch 4 ought to be enough for anyone testing an app designed for iPhone and iPod touch.
So you are a highly experienced IT geek and you find iPhone easy to use. Well, that's not surprising.
iPhone: install iTunes, sign up for Apple account, connect iPhone, sync, deal with firmware upgrades in iPhone, then regularly sync and backup, remembering not to disconnect prematurely
Android: enter Google account (new or existing)
Which one is easier to use? Most people don't even know how to install software on their computers, let alone understand syncing. Don't even get me started on Apple's idiotic notification system that makes you click through dozens of alerts and notifications and just won't stop.
Do some apps make Android slow? Sure; it's a fully multitasking OS. But that's a concept people grasp easily: "application X makes my phone slow, I'm just going to uninstall it".
It's quite coherent. More importantly, it's better designed, easier to program, easier to use, more secure, and more functional than iOS.
Who is stopping tom/dick/harry/corporate coders from coding every thing as a service.
A service that has been foregrounded has an icon in the notification area at the top of the display, thus appearing to the user to be "still open".
The regular UNIX os does swapout sleeping processes if needed.
Conventional wisdom is that the access patterns of a swap file are more suited to the wear patterns of spinning disks than to those of NAND flash memory.
You CAN get Android phones off-contract and you DO get more choice -- Interior, Best Buy-Day: "Gee, will I get the 4G phone with black trim, or the 4G phone with a kickstand?"
And these do account for some of Android's growth, but not perhaps as much as price dumping, and people being steered or defaulted to whatever the phone company is pushing. This is good for Android but it doesn't imply a very deep branding-- nothing's to keep WebOS or Microsoft or RIM from making a better revenue-sharing deal with the Samsungs and Verizons of the world tomorrow, and the end-users, unpreferenced as they are, will just buy whatever. People don't buy open as much as they buy apps, and open isn't the only or even the best way to bring apps.
It's not like the 80s where network effects drive 3rd part devs drives apps drives customer growth, adhering them to the platform by the by. Developer labor is cheap, even small indie houses are able to maintain multiple versions of their apps at little cost, even if the revenues they get from the Android version are a third of the iOS version, and people don't need ISA compatibility from phone to phone like they do with PCs. It's just a different dynamic.
Community-created mods are great but iOS, WebOS, and Android each have community-created mods, and all the OEMs, if not the OS vendors, obstruct them vigorously. Jailbreaking and mods don't distinguish one platform from the other, they're all basically equal, unless you count such wishywashy things as "Google supports us (just not with money, manpower, or anything more than a blog post)."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I disagree, but, honestly, after working on my mom's blackberry trying to get it to talk to her bluetooth headset(and doing the same on my friend's G1, my iPhone and an old WinMo device), I'm done having these arguments which is better.
I don't think it's improper to say that in the end, things are much better and we all win.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Normally id be on your side
However. My impression is that if most android users were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was open, they'd be largely thankful.
Yes, if you lie to them, they may very will be tricked into being thankful.
Aside from a very small number of nerds who get worked up over "open", *nobody* cares. The only reasons Android is doing as well as it is are that it was the only OS remotely comparable to iOS and it is more widely available.
The first part has nothing to do with being "open". Zilch. The second part does in a very small way: Google's licensing is more open than other offerings. I don't mean "open source", as in anybody can just take Android and put it on their phone. That has almost no impact on sales. I mean, Google was able to offer Android for much cheaper, sometimes "cheaper than free" (by sharing revenue with handset makers), because Android isn't the product. The user is the product and Android is just a vehicle for delivering ads.
So, no. Being open has essentially nothing to do with Android's success. C.f. Symbian & Meego (and, for that matter, Linux in general).
The other reality is, Android being free as in beer, leads people to a better phone experience than their standard feature phone.
You have yet to demonstrated that this is "reality". All you've done is asserted it as such.
The reason Android provides a better "experience than their standard feature phone" is because it has a touch screen and can run third party apps. That has nothing to do with being "free as in beer" (which is different from being "open", which is what you first wrote). iOS isn't free as in beer *OR* open, and it provides a better experience than a standard feature phone.
How low can you go? I can't help but rolling the phrase "pathetic" in my head over and over again. How about this: http://fbforandroid.blogspot.com/2011/06/facebook-arrives-to-android-os.html
I had been waiting for months for the Bionic, but everything I'm reading about MotoBlur and Motorola's attempts to lock or close down their phones is scaring me away from their phones. I'm leaving the Blackberry and iPhone because I don't like their closed worlds. The closed formats go hand in hand with a closed philosophy that is not a technology track I want to be involved with.
I'm sure Motorola is not listening to this but I hope many many buyers of phone share this sentiment as demand will hopefully eventually drive supply!
Hunger is the best sauce.
I calculate $1,000, not $1,500. From Apple.com in the United States, a new Mac mini costs $600, a new iPod touch 4 costs $300, and a certificate costs $100 for one year. The Mac mini can use the monitor, USB keyboard, and USB mouse of the desktop PC you already own. Or do you live in another country where Apple charges more for its products?