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

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    Android apps worse than iPhone? There are reasons

    Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by an anonymous reader. He wrote to answer the question previously posted in this blog, why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone. He has “done tons of iPhone work and as of late has been doing a lot of conversions to Android”. Thank you!

    Our standard estimate for an Android version is about 150% for equivalent functionality of an iPhone app.  We warn our clients that even with that, it won’t be as “slick” as the iOS version.

    Why?

    Apple’s SDK is gold. Core Animation forms the heart of UIKit and is incredible.  Core Data is usually a huge win for us.  Those two things alone are massive, but the cleaner, more easily customizable widgets on iOS are a big advantage too.  Let’s not forget Interface Builder and a far superior desktop simulator.

    WAY less QA.  Fewer hardware variations, and each iPhone generation is better in every way than the last.  If it works okay on an iPhone 3G, we know we’re not going to have performance problems on any recent device.

    One screen size. It’s so much easier for our graphics design team to create an awesome UI if they can design to the pixel.  Some UIs scale easily to different resolutions and/or aspect ratios, but others don’t.  We can use both on iOS, but not on Android.

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    Why do apps look worse on Android than iPhone, a programmer’s perspective

    Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Nikolai Sander, CEO of EODSoft. He wrote to answer this question, why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone. Thank you, Nikolai.

    I think I also know the reason why Android apps have so much worse UI’s.

    I’m an independent developer with over 20 years of experience, working for bigger and smaller companies. I have about 10 iPhone apps in the app store with over 10 million apps sold.

    I just recently ported one of my apps to the android platform and was shocked when I learned the User Interface API. It is the worst UI library I have ever worked with (and I have worked with quite a few)! I would even go so far as calling it amateurish. It looks like it was designed by at least 3 to 4 different people without common design guidelines. The naming conventions are inconsistent and the static nature of declaring the UI in xml files might work for the web but for a dedicated device interface it’s a nightmare. This along with the fragmentation of devices (mainly different resolutions) it is close to impossible to create a nice UI on Android devices.

    I wouldn’t blame the developers or designers of the apps for the bad UI. After all most of them wrote the iPhone version first and they sure have all the assets (bitmaps etc.) available but in most cases I assume that they got so frustrated with the UI SDK on the Android that they decided to create a simpler one in order to not waste too much time. I know I have. Trying to get the UI look right on the Android platform is a trial and error process and with trial I mean “you try it on all possible device resolutions and encounter mostly errors”. On the iPhone, you just build it in Interface Builder for 2 resolutions (320x480 and retina, which is almost identical to the iPad) and you’re done.

    Believe me, I’m not an apple fan boy. My background is actually Windows for most of my career but I have never ever seen anything as bad as the Android UI SDK. I’m a huge fan of Android and really want it to succeed but am deeply disappointed by what I’ve encountered.

  3.  

    The new LinkedIn app proves it again - apps on Androids look worse than on iPhone

    The new LinkedIn app proves it again that apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone.

    Let’s take a look at the landing page first.

    First, the layout of buttons in the iPhone version is consistent with the layout in many other iPhone apps. The layout of the buttons in the Android version is random, and not in a good way. They look unnecessarily sparse. The blue-on-dark theme doesn’t make it look like an app for professionals.

    Second, I have to ask this question: how many search buttons do people really need? In the Android version, there are three search buttons in just one interface - one small button on the right corner, one big button in the middle, and don’t forget, every Android device has a hardware search botton (don’t get me start on that). I guess what probably happened is that the Android app team could only come up with five buttons, but in order to to make the layout look better, they had to put one more. Then the search button was the choice since they didn’t have to add any new functionalities.

    Third, the invitation button shows the number of pending invitations in the iPhone version, but not in the Android version.

    Forth, the “News” and “In Person” (making connection through bluetooth) are also missing in the Android version.

    Fifth, the iPhone version has a “Themes” button with which you can switch color themes. I don’t really care about it. The Android version doesn’t have one. But I remember Android’s philosophy is to give users more choices. Maybe developers didn’t quite get this message.

    Next is the profile page.

    The difference on layout and font/size is obvious. The iPhone version looks cleaner and easier to read. The profile picture is bigger. The name and the title are highlighted and eye-catching. On the other hand, the Android version looks crowded and unorganized. It is really a bad idea to combine narrow font, tiny line spacing and almost no margin space around the content.

    Moreover, the iPhone version puts the “Invite to connect” and “More” in the bottom bar, so they are always accessible even if the user scrolls down. This is useful. For example, usually the user scrolls down to read more about this person and then decides whether to invite him/her. With the Android version, you will have the scroll all the way up to the top if you want to do so.

