Gripes about UI/UX of Android phones/tablets and so called "openness" that is nonsense to consumers.

If you also have an Android phone, you are welcome to email me your gripes as well. If you don't but you want to buy one, read this blog before you do it. :-)

-- A big fan of Google, not Android

  1.  

    This is why Android is incompetent

    Android is incompetent because 1/4 of the users need to install apps to do what the system is supposed to do - killing apps.

    Neilsen’s latest research shows that Facebook and Google’s stock apps are the most popular apps. If you look at the data carefully, you will find an app called “Advanced Task Killer (ATK) Free” is also among the most popular 3rd-party apps (24%-26% of users across three age groups use ATK in the past 30 days). ATK is ranked as top 3-5 among all 3rd-party Android apps. So what is ATK? It is an app that helps users kill background apps when those apps take too much resources, keep hogging CPU or using network, drain battery and make your phone become unresponsive. All these misbehaviors are made possible because of the so-called “real” multitasking on Android. It allows background apps to do pretty much everything and keep the phone awake. Fandroid often advertise this as an “advantage” over iOS, which has strict limitation on what a background app can do and how long it can run. I’m not sure how developers think about iOS model, but I’m sure iOS users can enjoy their devices instead of being busy killing apps.

    I bet now Fandroid will jump up and argue that users should not use any forms of app killers, because they should let Android take care of background apps, app killers will break the activity life cycle, app killes may kill necessary apps, bla bla bla… but who cares? ATK is super popular (4.5 stars from 352K reviews, installed 10M+ times) and it works for many users. It is true that Android’s multitasking model gives developers more convenience and flexibility, but if developers do not respect to the limited resource shared by many other apps, it could end up being a disaster to users.

    Android should really prioritize user experience over development convenience, unless it has a good way to achieve both. When the system is incompetent and many developers are irresponsive or careless, 1/4 of the users will have to kill apps by themselves. That’s just pathetic. 

    1. guillemette-alvarez reblogged this from android-gripes
    2. iambal reblogged this from meckz and added:
      I installed one, but I’ve only ever used it to see what programs are running, if any. I’ve never needed to kill an app.
    3. mooredan reblogged this from android-gripes
    4. meckz reblogged this from android-gripes and added:
      NOT needed nor recommended...anyone of note....
    5. android-gripes posted this