The back button in previous Androids was mostly fine with a few overloaded functions that led to some understandable inconsistencies. It might get stuck going backwards in the browser or it might dismiss a dialog or keyboard instead of going to the previous screen, but the annoyances were minor.
To fix this they inexplicably added a second iOS-style header back button (which is called Up even though it is normally shown with a left pointer). The combination of two back buttons and the difficulty of understanding it, even for developers who have read the long style guide[1], is an absolutely baffling design decision. There is no way that users can intuitively learn what these buttons do. Add the inconsistent implementations and it's a usability nightmare.
This. The back button is one of the most powerful feature of android. It has always been great for navigating between apps even though it is a bit confusing. Adding a _second_ back button (a third if you count the home button as a long jump back) was the worst decision the android team ever made.
I mean, I understand where they were coming from. When a user jumps between apps he or she might want to be able to navigate inside the apps not just between the apps. However, a single back button with an already too flexible implementation was confusing enough that adding even more navigation options was a terrible decision. One back button forced apps builders to make their app usable within a single thread of history which is a Good Thing.
When a user jumps from app to app and suddenly decides she doesn't want to follow the current line of history, it is not unreasonable, and much less confusing, to make her go through the device home screen to get access to the start screen of the app and its full navigation tree.
When an app opens another app it should be only to give access to a particular section of the second app that is relevant to the first app.
A single back button also helped with the recent apps list mismatches. The mismatches happen when an app is opened from another one and happened less when this type of navigation was for limited specific actions that brought you back to the original app.
I love the back button. After losing my uninsured galaxy note I'm stuck with iOS for a bit. I literally hate the way that I can click a link in an email then have a mammoth task to get back to the email app, then the correct account, then the correct email, then the correct part of the email to find the next link I've been sent so I can start this dance again.
Roll on the launch of the note 2, back to a phone and OS that allows me to accurately place the cursor when I'm editting text!
Cheers for that - I genuinely didn't know there was a quick way to do that - and it seems neither do any of my iPhone 4s using friends, as they were all as stuck as me - I look forward to speeding up my mornings now!
I think this is a prime example of why apple products are harder to use than they need to be because they refuse to evolve the hardware as the software evolve. They start out with very simple functionality that only need one button. Now, one button does different things depending on if you press, double press or press and hold it down. It's the same with their laptops, so many functions are hidden behind multi-fingered gestures on the touch pad or moving the pointer to some corner or the screen. It's not any easier than putting more buttons on the phone or making the options visible somehow.
It's not a full solution to your issue (and apologies if you are already aware of this), but a double tap on the home button brings up a list of recent tasks, and your email app should be the left-most one and you can just tap on that to get back to the mail that you were reading.
On the comment about placing the cursor, I have the opposite - I rarely have an issue on my iPhone/iPad, but I cannot for the life of me get the cursor on my Galaxy SII to go to where I want it to.
It is odd isn't it? Maybe our fingers learn different tools better? I LOVE the android keyboard, stock or the various add ons - but so many iOS friends just can't get to grips with it. But I storm along on my (now dead) Dell Streak and Note, and struggle to write anything on my iPod touch.
I wonder if there should be a keyboard that works just like the iOS one for Android, for those trying to migrate ;)
An Apple-alike one would be great. With the standard Samsung one I struggle to put two words together without a mistake, whereas with my iPhone I managed to type a 3 paragraph email while I was walking home last night and managed about two minor errors in the whole thing.
Admittedly I do like the SwiftKey keyboard, and I keep meaning to buy it (my trial ran out and I've not got round to associating a credit card with my Google account). The single best thing about Android for me is that you can at least swap out most of the things that you don't like about the stock OS.
The one in Windows phone acts up much more consistently then. The back button takes you to the previous screen in the app until you get to the home screen and then it takes you back to the page where you launched the app from.
I actually really like this idea: If you're in an email and you open a picture, you go to Gallery. Now you can a) Go 'Up' to the main Gallery activity, or b) 'Back' to your email. That seems pretty intuitive, a lot of the time I've been frustrated by the lack of an 'Up' option in apps.
That is what kills me in iOS, I regularly get an email with a few urls to check. Heck even one is a pain: open email, see link, click link, browser opens, check link, press home button, swipe to screen with email client, press email, press email account was in before, scroll to email, press email, scroll to point I was at in email before I was dragged away.
In android it just a single back button away, or if something goes wrong, when I return to email I'll be where I was before, correctly scrolled in the email I was reading.
Not to say that iOS isn't a pain for rapidly moving between tasks, but if you double tap the home button Email will still be in there so you should be able to swap back quicker.
I had to sit and explain the process to both my girlfriend and my Dad recently, I think one of the issues is it's a "you have to know it to know about it" situation, it's mentioned plenty by Apple but given that the products are pretty user manual free there's many things that you have to know it to know it.
Hope it helps, you can show your friends and bathe in the satisfaction of knowledge sharing. Also on iPad, 4 finger swipe to move between apps, 4 fingers up to show App Tray, full page pinch for home. Not hidden by any stretch, but not widely known.
Except it doesn't really work that way. I'm texting in WhatsApp when I get an email. I open the email from the notification area, read it, hit back, it exits to the home screen and not WhatsApp.
When I already have a home button, why should the back button be used more for home (besides the actions in the app) rather than "up" a level to a previous state like it's supposed to?
It is not two back buttons. It is like a browser: a history back button at browser level, and a suggested top left clickable app icon that usually brings you to app main screen, or some intermediary hub screen if the app is really multiple apps bundled in one.
It's true that it can be confusing at times but the reason is that of inconsistencies and some bad behavior of some apps, eg hooking the back button.
Don't think people are that stupid, they can understand such a simple model.
It becomes frustrating when the activity stack is invisible, but still accumulating additional activities in app. Old Gmail was especially egregious with this, where you could hit the back button 10+ times and end up switching between emails you've viewed days previously before you actually back out of the app.
