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Ars Dissects Android's Problems With Big Screens -- Including In Lollipop
When it comes to tablets, Google
doesn't even follow its own design guidelines." That's the upshot of Ars Technica writer Andew Cunningham's detailed, illustrated look at how Android handles screens much larger than seven inches, going back to the first large Android tablets a few years ago, but including Android 5.0 (Lollipop) on the Nexus 10 and similar sized devices. Cunningham is unimpressed with the use of space for both practical and aesthetic reasons, and says that problems crop up areas that are purely under Google's control, like control panels and default apps, as well as (more understandably) in third party apps.
The Nexus 10 took 10-inch tablets back to the "blown-up phone" version of the UI, where buttons and other UI stuff was all put in the center of the screen. This makes using a 10-inch tablet the same as using a 7-inch tablet or a phone, which is good for consistency, but in retrospect it was a big step backward for widescreen tablets. The old interface put everything at the edges of the screen where your thumbs could easily reach them. The new one often requires the pointer finger of one of your hands or some serious thumb-stretching. ... If anything, Lollipop takes another step backward here. You used to be able to swipe down on the left side of the screen to see your notifications and the right side of the screen to see the Quick Settings, and now those two menus have been unified and placed right in the center of the screen. The Nexus 10 is the most comfortable to use if it's lying flat on a table or stand and Lollipop does nothing to help you out there.
Google is following Apple and Microsoft and moving away from widescreen tablets. Good riddance, I say; 4:3 or 3:2 is much better for showing a 'page' of information.
That said, I don't begrudge widescreen (tallscreen?) phones, since they have to be narrow enough to fit in your pocket, nor large widescreen monitors, since they can show multiple 'pages' at once. In the 7-13" range, though, widescreens tend to be too much for one 'page' of content but not enough for two, and not nearly tall enough either. Blech.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It's certainly timely, now that Google has retired the Nexus 10, and introduced a smaller model.
This pointless review completely misses the point that most people use a tablet to surf, watch video, look at photos and play games. I don't care how the screen is used in Hangouts and Facebook.
Optimizing increases the number of actions that a user performs, which increases how much data the user provides. So why would there be zero reason to spend money on optimizing?
This article relates to something I've been bitching about since the earliest days of tablets: The insistence by Google and many app developers on treating a tablet like a giant phone instead of like a keyboard- and mouse-less computer. Crappy file managers and task management, lousy use of screen space, etc. all add up to an Android tablet being little more than an electronic teat you can use to get content fed into your eyeballs and ears and not something you can do real work (i.e. content creation) with.
Google had a chance with Android to remake the landscape of computing, to turn tablets into genuine alternatives to laptops for many (but certainly not all) users. Instead, they screwed it up (similar to how they failed to challenge MS Office with their own office apps). Are they this incompetent? Are they so focused on making money from content delivery that they can't see the bigger picture? Or do they have an (ahem) incentive not to compete in a bare-knuckles way with MS...?
Just look at how google has consistently fucked up UIs by removing functionality and making things more difficult and less efficient in the name of "design" in their other products. The only good thing I can say is that they're not alone, this is a pretty universal trend of idiocy.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
On tablets, the only thing that makes Android better than Windows 8 is the sheer number of apps. Other than that, the actual OS itself is worse in just about every way I can think of. First on large tablets, it's nice to be able to show multiple apps at the same time, and vanilla Android can't do this. It's also nice to be able to map network drives and have all the apps be able to read from them. Android can't do this. Android doesn't come with a command line. Windows has 2. And that's just things that Windows 8 RT does that Android doesn't. Once you get into Windows x86, and the huge list of actual Windows applications it supports, there's no comparison between the two. Android works great on phones, but on tablets it's way too limited, and I'd much rather ne running Windows 8 over Android or iOS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Google only cares about collecting data.
They care about staying in business.
Google bought Android because Microsoft had vowed to"f***ing kill Google", and Apple's direction with iGadgets were an existential threat to their business. If they hadn't stepped in with an alternative platform, they could have been a search engine without a platform to run on.
Make no mistake, without Android, Google would have been at Microsoft's mercy, and we all know the quality of that strained commodity.
Ironically, Google makes more money on iOS than on Android. And MSFT makes more money on Android than Google.
Maybe Google should have just stuck with being a software dev.
I have a Nexus 10 with Lollipop on it and I really don't see the complaint, at least not the one mentioned in the summary.
