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Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

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Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#131

Post by joezydeco »

batiudrami wrote: post #21
joezydeco wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you read about stuff like this[1]: "Mika says it spent 20% of its total development time last year on the process of porting two of its games to Android and then tweaking those titles for individual devices. It could never even get Battleheart to work on Galaxy S phones, because they can't download .apk's larger than 30MB with stock software . For all the months of "thanklessly modifying shaders and texture…

That's the original Galaxy S, a device which is now 5 years old. There are plenty of apps which no longer support iPhones that old. "It's too hard" or "it doesn't make enough money" are more than reasonable. A software limitation in a 5 year old device is not.

But devices that limit inbound APK sizes? That's just too much to deal with.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#132

Post by rsynnott »

dagw wrote: post #96
szatkus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Android user wants apps. iPhone is just expensive as hell. Android is much cheaper alternative. People who want "just phone with browser" usually buy Nokia Asha or feature phone.

A touchscreen Nokia Asha or other feature phone is not actually cheaper than an Android phone and very few shops carry them. You have to be quite into phones to even know they exists and have any reason why you'd want one. If a person who wants a cheap phone with a browser walks into a shop and asks for a cheap phone with a browser, they'll be walking out with a low end Android phone.

Really, even if they just ask for a cheap phone; at least in Europe, many telecoms don't sell consumer feature phones anymore _at all_.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#133

Post by rsynnott »

szatkus wrote: post #98
gmac wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your evidence is ... ? It seems to me there are more than enough cheap and crappy Android handsets out there to serve the feature-phone market too.

The cheapest Android phone I found costs 50 euro. You can easily find feature phone for 15-20 euro.

Depends where you live. In Ireland, for instance, if you walk into a shop wanting a prepaid phone, you're pretty much getting an Android, with most telecoms. Three, for instance (generally the cheapest major telco), currently lists precisely one non-Android phone in its under-100 euro category, and it's not a feature phone, it's a Symbian smartphone. The rest of its cheap phones are Android, mostly 2.3 and 4.0/4.1.

You could buy a feature phone separately and bring it to the telecom, of course, but normal consumers don't do that.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#134

Post by rsynnott »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #25
badman_ting wrote: post #22

Elephant in the room = adoption rate of current OS version. "Kit Kat is awesome!!" That's great. Who is using it?

I am. On my Nexus 5. Compared to a iPhone 5s, this runs circles around it. I'm not trying to start a flamewar or anything, but why are iOS devices so slow and clunky, and why is the UI so... fruity? Its just weird.

You're in a tiny minority, right now. 2.5% of Android users use 4.4, compared to 19% using 2.3.x, 15% using 4.0.x, and _35%_ using 4.1.x. It's nice that you like it, but it's probably not worth most developers' time using 4.4-specific features for a year or so.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#135

Post by tomelders »

nysv wrote: post #81
sbuk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..."element of elitism among Apple fanboys," Let's not use pejoratives. While we are at it, let's not project our own assumptions as points of fact.

You are right, I have but a little anecdotal evidence. In my experience there does exists a group of designers who view Apple to be the gospel of UI design, which can sometimes lead to them ignoring other schools of thought.

So if I've got this right... It's those nasty lazy designerses fault, and has nothing to do with Androids colossal shortcomings either as a platform to develop for, or to earn a living from?

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#136

Post by rsynnott »

georgemcbay wrote: post #17
mmuro wrote: post #10

Fragmentation is a real thing, not laziness. Almost 98% of Android users don't run KitKat.

It is both a real thing and laziness. With decent technical design and Google's Android support library you can pretty much code as if 98% of people run KitKat and not worry about it, the support library will fallback gracefully down to all the OS versions you do care about. Most of the time when I hear designers complaining about Android fragmentation they are really just using "fragmentation" as a scapegoat to bemo…

> With decent technical design and Google's Android support library you can pretty much code as if 98% of people run KitKat and not worry about it

People say this. It's not really actually true.

A nice little example encountered recently. Say you have a HTTP server which uses gzip or deflate when the client asks it to. Pretty standard, right? And say you want to return a HTTP 204, or other contentless success. Seems reasonable? And if you do this on Android 4.4 using the standard HTTP client, it will work. If you do it on Android 4.1 (the most commonly-deployed version of Android), it will throw a null pointer exception deep in the library code.

This is just one of many issues. Compatibility support libraries are all very well, but they don't really help with the standard libraries being buggy, and those bugs will _never be fixed_ for the vast majority of users.

It gets even worse when you take OEM crap into account. Want to use the camera? You'd better know about obscure Samsung quirks: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13448731/does-samsung-gal...

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#137

Post by thomasahle »

baldfat wrote: post #122
thomasahle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that we have to go more than a year back, since iOS generated more web traffic than android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#De...

There is something going on with iOS and Android web usage. My daughter used 8 gig of data last month. It meant she watched a lot of Netflix at her college who's Wifi is weak. Video = More Data not necessarily a good measurement.

I don't understand, do you mean that the stats I provided are based on data usage? In that case you are not correct. They are all StatCounter web hits: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile+tablet+console-browser-ww-...

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#138

Post by nysv »

tomelders wrote: post #135
nysv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, I have but a little anecdotal evidence. In my experience there does exists a group of designers who view Apple to be the gospel of UI design, which can sometimes lead to them ignoring other schools of thought.

So if I've got this right... It's those nasty lazy designerses fault, and has nothing to do with Androids colossal shortcomings either as a platform to develop for, or to earn a living from?

No. And I said, these designers are a minority. Android is definitely hard to get "right" design-wise, but it can be done.

But if all you are trying to do is make it look like iOS, you are on the wrong track.

Monetization issues are a separate problem as far as I can see. While money can shift priorities, but shouldn't affect design.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#139

Post by ChrisArchitect »

yaeger wrote: post #84
sedev wrote: post #34

> The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand Android users … Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put…

I haven't checked on Android as a platform in quite a long time but it is amazing to see that things still are exactly where they were when I last checked. Android == Google == Free Software That still seems to be the basic idea many users have. It was always weird to see a platform with such high market share compared to iOS can not even get close to what iOS rakes in as revenue and mobile traffic. If one looks at t…

uggh, conversations about this stuff get so messy.... Android users mobile traffic? iOS users may show more mobile traffic because the locked down nature of so many iOS app/features forces you to go out to the browser/web for daily tasks. Android allows so much to be done with only a few apps and basic information which accounts for 85% of your daily us to be at your fingertips without having to open a browser. So yeah, Android users may just use apps, but the reasoning/tracking for mobile traffic and pattern exhibited from iOS comes for different reasons...

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#140

Post by youngtaff »

bluedino wrote: post #123
youngtaff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am. I've also got an iPad and seriously considered getting a iPhone instead of my Nexus 4 but iOS's poor keyboard i.e. key caps are always uppercase regardless of shift state, it's hunt and peck rather than swype, and the lack of intents were a deal breaker for me.

The key caps on my desktop and laptop are always uppercase regardless of shift state.

Yes but sure the key idea behind soft keyboards is they can change to reflect what I'm going to type, as for example the iOS keyboard does when I hit the number / punctuation shift key
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