I love the general idea of the separate Up and Back, but I'd compare it to XP-era Windows explorer rather than a browser (though both are valid comparisons, I just think Explorer is closer). It just runs into issues where the developers have to try to divine what exactly you are wanting to do at each instance when you hit back. Sometimes users want to go back to where they were before when they hit back, sometimes they want to go 'back' to the home screen of an app - this is what the 'Up' navigation button should exist as, but seldom does. What about if you go Up in app, then hit the back button? Should you exit out of the app? Go back to where you were in app? Go back to the previous app? All are valid cases.
I don't really agree that the home button behavior is confusing. The home button complements the back button to give you two options: stay in the app or go back to where ever you came from.
I think the more real problem is that developers have been really bad at choosing the right default behavior for things like launching from notifications, widgets, or intents. These things are often the most likely way someone will interact with your app, so implementing them needs careful attention. At a minimum, an app like Gmail should offer a configuration to change the behavior even if they want to choose a weird default that overrides standard system behavior.
The back button gets picked on a lot, and it is confusing.
However I am much happier having a consistently placed back button that works 90% of the time than not have one at all.
When using iOS I constantly run into very common and simple workflows like read email, check a link in email, press back to get back to email which quickly become fustrating especially when apps have incredibly wierd workarounds (like twitter embedding a terrible web browser to check links), even simple things like deactivating the keyboard / going back from dialogs and activities.
I have never found the back button to be confusing. The problem is that we call it a "back button". To me it's the "anywhere but here" button. When I don't want to be where I'm at I just start pounding on it until I arrive at something I do want. Either something in my history or the home screen.
It's a nightmare for usability when done wrong, though it's amazing for usability when done right. For instance, a wrong way to do it is when I use the task switcher to go back to Google Voice which opens up the last conversation and when I hit the back button it dumps me to the home screen, when what I really wanted was to be dumped back into the inbox. This could be solved by pushing an explicit intent or whatever onto the stack for the inbox above the conversation so that the back button works as expected.
Where the back button works awesome is where I open a link from Tweetdeck and when I hit the back button it puts me back into Tweetdeck.
But, what the button is supposed to (as given in the article), is to take you back to your previous screen - the home screen. The button on the top left is supposed to take you back to your inbox.
Perhaps, but if you are taken to a conversation regardless of how you launch the app (ie, the previous state, which is standard behavior), then I would say, no. Which is what is happening in the Google Voice application.
I should state that what actually happens in this scenario is this.
1. View conversation, leave Google Voice.
2. Re-enter Google Voice somehow, currently viewing conversation.
3. Hit back button, taken to wherever you came from (previous app, home screen, etc)
4. Re-launch Google Voice, now the starting screen is the inbox.
Navigating back/around in apps is the single biggest thing that makes me feel like an idiot whenever I use an iOS device. I feel like the dedicated buttons kept me from ever feeling quite as dumb when I was first getting used to Android or, later, Windows Phone.
Otherwise stuff just feels like I'm used to one way and Apple does things a bit differently, which is fine, but I really don't get the lack of a back button. A lot of stuff seems to turn into two-step "tap to make the button bars show up, then tap the button" procedures instead of just hitting "back."
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, after learning touch-screen interfaces on non-iOS devices, iOS doesn't feel any more naturally intuitive, like as if Android or WP7 was missing something. It just has different customs.
They are removing physical buttons, not buttons per se. They are still on the bottom of the display, always in the same place, with the same functionality.
I use the 4 finger up-swipe for switching apps on the ipad, not sure if that exists on the iphone. My phone is an android and I've found it consistently faster to just go home than using the damned back button.
The 4 finger gesture doesn't work, but you can double tap the home button to do the same thing (on iPad too; that's how I do it because I don't like the 4 finger gestures).
The double-tap home menu always brings up the weirdest menu. There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to how the apps are arranged (or if you even get apps - sometimes you get iPod controls). One of the more irritating features of iOS.
Your device may be broken or something, because the functionality of the multi-tasking bar is pretty well defined. Double click the home button, the bar appears with a list of your most recently used apps, sorted in that order. the only way you would get ipod controls is if you swipe to the left on that bar, which reveals the media controls (works with apps besides ipod, like pandora etc).
They're arranged in order of last used; swipe left to bring up another screen's worth. Swiping right brings up music controls. It's pretty straightforward, and in my opinion incredibly useful.
How do you fit four fingers at once on a phone screen? My four fingers right next to each other are wider than my phone by a bit more than half a finger on each side.
But it does work for most applications, and it's quite slick. It's also very comparable to either a Browser 'back' or Windows Explorer 'back' functionality. Both can take you to places nowhere near where you are now, or they can take you just a bit further up in the current stack. Problems exist in both browser world and in Android world though, notably when developers (web devs and app devs) do things outside of spec - like constant redirects in browsers where you can't back out of reliably, or not closing out activities before adding more onto the stack.
Such a shame, this is such a good article. A respectful adult discussion of real problems. From which we could have a great conversation about these issues, and better, brainstorm solutions. Which would be an incredibly fun and productive thing to do. Even Matias Duarte himself replied to the article.
After reading the article I clicked on the HN comments, excited, expecting to read insightful solutions I could never have came up with. But instead, 90% of the comments here on HN, including the top voted ones, are just childish attempts to show off how cool you are for cheer-leading for either iOS or Android more. This is so sad.
This place is in desperate need of more moderation. The ratio of active users/mods seem out of control.
I've got a chrome extension called 'Hacker News Collapse'. With one click (on the parent comment spawning the low-quality discussion) I can hide the whole thread and move on to more interesting discussions.
I have both a "new iPad" and an Android Phone (an HTC G2, which is stuck in Gingerbread and is not exactly in its prime.) I am a fairly simple user of both of these: I use a few apps (Twitter and Yelp come to mind, and an app to read reddit) and the stock apps (Google Maps especially on the phone, the browser on both.) Here is my perspective on the two: it doesn't actually matter that much.