Yes, the two swipe-down menus have been unified... but you can still swipe down from the edges to get at it, and in fact you get all of the functionality that used to be in the left and right side swipes from either side now, which means you can get to all of it even if you don't have a hand on each side. Or you can swipe down from the middle. After the unified menu comes up you have to reach over to it with your thumbs to operate the controls and I suppose if you have very small hands that could be an issue. I just asked my wife to try it (she has small hands) and she can reach everything with a thumb while holding it two-handed. She does have to move the thumb hand, but it's a pretty natural motion that doesn't require letting go of the device.
I'm not saying there isn't substance to the complaint, just that the example quoted in the summary isn't really an issue.
Note that getting to the full quick settings UI requires swiping down twice; the first swipe gets you notifications, the second one adds the quick settings. Alternatively, you can do a two-finger swipe down and you get straight to the quick settings. I can't reliably do that with two thumbs (too hard to synchronize the swipes), so that method really does require fingers. But two quick swipes work fine.
On a related note, I like that it works exactly the same from the pre-lockscreen (pops up when you press the power button to turn on the display). The pre-lockscreen shows notifications (whether sensitive notifications can be seen on a locked device is configurable), as though you'd swiped down once, then another down swipe brings up the quick controls, without unlocking. I especially like this when I'm reaching for the flashlight on my phone; no need to unlock, just hit the power button to wake up the screen, then swipe, tap and there's light.
(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, though I work on the low-level security subsystems, not on UI, and have no problems criticizing changes I don't like. I have found very little in Lollipop that I don't like, however, and a lot that I really do like. My only significant complaint so far is the fact that the encryption by default means that when the device boots it can't read any of the storage until you enter your password to unlock it... including any alarms you have set. This means that if your phone/tablet randomly reboots during the night (rare, but it does happen), then your alarm won't go off. This hasn't bitten me, and I doubt it will, but it's not good. On the UI, though... when I go back to a device with KitKat it just feels clunky. Wow, this turned into a lot more than a disclaimer.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Please name 3 things of software Google has developed.
(Hint: The original Google search is the only thing they actually developed in-house - everything else was an acquisition.)
Gmail, Translate, Hangouts, Calendar, Play, etc.
Android doesn't come with a terminal emulator. The command line is there.
Except that for larger tablets, holding them with two hands is far easier, especially for anything over a few minutes. So no, the reviewer is doing it right.
I find holding the tablet in one hand a LOT easier than in two. I honestly can't think of the last time I held it in two hands, except to load up some random game needing two hands. Obviously, different people have different opinions.
> Google only cares about collecting data. As long as the data collection is working efficiently and stealthy enough, the OS is good enough for them.
If the OS wasn't good enough for the customers needs then they would not buy the devices. Thus Google _does_ care about the OS quality otherwise there would be no users (or fewer) and thus data collection would be less efficient.
Of course it is not the OS that is 'collecting data' it is the apps doing that. If you don't like TV having ads then don't watch commercial TV. If you don't like Google or Microsoft or Apple collecting data the don't use Google or Bing or phones or search or anything else that is gratis.
I never understood why they placed the home/back buttons in newer releases in the middle of the screen, it just didn't make any sense.. How hard was it to even think about larger tablets or have people being able to choose the position..
For me, with every new incarnation of any OS, it seems to get more stupid and babylike interface..
Good UI & UX design is hard. Really hard. It's one thing doing a cleanroom design of UX, an entirely other doing it for real life and various screen-sizes - preferably responsive. It's like with the code itself. In dev it will run and work, but beware of post-deployment if you haven't tested your stuff in every possible situation. I did tons of this stuff with Flash back in the day, and even with Flashs superiour visual & direct manupilation workplace and solid cross-plattform compatilibilty it was hard. I remember doing the UI for a flash-based MMO at a gamepublisher some years ago. We worked for months just to get the pageflow of character configuration and setup right. Video-based UX testing with usergroups and all. We'd discuss how and why the rail of a slider would look like X and not like Y.
Now, with HTML5, CSS and JS and all the screen sizes and mouse vs. tough it's by orders of magnitude harder.
It does not get that much easyer when you go native with Android or iOS SDK. You're app and your workflow will always have something significant that a good UI designer would like to highlight or help out in being intuitively usable - without destroying the page- and workflow the user is used to with other applications. It's a really tough job and each and every time it's like jumping off a cliff and not knowing if the parachute will deploy.
I'm one of the rare cases that's actually reasonably good at both - I have various diplomas in art and design and 28 years of programming experience, but I honestly couldn't tell which is harder. Basically both require very hard work if you want to do it well. Good UI is also where shitty backends are exposed. If the backend can't deliver what the user needs, no UX in the world will fix it. A significant portion of the logic is having the computer do what the enduser needs, fast and efficient. If UX and backend development don't work together or one of them doesn't understand the needs of the other, it almost instantly shows in a project. That's the classic difference between Apple and MS, btw. Steve Jobs basically nailed it in this rare direct comparsion comment.
