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Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#61

Post by LokiSnake »

cooldeal wrote: post #35

I use WP7 because it has a lot of apps and the nice metro UI. iPhone and Android look jaded in comparison, just like a desktop UI on a phone., But HN is a wrong place for this poll, there is a sizeable section of people who are anti-MS on here and there are even people who call commenters who say anything pro-MS as paid shills. Numbers of wp7 phones in the US might be between 2 million and 4 million now and the devel…

Those numbers are a bit off, I believe. The 2-4m is probably devices shipped to carriers, not necessarily devices sold to consumers. Also, considering the number of device activations on Android, this is a drop in the bucket.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#62

Post by midnightray »

I had two android phones (HTC dream and HTC hero) before I got sick of the UI and made the switch to WP7 on my HTC HD7 which I love.

The whole app thing doesn't actually bother me much as i use my phone 90% of the time for text/phone/email/twitter which is fast and smooth. The other 10% is spent playing games :)

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#63

Post by jaxn »

sandipc wrote: post #55
ricardobeat wrote: post #34

Had an Android (1.6) for a year. After the initial excitement wore out (a week), I could barely answer a phone call since the interface bugged out everytime. The battery wouldn't last for a work day, and every app froze/crashed randomly (including contacts, phone app, and other system apps). The only good experience was MotoBlur syncing perfectly all my profiles, yet it's interface was just as crappy. I already had a…

I think you'll find Android 2.2+ to be a very, very different experience from 1.6 - Google has really worked out many of the silly problems that you mentioned (that certainly plagued early versions of the platform, I agree) .

I prefer iOS, but I have android phones (G1 and Aria). The difference between 1.6 and 2.2 is huge. Bigger difference than iOS has seen (though iOS 5 is close)

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#64

Post by mahmud »

cageface wrote: post #43
mahmud wrote: post #18

I don't currently own a smartphone, but I develop industrial Android apps for tablets.

I've been writing iPad apps for a while but considering testing the Android waters. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the Android tablet development experience now that 3.2 is out.

Galaxy Tablet + Eclipse and official JDK is what I use. Pretty streamlined. On Unix and Mac you don't even have to install the USB driver.

I really have no complaints; there is no live REPL, but you have the second best, code getting statically checked & compiled with every key stroke. Android docs are abundant, but after 2-3 months you get a feel for it.

I have written close to 12 apps by now. I believe we will one of the biggest Galaxy tablet roll outs in Australia, with 40-50 units distributed to our companies by year's end.

My experience might be skewed since we're not going through the official Marketplace channel, and also because we control all the devices (in fact, they're useless outside our VPN.) OTOH, we're using the API extensively. I found bugs in the Samsung hardware and there are things I can't get help for, do to the extreme rarity (and bleeding-edgeness) of what we're attempting.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#65

Post by rawsyntax »

azakai wrote: post #60
KeithMajhor wrote: post #6

I have an Android phone and recently bought an iPad. After experiencing both platforms I think I'll be buying an iPhone 5 next. If I we're going to do android again I'd get a phone where I could install stock android (like the Nexus S). Oh also, I really hope WP7 doesn't take off. The new wave of smart phones run webkit almost exclusively right now and I'd like it to stay that way.

> Oh also, I really hope WP7 doesn't take off. The new wave of smart phones run webkit almost exclusively right now and I'd like it to stay that way. Why would you want there to be a single web browser engine in the mobile space? I'm no fan of WP7 myself, but having a single web browser engine isn't a good thing. We need some diversity.

Windows is not known for making good browser engines.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#66

Post by cageface »

mahmud wrote: post #64
cageface wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been writing iPad apps for a while but considering testing the Android waters. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the Android tablet development experience now that 3.2 is out.

Galaxy Tablet + Eclipse and official JDK is what I use. Pretty streamlined. On Unix and Mac you don't even have to install the USB driver. I really have no complaints; there is no live REPL, but you have the second best, code getting statically checked & compiled with every key stroke. Android docs are abundant, but after 2-3 months you get a feel for it. I have written close to 12 apps by now. I believe we will one…

Doesn't sound too bad. I've recently written a couple of trivial apps for my old Droid and so far it's been a lot easier than iOS. Too bad the emulator is so bad. I'm a little hesitant to sink $500 on an actual tablet just to explore.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#67

Post by shriphani »

rawsyntax wrote: post #65
azakai wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh also, I really hope WP7 doesn't take off. The new wave of smart phones run webkit almost exclusively right now and I'd like it to stay that way. Why would you want there to be a single web browser engine in the mobile space? I'm no fan of WP7 myself, but having a single web browser engine isn't a good thing. We need some diversity.

Windows is not known for making good browser engines.

Slip of tongue ? Whose operating system generates its own browser engine ?

Also : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG30mtlDKOs&feature=relat...

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#69

Post by cageface »

cooldeal wrote: post #35

I use WP7 because it has a lot of apps and the nice metro UI. iPhone and Android look jaded in comparison, just like a desktop UI on a phone., But HN is a wrong place for this poll, there is a sizeable section of people who are anti-MS on here and there are even people who call commenters who say anything pro-MS as paid shills. Numbers of wp7 phones in the US might be between 2 million and 4 million now and the devel…

This is the first time I've heard anyone say that the number of apps is a strong point for WP7. Surely if this is an important criterion then Android or iPhone is 10x a better choice.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#70

Post by cageface »

redthrowaway wrote: post #54
shiftF wrote: post #51

Throughout my last 3 years I've used (in order): BlackBerry 9000, iPhone 3GS, Samsung Focus (WP7). Each one for almost exactly a year. A year ago I made the hard decision between Android & WP7 and eventually went with WP7 for 3 simple reasons: 1) I love the UI. Clean, simple, to the point. 2) Responsiveness of UI. Every Android phone I'd played with (a year ago) didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as…

>Every Android phone I'd played with didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as if smartphone CPU speed couldn't handle all that Android. My roommate has a Galaxy S. While I haven't played with it too much, my initial reaction was quite positive. It felt as smooth and quick as an iPhone 4.

There's a night & day difference between my old Droid 1 and the current crop of Android phones. I recently tried a friend's Galaxy S II and was shocked at how responsive it was, even compared to the iPhone 4.
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