With iOS, everything looks pretty good and there's a lot of consistency. The browser, I understand, is much better than the browser on my phone (I'm not sure how it stacks up against Chrome for Android, which is not available to me.) But then, iOS is kind of annoying too: the keyboard placement often gets in the way of text fields, there is zero integration in between apps and no way for an app to provide a common service, I have to log in to everything separately. It's very difficult to move within a word (for example, if I typed fold instead of food, it is difficult to change the l to an o.) Every app has its own embedded web browser, which invariably has slight different controls than every other apps embedded web browser. Settings are sometimes bafflingly hidden in some other settings app, rather than being in the actual app you're using. Those things annoy me slightly, but they don't bother me that much when I'm using the device, because when I'm using the device, I'm focused on the task at hand and the device doesn't confuse me enough that it breaks my concentration. This is easy to understand because, as I mentioned, I do pretty simple things on my iPad.
With Android, apps can provide common services ("Android intents") and they integrate well with one another. There's a back button to move between apps, so apps don't need to do things like embed their own web browser. There's a little nub that I can use to move within a word, so correcting text is much easier. I can use a custom keyboard that is better than both the iOS keyboard (which is admittedly very good), and better than the built-in Android keyboard (which is pretty good, but doesn't have very good autocorrect.) But the thing with Android is that up until recently, it's been very plain and even ugly by default. The default look of an app is pretty ugly (just white text on a black background) so developers seem to try to implement their own style, with varying degrees of success. When the back button works, it's a godsend, but when it doesn't it's really fucking confusing. Animations are often choppy. But mostly none of this actually matters that much, because when I'm using the device, I'm focused on the task at hand and the device doesn't confuse me enough that it breaks my concentration. This is easy to understand because, as I mentioned, I do pretty simple things on my Android device.
> an HTC G2, which is stuck in Gingerbread and is not exactly in its prime
Software upgrade issues with Android aside, I seriously suggest you redo your comparison after getting your hands on an ICS or JB device. The UI differences between GB and ICS/JB are enormous.
I tend to agree: each has it's own positive and negative points....
I own an iPhone 4S, Galaxy S3, and a Blackberry Bold 9900 - all for testing. In terms of usability, I also put them in this order. Don't get me wrong: all three have good UI points (ahem harder to find in the Blackberry sorry), and all three have bad UI points (a blog waiting to happen for iOS too? e.g. you can't see the message above if you've typed a long message in Messages in iOS). But regardless: the 4S has much better usability guidelines than Android AT THE MOMENT. Namely, regrading the things the article brought up (e.g. icon sizes - come on...)
Personally I'd love to see Android up it's game, and since Matias Duarte has taken the reigns I think that we'll start to see it's usability become much more consistent - hence evening the UX playing field. I also really REALLY hope iOS fixes some of the annoying things in it's UI interface. Personally, I look forward to a greater UX experience all round - thankfully, arguably, that is already happening.
"e.g. you can't see the message above if you've typed a long message in Messages in iOS"
Lost my iPhone so can't check this, but I'm pretty sure you can drag the visible bit of the message above down to collapse the keyboard and see the whole thing.
You should really try the Windows Phone in that case. Its quite intuitive. Now I know the word is relative but I have used both android and iPhone in the past and I just love how the Windows phone brings everything together and how it is consistent across the board.
It has this app integration where you can link into an app from another. e.g. if I looked up a restaurant in maps then all the restaurant related apps such as yelp and opentable are available to me right there. A tap takes me right into those apps at the page that talks about that specific restaurant. This has been there for a couple of years unfortunately not enough people have used the platform
I have a HTC G2 (aka Desire Z) too, and i have a [ICS custom rom](http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?s=3eaa2220b0e...) on it that runs rather smoothly. I'd lie if i said installing a custom rom is super easy, but for someone browsing HN it shouldn't take longer than 2 hours.
> (I'm not sure how it stacks up against Chrome for Android, which is not available to me.)
Asus Transformer TF300T tablet, Android 4.1 - Chrome is laggy; it takes some time for it to start up to be usable. It's not too bad, but not too good either.
Just a tip, if you are jailbroken you can install "Swipe selection". It allows you to swipe left and right on the keyboard to move the text-edit-bracket (?), much much much better.
iOS neither has true background apps nor a true history. When clicking a link that opens Safari (for example), the originating app only knows its shutting down and in the future may be restarted. The only decision to be made is "Save state or not?" .. the double-click-on-home method to go back to the last app works pretty consistently if apps save state, primarily due to simplification of options.
It sounds like Android, on the other hand, has real background apps and a real history. If so, the back button would then actually have to communicate a state of some sort to the previous app (which is still running), putting the end action in the hands of the developers.
I'd say my biggest complaint with Android is excessive use of cryptic icons with no way to tell what they do until I press them.
I'm pretty sure I forwarded some spam to some fairly important people the first time I tried to use Google Plus on my Galaxy Nexus. I still have no idea what I did, because I can't read hieroglyphics. I don't have time to look for documentation or tutorials that probably don't exist anyway, so I'm basically afraid to explore the app any further. An app that instantly and irreversibly alters the state of a remote process is not a good place to rely on discoverability, no matter if it's for social networking or nuclear reaction control.
In general, things that are supposed to be "intuitive" need to be spelled out for the benefit of us slow folk to a greater extent than the designers at Google believe.
Pro tip: Click and hold any icon in a top or bottom action bar in Android to see its label. Very useful with cryptic symbols. Not a solution, but eases the issue.
Doesn't work in Browser, the #1 androd app. Holding on the tab switch button or the three dots menu button does nothing. Holding Back opens the history menu, holding the app switcher does nothing, holding home runs the Google Now animation. Better luck in other apps maybe.
