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

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

#91

Post by ThomPete »

blub wrote: post #90
ThomPete wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I am not sure what you are getting at here.

All discussion about design must be understood in context. The context here is the iPhone vs. Android GUI.

I responded to the claim that flyosity's comment was somehow contradictory. It's not. It's just a matter of understanding that design in this context isn't only about the beauty.

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

#92

Post by EwanToo »

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..…

I think the screen resolution issue is easily overlooked - my wife had the Sony X10 mini, with a screen resolution of 240 x 320, and a lot of other cheaper Android phones have a similar resolution.

If an app developer wants their phone to work on the whole range of Android phones, the app interface needs to cope with these very low resolution screens.

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

#93

Post by arethuza »

chicagobob wrote: post #50
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…

I call BS. My neighbor is a "normal" non-geek who has an android phone and even he notices the difference in app quality and bitches about it all the time (his wife has an iPhone). Just because he isn't "trendy" doesn't mean he doesn't know what quality is. Its his work phone, when his contract is up, he's already decided he's going to lobby for an iPhone and the apps are a huge reason why.

I have a work iPhone, a personal iPad and I used to have a relatively dumb personal phone. I "upgraded" the personal phone to a low end Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy Europa) and I've been really disappointed with it.

Of course, what people now tell me is "but that's a bad phone" - and I think that's the problem that Android faces - the actual end user experience is largely determined by the quality of the hardware and this varies a lot.

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

#94

Post by jan_g »

sparkymat wrote: post #60

As an Android and iOS developer, I would like to point out that one of the contributing factors to the lack of well-designed applications for Android is due to the lack of polish in the Android tools and the available IDE (ADT for Android, and XCode for iOS). XCode on Mac OS X is a delightful experience, with the right tools and the right amount of control to make good applications, supported by excellent tools to op…

But you run emulator only first time (granted, that takes some time). Subsequently you deploy your app to already running emulator. That's pretty fast.

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

#95

Post by RSO »

I think it also has to do with the fact that the iPhones have a fixed set of specs. With android you never know what kind of specs your users phone has (screen height/width e.d.). But with the iPhone you're always sure what controls your user has (touch screen instead of controller).

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

#96

Post by krakensden »

jan_g wrote: post #94
sparkymat wrote: post #60

As an Android and iOS developer, I would like to point out that one of the contributing factors to the lack of well-designed applications for Android is due to the lack of polish in the Android tools and the available IDE (ADT for Android, and XCode for iOS). XCode on Mac OS X is a delightful experience, with the right tools and the right amount of control to make good applications, supported by excellent tools to op…

But you run emulator only first time (granted, that takes some time). Subsequently you deploy your app to already running emulator. That's pretty fast.

I don't, my computer can't run Eclipse and the emulator at the same time without stalling out.

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

#97

Post by aerique »

richcollins wrote: post #69
MichaelApproved wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't excuse the apps that actually write an entire UI from scratch. As I mentioned before, the CNBC app is all custom UI, beautiful and mostly entirely self-contained. However, the android version is a POS thats essentially just a mobile webpage. Built in OS UI is not a factor here. I suspect budget isn't either. Edit: Here's the link to their Android app. The screen you see is basically the whole app. Click…

both apps are as hideously busy as their TV broadcasts

Also know as Angry Fruit Salad: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/angry_fruit_...

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

#98

Post by ZeroGravitas »

_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.

I don't think it's even slightly true that "a lot of Android phones ship without a way to install third party apps".

I've heard of portable media players or Nooks that run Android but don't have app stores (though the Nook is getting one). I've heard of tablets that don't have the official Google Market, though they often have an alternative market and relatively simple steps for the user to get the Market on to them. There's even 0.4% of "Android" phones that are running OPhone and so while they can run Android apps fine, they don't come with the Google apps or Marketplace, but again they have alternatives.

Do you have any links to what you mean by this?

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

#99

Post by d_r »

EwanToo wrote: post #92
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..…

I think the screen resolution issue is easily overlooked - my wife had the Sony X10 mini, with a screen resolution of 240 x 320, and a lot of other cheaper Android phones have a similar resolution. If an app developer wants their phone to work on the whole range of Android phones, the app interface needs to cope with these very low resolution screens.

Agreed, just it adds another "I need to test this" configuration for devs. Have you found that many apps don't support this resolution?

Google actually tracks screen sizes of devices that access Android Market:

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

It appears that 240x320 (small + low density) accounts for 2.3% of users.

While unrelated to UI, another very handy page tracks Android versions in use out there. It looks like 2.2 has become the most common version in the last month: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...

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

#100

Post by ZeroGravitas »

danssig wrote: post #88
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 Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?

As of Q4 2010 the global sales were equal (10 million iPod Touches and 7 Million iPads and 16 million iPhone vs. 33 million Android phones). The Android sales were growing faster up to this crossover point, but while that means they'll have higher sales in the future, it also means that Apple currently have a higher installed base, which should last a few more months.
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