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.  

    Too many apps “live” in the notification panel

    AG’s notes: the following is an anonymous guest post from the same author who wrote “Inconsistent behavior with the ‘back’ button”. Once again, I cannot agree more with him. Apps in the notification panel are really annoying. Exactly like this author said, every app wants to do something there. For example, WeatherBug displays the current temperature in the panel. Lookout displays its icon in the panel even if “Everything is OK”. Gmail, Facebook, GTalk….. everybody sends notifications to the panel by default. Even after I install an app, a notification lives in the panel forever until I click it to start that app. Android, I don’t want to start an app from the notification panel, I want to start apps in the launcher. This is what my panel looks like, for most of the time. Notifications include app installation, Gmail, Drocap2, eBuddy, WeathBug and Lookout Mobile Security:


    The rule should be that if it’s something that indeed requires user’s immediate attention, e.g., a calendar reminder, pop up a dialoge; otherwise, show the notification in a polite and decent fashion. Maybe take a look at how iOS does it?

    This is less of a gripe about Android itself and more about Android app culture, but nonetheless valid imho. The notification panel in Android has become a bit like the notification area of the Windows taskbar. Every developer feels that their app is important enough to have some crap living there.

    The notification bar should only be used when a program, well, is capable of sending notifications to the user. The user then drags down the bar to deal with the notification. Keeping a persistent icon in the notification bar is rude and uglies up my phone.

    Update (04/29/2011) A new way to use the notification panel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXNA6tabKNA.

  2.  

    Inconsistent behavior with the “back” button

    AG’s note: The following is an anonymous guest post. I cannot agree more with him. I also found the hardware “back” button confusing and “unnecessary”. In iOS, people usually “go back” via a graphic button, which tells “where” to go back to. That is much clearer.

    One thing which bothers me about Android is that sometimes the “back” button means to go back through the app stack, whereas sometimes it means to go back to the previous page in the application itself.

    For example, if I want to see the main page in the “messages” app, I first pick the app out from the app list. The app opens up with the last active conversation. Now to get back to the main screen, I can either press menu → more → all threads (ugh), or I can press “back”. But if I launched the application from the home screen, “back” means to go back to the home screen, so I’d need to open up the messages app again, and then press “back”. Otherwise it goes back to the main screen.

    Very confusing and inconsistent behavior.

  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.

  4.  

    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.

  5.  

    I had horrible experience with the map app on Android. Comparing to the map app on iPhone, it feels bumpy and sometime quite confusing. Even though they both use the Google Map as the engine, Android does a terrible job engineering the app.

    I made a video of locating Apple’s headquarter in Cupertino on both iPhone and Android. What I did is first searching for the address and then zooming in at the entrance of the building.  

    First, loading map is very slow. The video is taken when both phone connect to the same Wi-Fi network. Android loads map image much slower.

    Second, zooming in/out kills the app. Many times when you zoom in, it takes a few seconds to load the higher resolution map image. Sometimes it suddenly zooms in a little more after my finger leaves the screen. It feels very bumpy. Things may get even worse - the new image looks like a different place after loading, because the new image is not the exact image showing before reloading. It is often a little bit off geographically, plus the resolution is different, so it feels like a totally different place. It is very confusing especially you are looking for a place on the road.

    On the other hand, zooming in/out on iPhone is very smooth. There is no “reloading” glitch. It feels just like zooming in/out a photo. I’m not sure how iPhone makes it, maybe it preloads images with similar resolution as an optimization. But who cares, it feels so good.