Older Android versions looked like they were design by the very same people who were supposed to write the code... newer ones look a lot better thankfully, but still far away from good UI.
I have this same issue. I find copy/paste on iOS to be simple and copy/paste on my Nexus to be a pita as I have to remember what all of the icons represent.
It's easy to nitpick little quirks in a platform's interface. iOS isn't quirk-free. I think a much larger problem is something this article only occasionally hints at (for example in the icon sizes section):
Android's design aesthetic still sucks!
Is it skeu-oriented like iOS? Not often but sometimes yes! Is it completely 2D minimalist like Metro-style? No, but sometimes yes. Is it futuristic/robot/Matrix? Yes, sometimes, but not always.
Jelly Bean (and ICS) certainly improve upon past versions, but the UI still looks like a big mishmash compiled from random submissions from a bunch of volunteer open-source designers. Nothing wrong with that in theory and no offense to volunteer open-source contributors, but we're talking about Google here and their flagship platform. I can forgive spit and polish when I check out Haiku OS or the latest bleeding-edge KDE distro, but Google and the companies commercially shipping Android devices should be held to a much higher standard. Laugh all you want about Apple shredding pixels in Passport in iOS6 but at least they're putting huge resources into crafting memorable experiences that delight users. What's delightful, memorable -- even whimsical -- about Android?
As an ios user since 08, the nexus7 needs a lot of comparative polish.
* The keyboard doesnt always pop up when you're in a text field.
* What's the deal with font rendering in Chrome? Some links appear bigger than others (on hackernews and reddit).
* Hitting an actual link is like choosing a first square in Minesweeper, sometimes it works, but most of the time it either misfires or opens the enlarge modal.
* There seems to be inconsistent feedback that a link was actually tapped in Chrome.
* The built-in apps lack any real contrast.
* The default google apps only seem to play content from the play store. I cant get the book reader to open anything so I had to try 10 different ebook readers leaving me in a situation of read some here, read some there. Why wouldnt google want it to open epub like ibooks does?
* The software home button is very frustrating. Miss the spacebar, Im going to the home screen
* Who thought that power + volume down is the best way to take a screenshot? It is very hard to do
There are other little things that escape me at the moment. The device is great though, and if I didnt have such a history with ios, id probably think it was the best that could be offered. Luckily for us the gripes that I have seem to be minor in the grad scheme of things. My main advice (to you googlers reading) would be to choose a default setup that is what you guys consider the best of the best and still let the tweekers tweak.
Oh and I feel that a small ipad would easily eat the nexus7's lunch
>What's the deal with font rendering in Chrome? Some links appear bigger than others (on hackernews and reddit).
This happens in Firefox as well. They're trying to use an adaptive algorithm to resize text intelligently, making "content" appear larger than nav bars and the like.
At least with Firefox, this fails when someone leaves a short comment and the algorithm doesn't recognise it as content. Even if Chrome fails in a different way, they're failing at the same (somewhat hard) problem.
Maybe it could fixed by, upon discovering content, ensuring that any similarly styled/classed elements had the same font size?
In Firefox, I believe that chaging the about:config setting font.size.inflation.minTwips to 0 might disable it -- that's the setting desktop firefox has.
It's possible that tweaking some of the other inflation settings would allow for more pleasant inflation, though.
Who thought that power + volume down is the best way to take a screenshot? It is very hard to do
On a lot of phones, those two buttons are across from each other, so squeezing the phone with two fingers will take a screenshot if those phones support that shortcut.
> The default google apps only seem to play content from the play store.
I have sideloaded PDFs and epub. I don't think this should be an issue. Anyone else with a comment on this?
>* The software home button is very frustrating. Miss the spacebar, Im going to the home screen
Never had that problem, but long press spacebar and annoying 'Choose input method' dialoug pops up. YMMV
> Hitting an actual link is like choosing a first square in Minesweeper, sometimes it works, but most of the time it either misfires or opens the enlarge modal.
I have had this issue with my friends iPad as well. May be I was not experienced enough on the platform. You might be avoiding it on iPad owing to its large screen estate and hence larger content.
> What's the deal with font rendering in Chrome? Some links appear bigger than others (on hackernews and reddit).
This is actually a feature, to make it easier to read text when you're zoomed out. As you zoom in it reflows to the proper size. I find it super handy on my Nexus S, not sure how I'd like it on a tablet. Same with the zoom function, I'd rather get the zoom dialog then get dragged to the best guess, or sit there clicking for a million years. Both are innovative features that I was glad to see once I got used to them.
> There seems to be inconsistent feedback that a link was actually tapped in Chrome.
In general, Chrome on Android isn't a very polished experience. Dropping the old Android Browser for the Nexus 7 was a poor choice, because there are a few bugs like this that crop up. On my older Android tablet, the Browser almost never goes wrong, while Chrome periodically just dies. These are really Chrome problems, and they could be fixed with an update from the market.
> Who thought that power + volume down is the best way to take a screenshot? It is very hard to do
Different hardware configurations make most physical key-combos a nightmare. On the Toshiba Thrive, those buttons are right next to each other. On the Nexus S, you basically pinch. Apparently it's hard on the Nexus 7. Mostly, I think they haven't given it much thought because it's not very commonly used.
> Oh and I feel that a small ipad would easily eat the nexus7's lunch
If Apple releases a tablet for the cost of an iPod Nano I'll eat my hat. They don't like to operate on the heavily subsidized, loss-leader model. It would dilute their brand needlessly, while plenty of people would lap up a $400 7" iPad.
"* Who thought that power + volume down is the best way to take a screenshot? It is very hard to do"
Ugh I feel the same, it's hard to do without the Phones Volume being displayed on the phone. Then you get a screenshot of what you want and the Phone's Volume level being displayed.
Tip: If you are running CyanogenMod (and possibly some other ROMs), you can take a screenshot by long-pressing the power button to bring up the power menu. In CM10 this is optional and can be enabled in settings.