    Here is another example to show the text in the Android version is hard to read:

    I don’t think I need to say more.

    Last but not the least, if you close the app and open it again, the iPhone version brings you to where you left, while the Android version always brings you to the landing page.

    This is yet another unpolished app for Android users. You need to compare with the iPhone counterpart to truly feel the difference.

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

    When I use an iPhone and an Android phone at the same time, I often find that apps from the same company look a lot different on these two platforms - the ones on Android usually look much worse.

    Here is a couple of examples.

    This is what Meebo IM (see update [5]) looks on Android, the contact list screen and the conversation screen: 

    and this is what Meebo IM looks on iPhone:

    I think the difference is pretty obvious. The one on Android pretty much looks like a programming class project. The contact items are too narrow and thus hard to click. They also look bad. The conversation interface is like a geeky IRC client. Those smiley icons are disproportionately small. On the other hand, the interface on iPhone looks much much more polished.

    Here is another example - the Facebook launch interface on iPhone vs. Android (see updates [1] and [4]):

    The same thing here. In the Android interface, icons are not properly aligned. The extra space makes the view look very awkward.

    Let’s take a look at the search interface in Facebook apps:

    First, the search target tabs look much better on iPhone. Those tabs on the Android app, again, look like a programming class project. Second, what’s the point to show the “Facebook” bar at the top again? It does nothing other than occupying the already very scarce room in this page. Third, the “Facebook” bar, the search input box and the tabs are all in different heights. They look very messy when put together. Lastly, the Android app doesn’t have search for pages. Is it because it’s too difficult to put three tabs than just two?

    Again, these is no focus on details. 

    The last example is the user interface of Speedtest:

    This time the difference is not that dramatic, but obviously the one on iPhone looks nicer. The Android UI putting the tab buttons on the top is quite distracting. If I remember correctly, the one on iPhone used to look similar to the one on Android a very long time ago. This company chose to improve the iPhone interface first. Just in case you didn’t notice, the Android phone’s wireless connection is usually slower than the iPhone’s. I run these two speed tests with both phones connected to the same wireless router, and the Android phone is always slower.

    Since the apps of interest are from the same company, they should have the same user interface standard, even if the iPhone versions and the Android versions are developed by different people. But why do they look so different? Is it because iPhone developers are better at user interface design? Is it because the iPhone development environment is better than the Android’s? Is it because iPhone users care more about user interface? Or is it because Android itself implants the ignorance of beauty, usability and focus on details into the community at the first place?

    [1] Updates (4/7/2011 21:38): As some people pointed out that the Facebook app I used was not the latest. It is true. I upgraded to the latest but I didn’t find any changes except that there are two more buttons in the latest release, “Places” and “Chat”. However, I will not update my screenshot. The point is that the Facebook app on Android used to look like that. The iPhone version never looked like that. How could they release an app that doesn’t even have balanced button layout? By the way, the version I installed happened to have a serious bug that drains my battery very fast. It was fixed later.

    [2] Updates (4/7/2011 22:00): Added the comparison of the search interface of Facebook apps on iPhone vs. Android.

    [3] Updates (4/8/2011 1:23): Somebody mentioned that the recently released LinkedIn Android app is worse than the LinkedIn app on iPhone. I took a look and found it is indeed true, so I wrote a new blog post about it: the new LinkedIn app proves it again.

    [4] Update (4/11/2011 8:19): Some readers (especially thank David) pointed out that the empty space in the Facebook app on Android will become a picture stream once you have friends sharing pictures. I tried, it worked, but the picture loading is very slow. Plus, it seems to pick pictures randomly. More importantly, I don’t think it is necessary to load pictures in the landing page. If I only look at the pictures, I may miss more interesting feeds that do not have pictures. So I will have go to the feed page anyway. Plus, when there is no picture, they should somehow remove that empty space. What if somebody has friends that don’t share pictures? This is typical on Android, they give you some more features to make you happy, because they know the competitor is better, but those features are often not necessary. People call it “feature creep”.

    [5] Update (5/16/2011): Many people complained that the choice of Meebo IM is not fair, because its Android version has not been updated since 2009. First of all, to be honest, I didn’t know that. Meebo IM on Android had more than 27K reviews and still had 4 stars. I never care about when an app is released when I pick apps. Second of all, does it mean that Meebo has given up on Android?

    Looking for answers of this question? Here you go:

    Thanks to all the guest writers and the comments from readers! I greatly appreciate it.