Bottom line: The apps shown in this rundown on lollypop are the best you can get with boilerplate UX. The article basically is right, good UX looks different.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's not 'worse in every way'. It's great for what it is designed for (tablet) and Windows 8 is great for what it's designed for (desktop)
Which is why I have a desktop for work where I sit down and work for long periods, and a tablet for reading, watching movies, playing short games, and taking notes in meetings. It's handwriting recognition is pretty good, it's not perfect but usually I just go back afterward and correct any spelling issues.
My Samsung Note III does have multiple windows as the default, and it works great. When I click a link in Facebook, it opens in a side window that is easily closed. I can use the pen to draw a box and open many apps in it, like a calculator or map. Or, I just slide in from the right to get a list of apps to open.
I don't need to map network drives to my laptop, I can play any media file I want on TV, using my tablet as a remote for my Harmony Hub.
I use the pocket cloud app, and have full access from my tablet to my desktop if I need it, which does run Windows 8. With a bluetooth keyboard, it's OK for short sessions. From that session, I can then RDP to my work computer and do support if I'm needed.
I have not had any need to run a command manually on my tablet, that's just a stupid comment geeks and nerds throw out for something that has become almost irrelevant.
When I decided to get a tablet, I looked at both the Surface Pro and Android, and picked the Android because I felt for the money I spent, I got more value for what I needed.
My Note III does exactly what I need it to do, and my desktop does also. For instance, I'm typing this from my desktop because typing on ANY tablet is a pain in the ass for anything of length.
The ONLY think I wish it came with was a built-in scripting/cron capability of some sort. But it hasn't bothered me so much that I've even done any searches to find any add-ons.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The problem I find is that Android wasn't designed for the tablet. It was designed for the phone. The whole model OS was built with the assumption that it was going to run on very low spec hardware on a very small screen. Hence the limitations such as requiring all apps to run full screen, and the operating system's ability to kill an application (or the activity) at any time, leaving the developer to jump through hoops to make sure that information isn't lost. Tablets (and many phones) come with 2 GB or more of RAM, so there's very little need to manage applications in this way. Of course, they left out an easy way to actually close applications, so going back on that decision now seems difficult.
I think that the fact that Samsung has added multiple apps at the same time kind of shows that people really do want this feature, and that Google is being stubborn by not implementing it in standard Android. Even MS has realized that the simple 2 app split screen isn't enough for people, and will allow windowed apps on the desktop in Windows 10.
I think the major problem for MS right now is that Surface Pro is just really expensive. The starting price is quite high. I think next iteration, they should offer a model with an Atom/Baytrail processor (or whatever the current low power x86 option is) without a digitizer and include the keyboard by default, to bring the price down to what more people are willing to pay for a laptop. If they can get it around $400-$500, then I think a lot of people would opt for it over a more traditional laptop, and they wouldn't need to buy a tablet. Or if they bought a tablet it would be a cheap, 7 inch, $100 tablet that they could just throw in a bag and not have to worry about too much, but which really wouldn't be a productivity device. Once you have have 10+ inch tablet, it's really nice to be able to use it for real computing tasks, because it gets expensive enough that it's hard to justify such a high price for something that you're just using to read books, watch movies, and check facebook.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That left / right split swipe in Android 4 felt wrong and looked pretty stupid especially for someone familiar with the behaviour on a smaller device.
"I like this, I don't like that." So what? That's just your taste. Yes, that's a starting point, but everyone overestimates how much they understand *other* users.. What you have to do is observe users working with the software for real. And you can't just do it for five minutes and declare yourself an expert; you've got to watch users over the course of years before certain things become clear.
I was for many years a software designer targeting PalmOS and later PocketPC. In the early days we designed what were essentially scaled down desktop applications -- using common sense of course. But unlike many people in the modern App Store environment I had close contact with users. I traveled to user sites to install the software and train the users. I rode in their trucks and watched them using the software in the field. And over the years I began to gain insight into the PDA form factor and how people use it. We all started out with the notion that UI design for handhelds was about dealing with the limitations of a small screen. It took me years to realize that mobile US design was actually about exploiting the potentials of a touch screen you held in your hand. When the iPhone came out I immediately knew that Apple got it: the handheld form factor is about the experience of direct manipulation. By using a capacitive touch screen Apple removed the last perceived intermediary between the user and the things on scree: the stylus.