> * The software home button is very frustrating. Miss the spacebar, Im going to the home screen
I hate this one too. I bought this up on a hangout with Google developers (they do this weekly). And they made it clear they're very aware of the problem and even hinted some possible solutions they've been trying, such as giving the user an option to move the OS bar up. One can only hope.
You all dismiss these as things as minor annoyances, but you're missing the main point. It's these details that separate a brilliant user experience from a poor one.
Apply may have less features, and it may be less flexible. But it provides a nicer experience, because of these kind of levels of details. You pick it up and it works, it really does feel like magic.
I use both, and whilst my Android is considerably more powerful and has tonnes more features, the iPhone is just a pleasure to use (and I'm a Apple hating Google fanboy, so this pains me).
It's funny, I have the exact opposite impression. I loathe picking up my iPad. I get into the browser and open a youtube video. How do I get back to the browser? Go all the way back home and hunt down the icon? Seriously?
I want to just check something real quick, I'll just pull up my home screen and...crap... I have to actually hunt down an app? For real? I just want to see <whatever>!
The navigation model in iOS, to me, is just broken. I think it's a polished experience no doubt. I think it's snappy and smooth. I just don't find it very delightful. It's work to me.
My Jellybean Nexus, on the other hand just makes sense. It flows, it puts information where I want it, and does it all in a pretty seamless way. I'm rarely lost.
For me I prefer the Android experience on it's own merits.
To add to this, four finger swipe up for the multitasking bar or four finger swipe to the left/right to flip between apps. It's not discoverable - as far as I know there isn't even a tutorial - but this is how large-screen devices work best.
ipad owner here -- you can use the 4 finger swipe for quickly switching apps. It's Apple's equivalent of a back button. It's also intuitive since you can see both apps as you are "dragging" the app back. You can also swipe up to get the equivalent of the double tap home button.
For some reason no one has remarked on one of my biggest problems with Jelly Bean - that Google no longer lets you opt-out of being tracked. There are two location services, which used to be called coarse (uses names of nearby Wifi networks and such) and fine (GPS). Google now won't let you use coarse without also opting in to having your location sent to Google at all times, whether you are using any application or not. So, for example, Google Maps doesn't work unless you opt in to being tracked at all times. Google Now doesn't work at all unless you opt-in to being tracked at all times. Etc.
In prior versions of Android, being tracked 24/7/365 was a separate checkbox you could opt out of while retaining full location functionality when you desired it, e.g. for Google Maps. No longer.
No one in the press seems to have picked up on this unadvertised feature change of Jelly Bean.
I'm not sure if you're right about this change but it doesn't really matter. Cops are all over location data from cell towers, the phone companies don't even require subpoenas to give them access to it. And there's absolutely no way to opt out of it except by not using a cell phone.
Are you sure? I was under the impression (CM10 on SIII) that you could opt out of wifi based location services and choose to only use GPS satellites for GMaps.
It's not like that on my Nexus 7. I can choose only to use the GPS in the Location services settings, or I can choose to use "Google's location service", which sends information to google.
The back button issue for me is the biggest one. The back button is such a useful thing to have, but the inconsistency of its behavior is sometimes mind-boggling.
I think Android is great, but this inconsistency is what spoils it.
I still get tripped up when I click the back button in the browser, and it boots me back to the home screen and not the previous item in my browser history. Never mind having the concept of 'windows' with zero visual cue that a page loaded in a new window, and not the existing one.
There wouldn't be much of a problem but the stock apps set expectations that are rarely delivered upon anywhere else. You're trained to long-press an item to perform an action on that specific item. This won't work in every app: in some caes you might have to swipe it, iPhone style; in others, it's just not possible.
I would still use Android over an iPhone, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
Agreed. I constantly get confused when using the play store. If I navigate to an app detail view, do I press the back button or the top left navigation button to get back to the list? Shouldn't it be intuitive enough for me to know without having to memorize its behavior?
That and the horizontal complaint are the ones I don't really get. Horizontal doesn't really make sense as a horizontal orientation. And orientation changes with widgets on the home screen brings it's own issues. Take for example a home screen filled with edge to edge one row tall widgets. How do you resize that to fit into a horizontal orientation?
The Google Voice one makes sense to me. I don't have an Android phone, but the idea of having multiple texting apps that are slightly different seems amazingly confusing.
The horizontal support was the only one that didn't seem like a problem to me. Most Apple apps on iOS have horizontal support (Messages, Calendar, Camera, Photos, Mail, Stocks, Calculator, Notes, Safari, Reminders, Contacts).
But Springboard (the launcher) doesn't have horizontal support. That doesn't seem like a loss to me. If there was a second horizontal orientation, I've have to re-organize everything. You can't rotate every icon 90 degrees because there isn't enough space for the app titles in landscape.
A few other apps lack a landscape mode, but it doesn't seem like a big deal. Settings, App Store, Weather, and YouTube (outside of video playback) don't support it, but that doesn't seem like a big limitation.
Google Voice doesn't come stock with Android. You can install it if you have a Google Voice account. If so, you probably know which one you want to use for texting. For example, I'm on Sprint and have GV integration enabled, which means my GV number gets used for caller ID and voicemail instead of my Sprint number. If I use the stock messaging app (or any other like Handcent), the texts go out as SMS through Sprint, with my Sprint number. If I use the GV app, the texts go out using the internet (3G or Wifi) and have my GV number. I never use the built-in messaging app. I'm pretty sure anyone who installs GV understands the concepts behind it and chooses to use either GV or SMS for text messaging without any confusion.
I guess it depends if you are a GV user or not. If you route all your phones through GV and only give out your GV number, you probably only use GV for texting. When I use my carrier for texting, recipients see it coming from a number they've never seen before.
I've had the same cell phone number for a decade, and it's what I give out for personal contacts.
