Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

android-gripes.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 137 posts

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#81

Post by asmosoinio »

guelo wrote: post #67
daniel_solano wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to only having to "worry about one resolution", I disagree. Android does give you a set of tools for working with multiple screen types, but it's a bit more complicated than "2 sets of art assets". This only addresses one aspect of different screens: pixel density. This still leaves out different screen sizes. Even then, a "normal hdpi" screen can still be different from another "normal hdpi" screen. It…

There might be slight differences between "normal hdpi" screens but those differences won't affect a good design and the developer won't have to worry about it. And it definitely has nothing to do with why the meebo app looks like crap. It looks like crap because meebo didn't put the effort into it.

Where is that? I've been looking at this:

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.htm...

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#82

Post by guelo »

asmosoinio wrote: post #81
guelo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be slight differences between "normal hdpi" screens but those differences won't affect a good design and the developer won't have to worry about it. And it definitely has nothing to do with why the meebo app looks like crap. It looks like crap because meebo didn't put the effort into it.

Where is that? I've been looking at this: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.htm...

oops, you're right, that one hasn't been updated in a while.

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#83

Post by lloeki »

_frog wrote: post #66
irons wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they're disappointed, per se. The non-nerds I know who bought Android phones are generally pretty pleased to be able to make calls and use the web a bit. They're not app consumers to the slightest degree. Android represents a small value-add over the dumbphones they had before, which is fine, but they're not part of the vast army that Android partisans seem to think is coming over the next hill.

This. A lot of people are coming to Android as a step up from feature phones. In fact a lot of Android phones ship without any way to install third party apps and act as essentially glorified feature phones. I'd love to see the statistics of Android phones sold with the Android store versus iOS device sales to get a better idea of where the two platforms stand in relation to each other.

A friend of mine bought a HTC Desire Z (of which the G2 is a variant) but while it is supposed to be in the powerhouse department (at the opposite end of the spectrum of a Galaxy Spica) its UI feels jerky, laggy and generally unwilling to respond to some user actions. My friend, despite being on the geeky side, seems not to notice it and because he seems to enjoy the phone I'm reluctant to make him notice and ruin its experience. Certainly this has to come from the fact he comes from a feature phone, so that phone is definitely an improvement.

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#84

Post by ThomPete »

blub wrote: post #79
flyosity wrote: post #14

I think it's the standard that is set by the original creator of the UI widgets available on the platform, in this case, Apple vs. Google. I'm an iPhone UI designer/developer and you can make a really nice looking app without doing any custom design work just by using the widgets that Apple provides. A good example of an app that was nearly all stock is Tweetie 1 for iPhone and it won an Apple Design Award. Apple has…

"The apps that Google built for Android (Maps in particular) are very clean and elegant but I would hesitate to call them beautiful or extremely polished. Google's design aesthetic typically eschews gradients, sheen, highlights and shadows in favor of a flatter, cleaner look and feel. " Your post is very confusing. At first you seem to imply that good design is tied to the amount of shadows, gradients or highlights a…

Design is not only about aesthetics. It's as much about how it works.

You can have a well designed app that isn't necessarily beautiful.

All Google stuff is by definition not beautiful, that doesn't mean it's not well designed.

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#85

Post by ThomPete »

d_r wrote: post #23

iOS comes with a handy set of UI controls that look decent even without customization. You can use the default UITableView, for instance (looking at the Meebo screenshot) and get the nice look-and-feel out of the box. This especially helps a low-budget dev like myself. Apple showcase of the controls that come out-of-the box and various ways to tweak them: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userex..…

Do you think there would be a niche for creating good looking high quality UI controls for Android? Or will it still be a too big hassle to implement them?

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#86

Post by lloeki »

nl wrote: post #51

He doesn't make a very convincing case. The iPhone Meebo emoticon screen looks a lot better, but all the others aren't as simple. I prefer the look of the Android Meebo contact list, but I prefer the iPhone chat interface. Note that his Android Facebook app needs updating. The missing Chat & Places icons fill it up. I think I prefer the Android version - the white background makes it look more lighter and more spacio…

"I prefer the look of the Android Meebo contact list, but I prefer the iPhone chat interface"

To me, from the apparent size of it, the Android one looks like hard to manipulate by touch. I don't want to feel like aiming each time I navigate. Also, probably the john@xyz filler with no user picture is part of the unsettlement. That point is valid of the Android one too, as it shows the user both offline, in buddies and in conversations. Weird.

That said, no developer in their right mind would ship such an emoticon picker. It's simply outrageous and just shows disdain to the user.

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#87

Post by ZeroGravitas »

irons wrote: post #45
redthrowaway wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. My hunch is that we're starting to see a Windows/Mac differentiation here, with Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd. That carries over into the apps themselves, with Android apps (like their windows counterparts) being clean and…

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. OS market share is the easy metric, but it's not the right metric. Read the last six paragraphs: http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-o... Applying the Windows/Mac analogy to the mobile market is like trying to cram modern geopolitics into a cold war framework. You'll ruin your…

Does your link realise that their first couple of graphs are for the "phone" market, not the "smartphone" market?

It makes about as much sense as lumping in Apple's laptops or Samsung's TVs and the text only occasionally seems to recognize this, almost as if they drew the graphs thinking they referred to smartphones and then lightly edited the text rather than remove them when they realised their mistake. Makes them difficult to take seriously.

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#88

Post by danssig »

redthrowaway wrote: post #31
flyosity wrote: post #14

I think it's the standard that is set by the original creator of the UI widgets available on the platform, in this case, Apple vs. Google. I'm an iPhone UI designer/developer and you can make a really nice looking app without doing any custom design work just by using the widgets that Apple provides. A good example of an app that was nearly all stock is Tweetie 1 for iPhone and it won an Apple Design Award. Apple has…

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. My hunch is that we're starting to see a Windows/Mac differentiation here, with Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd. That carries over into the apps themselves, with Android apps (like their windows counterparts) being clean and…

>Android has more market share than iOS

Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#89

Post by lloeki »

one of the most appalling part (ignoring that record-breaking emoticon picker) is not the selected apps themselves but the left-aligned icons in the top status bar. Their lack of quality shows even more when contrasted with the carefully designed right-aligned part (I suppose that one is OS-tied and therefore from Google).

Re: Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?

#90

Post by blub »

ThomPete wrote: post #84
blub wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The apps that Google built for Android (Maps in particular) are very clean and elegant but I would hesitate to call them beautiful or extremely polished. Google's design aesthetic typically eschews gradients, sheen, highlights and shadows in favor of a flatter, cleaner look and feel. " Your post is very confusing. At first you seem to imply that good design is tied to the amount of shadows, gradients or highlights a…

Design is not only about aesthetics. It's as much about how it works. You can have a well designed app that isn't necessarily beautiful. All Google stuff is by definition not beautiful, that doesn't mean it's not well designed.

It depends what you're designing for. If you're designing for more clicks, more ad glances, cross-promoting your services, you can say that Google's stuff is well designed and that it works - because these are the metrics that they use to evaluate their design.

When we're talking about "graphic design", beauty automatically flows from good design and Google's products are simply not well designed. And they will not be, because they micro-optimize for what brings more users.

Post reply on HN