Now I'm no longer a professional developer, but I do watch how people use their mobile devices with interest. The author is obviously right when he says a tablet is a different animal than a smartphone, but I think he hasn't grasped what the difference is. It's not just about screen real estate; it's about the totality of how the user interactrs with the device. You can't put a tablet in your pocket, and I think that's a much huger difference than it sounds; it stands for a whole lot of other things that are different betwen a palmtop device and one that is simply hand-holdable. For example he likes the idea of widgets that float over the active application as a way of making use of wasted screen real estate. This is technology focused design thinking (how can we use this resource), not user focused. And my admittedly casual observations suggest that this idea is bad for a lot of the way users use tablets.
One interesting development has been the near-disappearnce of handheld computers in the 4-5 inch screen range that *aren't* smartphones. But wi-fi only tablets remain popular. Why should that be? Again I haven't been observing as a developer, but I think it's because people have different application focuses when they use different devices. When you see someone using a smartphone as a computer they're texting, tweeting,instagramming etc. When they're on their tablets they're surfing the web, watching videos, reading ebooks, and playing games. The idea of widgets floating over active content is ideal for someone who uses their tablet like a smartphone. It's not so great for people using tablets in the ways they seem to. Of course some peoiple *do* use their tablets like smartphones. They're the people who drag out their iPad to take a candid photo. Such people exist, we've all seen them, but it doesn't make them typical. I'd guess most tablet owners these days also have a smartphone.
I'm no longer developing, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that the focus of smartphone use is connecting, the focus of tablet use is consuming, and the focus of desktop use probably should be creating. Blowing up a phone app to a 10.1 inch screen will clearly make it look ridiculous, but it may not matter. What matters is the usability of apps that are built for the things tablet users are focused on.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you're trying to sarcastically recommend CSS, I've explained before why CSS isn't enough. You often want different amounts of content for different screen sizes, with more information per page on a 960px to 1920px wide desktop than on a 320px* wide phone. Downloading it anyway and hiding it with CSS display: none wastes last mile bandwidth, especially on cellular ISPs whose users are still billed by the MB.
* 1px in CSS means 1/2688 of the viewing distance. High density displays, such as Retina brand, use more than one hardware pixel per px.
it's really web developers fault for insisting on presenting information in a narrow column format. Fixed or maximum width pages drive me bonkers. To this day, most (all?) standard WordPress layouts, for instance, have a maximum width far short of a standard monitor width Why, for heaven's sake? HTML is infinitely malleable in it's native form.
Studies show that lines of text longer than about 80 characters are hard to read, as the eye ends up skipping or rereading a line. And you still end up leaving the same amount of space between paragraphs.
Unfortunately, it's far less useful to those working primarily with text or other largely vertically oriented documents (like programmers).
Do you use Windows 7, 8, or 8.1? Try pressing Win+Left Arrow or Win+Right Arrow to snap your browser or word processor to half the width of your 1080p or 1200p monitor. Good window managers for X11 should have a similar tiling feature.
He doesn't like things centered. That's fine. Google thinks otherwise. Perhaps so too others. I would add that most people probably only use their tablets in landscape mode while viewing media, or at least far less than portrait mode. I'll agree that in some cases maybe more effort could have been made to limit the expansion of the app in landscape vs. portrait mode but that involves a lot more hackery in the design. Bottom line, this guy is just too lazy to turn the tablet to portrait mode when the app is clearly designed for viewing that way.
I think the major problem for MS right now is that Surface Pro is just really expensive. The starting price is quite high. I think next iteration, they should offer a model with an Atom/Baytrail processor (or whatever the current low power x86 option is) without a digitizer and include the keyboard by default, to bring the price down to what more people are willing to pay for a laptop. If they can get it around $400-$500, then I think a lot of people would opt for it over a more traditional laptop, and they wouldn't need to buy a tablet.
What you want is called a Transformer Book by ASUS.
So if someone does end up needing a particular feature that few others need, how does it benefit the public that that someone is out of luck?
The idea of widgets floating over active content is ideal for someone who uses their tablet like a smartphone. It's not so great for people using tablets in the ways they seem to.
I use a 7" Android tablet for watching videos, surfing the web, composing e-mail, and jotting ideas down. Sometimes when composing e-mail, a note, or a comment on a web site, I need to do a little arithmetic. Why should a calculator on a tablet fill the 7" or 10" screen? Apple has known since Mac OS I in 1984 that even in a single-tasking environment, there are things that users need to do while inside another task. That's why Apple included "desk accessories" such as the calculator.
How does the math change if the utility for those 3 people is 100 with the feature or 0 (because they'd switch to something else) without it?
4 of those things were developed from shit they purchased.
All you have to do is Google it.
Why would do that? I never claimed 27 people would be infected.
Quote my original post and the post I was responding to, then try again.