I give out my GV number for professional contacts. I generally won't answer an unknown number if it's coming to my personal number, but if it's coming from my GV number, there's a good chance it's something important.
Makes it easier for me to screen calls without changing the number all my friends have had for years.
I believe it's possible to migrate your cell number to GV, like you would with any other provider. I prefer GV here so that I can answer calls from essentially anywhere -- whether it be from my home phone, or from my gmail browser. When people text me, it arrives as a normal text on my cell phone, but also arrives as an email that I can simply reply to via the standard gmail interface. Voicemail also appear as normal messages in my email inbox, so yeah, there are a fair number of advantages using GV over your normal cell number.
>I believe it's possible to migrate your cell number to GV, like you would with any other provider.
You can, I have no desire to. It makes it easier for me to cleanly separate my work and personal life. Like I said, I give out different numbers to different people for this reason. I don't want a single number for everything.
All the calls get routed to my cell phone, but it's easier for me to tell who's calling and possibly why if they go to different numbers.
If I don't want to get business-related calls when I'm off on the weekend, I can just set GV to do not disturb while still being available for personal calls, etc.
>Voicemail also appear as normal messages in my email inbox
You can do this without porting your number. You just set up GV as your voicemail provider. You can do this from the GV app.
As an avid iOS user, every time I try and pick up an Android I experience the same types of issues. I wonder whether it actually is a lack of intuition, or that I am so locked into the iOS way that it ends up feeling foreign right from the start.
Re: the back button, I am curious how other mobile OSs handle this problem. An obvious solution would be that the OS forces a particular behaviour, but then again, you were referencing default apps with varying implementations. Having never worked with the Android SDK, I wonder if the behaviour is forced on 3rd party apps?
This is true of every major platform UX change. Everyone hates all platforms except the one they use, except for those rare conversion events where something trips in your brain and you decide to switch. Then you hate what you used to use and everything returns to normal.
As a person who's never had an iPhone/Mac, I experience the same foreign feeling when I use an iOS device. I'm pretty sure this feeling is mostly due to unfamiliarity and not superior design on either side. Although it is worth noting that whenever I've borrowed someone else's Android phone it can be a completely different experience from my own Android device, whereas an iOS user borrowing an iOS device will know exactly how to operate it.
Yep, I especially get this feeling when using a Mac, from the mouse acceleration curve. It just feels wrong, and I can only use a Mac for a few minutes before my hand starts hurting.
" I wonder whether it actually is a lack of intuition, or that I am so locked into the iOS way that it ends up feeling foreign right from the start"
Both, but mostly the latter. If you use both OSes regularly each becomes pretty natural to use.
But there are some baffling things in Android that are just too vaguely defined, like the oft-mentioned-here back button.
I use Android every day, and I'm still not 100% sure what the backbutton is going to do when I press it, even in apps I use pretty often. Unfortunately fixing this now isn't that easy because each app's Activities gets to choose what happens when the back button is pressed. This is bad for the obvious reason that some developers are bound to do the wrong thing, but made worse by the fact that Google themselves have attempted to "redefine" the back button various times and each attempt has made things more confusing (IMO).
To elaborate... What informs my thought process as to what I believe will happen when using the interface? Do I think it will behave a certain way because it seems to make the most sense, or because I remember the iOS implementation? Since it's probably fair to assume that my understanding of any UI is going to be derived from some other previously used UI, perhaps the question is a pointless one? I am not sure what the answer is.
This is not exactly Jelly Bean's problem but it's one thing I can't stand. When you quickly scroll page and stop it using single tap, if that tap happens to fall onto tappable element (e.g. links), the element will be tapped. Both stock browser and Chrome has this behavior (which is extremely annoying).
Other thing is scroll bar, I can't understand why do all apps implements its own scrollbar. From my quick testing of stock apps in JB (CM10), Messages app has one, Email app has one and contact list has another one.
* I think the inconsistent application switcher icon / app title display issue is due to intents. If you click an image in your GMail it uses the Gallery to display it, but you are still in the GMail app. At a technical level I understand what's going on but I think it either needs to make it clearer what's really going on (for example have the GMail title bar above the image, and have the intent embedded like an iFrame, as well as fixing the icon/screenshot issue), or spawn a new application to handle it (which, if the back button behaves as per the spec in that application, would be totally transparent to the user). Both of these approaches are similar to existing solutions in the desktop world so I think the familiarity would defuse the confusion.
* Icons - I like that the icons are all over the place, in style, size, shape etc. It's a common criticism from an aesthetic perspective, which I agree with, but from a usability perspective it makes it a hell of a lot easier to pick out my apps. I used to use Go Launcher with a theme to make everything a bit more iOS-like and one of the things it did was make all icons the same outline and size by generating coloured backgrounds on them. Obviously, this is far lower quality than actually having uniform icons designed by humans, but I found the lack of silhouette and size variation made them blur together more.
* Horizontal support - I don't know why, but some apps don't change based on the tilt sensor, and some do. My old Motorola had a dock and when I put it into it, it forced everything including the homescreen into landscape mode. If you have a custom launcher they usually have options to control whether or not the homescreen & launcher will go into horizontal mode or not, and on both devices I've tried this, if you allow the homescreen to go into horizontal mode everything else follows - including the dialler. This is the only point in the article that I would say is definitively incorrect.
My single biggest annoyance is the last of support for calendar invites. Android just doesn't know what to do with them. I have to save them, open a file manager, view them in a text editor, manually create calendar events. Things like that are why I still reach for the nearest iOS device whenever possible. I'm still not thrilled at the speed and smoothness of web browsing on Android either. On a Galaxy Nexus with either 4.0 or 4.1 zooming and scrolling often lags. Finally will they ever update the IMAP/POP client? No message threading? Not everyone uses GMail.
One pet peeve of mine is when you set up a new Android phone. I've only done this once, but from Google Play it's pretty easy to find all the apps you've installed before. But after clicking one and installing it, you return to the app list at the top.
I know they meantion a different use case in the article, but this literally turns what should be a quick and pleasent task of getting your new phone going, into a killer. Maybe there is a better way of doing it, from their website? Whatever they should make it easier and clearer.
The back button annoys me most in email apps - I think it's the stock Email app - when you scroll through all your unread email, and instead of doing an "up", it decides to go back through all the messages your just read. Meanwhile, it upsets me in other apps where, when I open a file from a file browser, and press back, it doesn't take me back to the file browser; it takes me "up" in the application that opened the file.
So this is the heart of the inconsistency. Sometimes I want up, and sometimes I want back. It's context and app dependent. I don't really see a way to do it right without letting apps fiddle with the stack.
Re icon size difference: I actually find this difference helpful in distinguishing one icon from another. On iOS, most icons are rounded squares, and are less visually distinctive. I had to go completely overboard with classification folders to make it easier for me to find stuff on my iPad.
A lot of the other points are QA polish. I don't disagree with many of them, but they don't really bother me either. On the multiplicity of messaging apps, I don't really see that as a problem either, since I don't use any of the Google ones apart from the SMS app when I'm forced to; I use WhatsApp instead (yes, insecurity, I know).
> "I don't really see a way to do it right without letting apps fiddle with the stack."
Apps can (and often do) fiddle with the stack, at least as it applies to their own Activities. Of course, they do so inconsistently (even Google's own apps do so inconsistently).
For example what they call the "up button" (both in the API and in their designer docs) visually looks like a back button. Trying to distinguish between "back" and "up" is great, but then making your "up" button look exactly what any sane person would expect a "back" button to look like is goofy. Not only is this confusing for users, but it is also confusing for developers, resulting in different apps handling the situation differently even though the app developers have tried to do what they think the right thing is.
So the solution is in many ways more confusing than the situation before they tried to fix it.
This was asked in one of the Google IO 2012 videos that was recorded, and their response is that it originally looked like an like a triangle to the left of the icon in Honeycomb, but nobody noticed it was there.
Spent a lot of time nitpicking small issues, but he does pick it up with better points after the back button rant and latitude.
The horrendous lack of support for landscape views, G+ photos being stuck in my gallery (with a Picasa icon on top of it), soft button rotation, crappy contact pictures, and the 4 separate text messaging systems from Google.
Good list overall, I hope the next update (Kringle?) tries to enforce more uniformity in the UI and in Google Apps particularly.
Most of these are valid, but he undermines his own case with some of them e.g. icons being the same size. That's a valid issue, but the Android guidelines are correct that using every pixel of height would look uneven. It is the same issue with capital letters, A should generally be taller than T so that they visually look equal in height. Dismissing this as "just eyeballing it" is favoring OCD-style logical consistency over actual user interface consistency, since icons with the same pixel height can look inconsistent to users.
Time for two of my favourite quotes "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", and "different isn't always better, but better is always different" and to note that this is the kind of article that Gruber used to write about OS X when Apple were rapidly evolving it in it's early days[1]. It seemed to me even then that it didn't recognize the tension between improving what's broken and keeping everything consistent.
FWIW: In iOS, all icons are varying size, just they have that little border around it forcing all sizes to feel identical. Its a good trick.
BTW He forgot to mention: Why is it that on every fucking device out there the back button and menu button are placed in different locations? Like samsung = right, htc = left, google = left, samsung's evil twin = in the middle of the screen.
Every time I pick up an Android based phone it's always the same miserable first five minutes.
"Where are the apps? Is... Oh. Are these all of the apps or some of the apps? Where are all of the apps? Do I hit a button? Oh.. Oh, there's a browser. But why is it where it... do I drag this or something?"
"How do I stop making it putting squares on the faces in the pictures? Why would you do this? Is it in the Settings? Where is the settings? Is there one settings app? Is it in a menu? Do I tap something? Is it one of these hardware butto-OH where am I now?"
"How do I get this keyboard to go away? It shouldn't be up anymore. I hit enter. Didn't I? What the hell is this key with the arrow? Wait, is this "dismiss?" No.. do I touch the screen? Gotdamnit don't hit that I didn't want to hit that."
Even on a Galaxy S3 last week, it was the same experience. There's too much Old World UI in Android for my tastes.
You appear to be battling the highly technical concept of "familiarity". Anyone using an Android device for longer than a day has none of these issues, and someone that has never used an iOS device would have the same issues. For example:
"Where are the apps? Is... Oh. Are these all of the apps or some of the apps? Where are all of the apps? Do I hit a button? Oh.. Oh, I swipe from side to side. Oh, but some of them are inside folders? What's going on when I go too far left?"
shrug Your indignance over my experiences won't change anything from where I'm sitting.
From a no-name candybar running 1.6 to a dead latest Galaxy S3 running 4.0, I have had the same miserable first five minutes.
I've watched a Google marketing executive thrash around on 3.0 before having to wade in on his behalf, I've finished whatever e-mail setup the Verizon rep didn't do a dozen times, and I've spent nice long chunks of my time trying to troubleshoot issues, set up MDM, and fix sync drama of whatever type.
I've spent tens upon tens of hours doing my due diligence. But every time I pick up the device, it's the same five minutes. Whatever manufacturer, whatever device, whatever form factor, whatever.
Edit: Here's another way of putting it. When I pick up an "Android" device, I don't know what I'm getting. Stock? Cyanogen? Sense? Touchwiz? Motoblur? No-Name? No-name without OHA support? Carrier modifications? Manufacturer pre-loads? 1.x? 2.x? 3.x? 4.x?
This makes answering remarkably simple questions like "how do I set up e-mail" pretty difficult, because there are so many possible answers to that question (K-9? Mail? Maildroid? Gmail? Forward mail to Gmail?) -and- the ones that come before it like "how do I get to the apps" and "how do I unlock the phone" and "what button, if any, wakes the phone up".
These thousand distinctions without a difference make it hard to make predictions, design workflows, or make recommendations to anyone about anything Android. It's just this ever-expanding morass of STUFF.
I'm not sure if this is a slam or a support, but sure, let's talk about iOS.
There is no affordance for switching homepages, summoning notifications, deleting an application, moving an application, creating a folder, destroying a folder, or moving folders between pages. All homepage editing is hinted by a talkative modal popup that happens at first launch, the worst imaginable time for educating users on a relatively insignificant feature.
The blue (Done) button rules your world until black (Edit) is required. (Trashcan) icons get overloaded with filing tasks, (Send To) prints except when (Print) prints except when "Print" prints.
I've watched normal, bright human beings slam into every one of them. I've met people who literally never realized there was a lock button on their phone and simply throw it in their bag when they're done.
These problems are no more excusable and no less vexing to novice iOS users. The thing is that iOS has such an incredibly clean core interaction model of "Everything Is An App" and "Press Home When You Are Done" that it goes a long way to forgiving all the crippy crap nonsense added on after the fact. And most every question you have can reliably answered by another iOS user of the same technical skill and comfort because they're using, substantially, the same thing. iPod, iPad, 3.x, 6.x, whatever.
When Android can mean any of 20 different skins, layers, versions, and loadouts, even fundamental questions like "is there even a back button" have to be asked. Is it on the phone? Is it a soft key? Is it hiding due to context? IDK. Unless you know someone who has a substantially similar device, good luck with network learning.
All computers suck. Android sucks in some key areas, starting with "Where are the apps"? The answer "depends" isn't good enough.
iOS sucks in some pretty key areas too. The only difference is what you're familiar with.
I had been using an iPhone for two or three weeks before I discovered (by accident) that double-pressing the home button actually did anything. To my knowledge, this is the only time double-pressing anything is the correct interaction in iOS; I'm so trained at this point that you either single-press or long-press that this startled me. How anybody ever figures this out is beyond me.
The same goes for navigating text - it also took me a while to find out that long-pressing creates a magnifying glass. I still prefer Android's version, which is consistent on all text fields (including the browser URL bar!) and faster.
The browser forces me to scroll up all the way in order to navigate to a different page. The URL bar and search bar are inexplicably different, which makes no sense on a mobile device.
I still couldn't tell you without looking which icons I can move on my homescreen and which I can't. Even if I look, I couldn't explain why I'm unable to move many of them.
Settings - man, why does this have to be so complicated? Even Cyanogenmod, which offers a far greater level of customization, makes much more sense. Almost all relevant settings for a particular application are inside the application itself - this isn't split half-and-half arbitrarily.
Taking a screenshot? I always forget that this requires pressing two buttons that are very awkward to hold down at the same time. On any ICS+ phone, I can just long-press the power button. Simple. Easy.
The notification bar is completely superfluous. I receive a notification from Twitter, then tap that notification to go to Twitter to read it, and then I notice that I have to go back to the notification bar to clear the notification again.
I've never had any problems with buttons. All Android phones have a back button; the only question is whether it is hard or soft, but I don't really care about that.
Maybe that means I, the user, am just dumb. But I never have had any of these problems on Android.
I couldn't agree more on Settings. Apple made the hideous mistake in iOS 2 of placing each third party app's settings in the OS's Settings app. Developers correctly determined that nobody wants to leave their app to change how it worked and mostly ignored it. But there they sit, dozens of them, ignored forever.
For screenshots, Android absolutely does not get a pass. iOS has had instant PNG screenshots since 1.0. That it took Google 4 years to provide any kind of screenshot functionality at all sans debugger is almost insane.
The rest, yep. Many of the unconventional features and idioms in IOS were released to great fanfare to the fans and featured in advertising. Those coming to the platform after the fact are left playing "hidden secrets".
(as an aside, how are you unable to move icons? They are all movable. only a few built-in ones cannot be placed into a folder.)
You're not dumb. Users are not dumb. They simply have their expectations on how something works met or not, and the more expectations and prior experience you come with, the more frustrating it is when those expectations are not met.
Mobile OSes are not the end of the line in simple computer design. I firmly believe there's another order of magnitude to go, and I am certain I'll see it in my life.
> Android absolutely does not get a pass. iOS has had instant PNG screenshots since 1.0
We're comparing usability, not features. Android's interface is more usable and intuitive.
> only a few built-in ones cannot be placed into a folder
I never use Newsstand. Why shouldn't I be able to place it in a folder
> You're not dumb. Users are not dumb. They simply have their expectations on how something works met or not, and the more expectations and prior experience you come with, the more frustrating it is when those expectations are not met.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. All I know is that, after several months, I'm still frustrated that I can barely do basic things like type on the phone properly (at a reasonable speed) because of all the sloppy design with the text entry. Since the iPhone doesn't let you swap keyboards out, this means that my only other solution is to use my Galaxy Nexus for any serious work.
So there you have it - this incredibly expensive hallmark of 'good design' is relegated to being little more than a flashy toy e-reader! Oh, the irony....
> Whether or not you agree with that is an argument of opinion
That's the problem - almost any design decision can be framed that way. As long as you have the ability to change it, it remains an 'opinion', but as soon as it's the only interface available, then it becomes 'opinion posing as fact'.
You're right, that's to bring up the menu, but the Jelly Bean action is the power and volume down buttons, which on virtually any newer Android phone is far easier to press than the corresponding buttons on the iPhone.
Well, I was only born one person. In the meantime, the world's most important new computing platform has some significant design issues that will probably require attention before we arrive at an era when "what's in your pocket" is your entire computing experience.
I have the exact same problem every time I pick up my wife's ipod touch; I can't remember how to do anything on it. I'd take it one step further, however, and say that it's a lot easier to use the buttons that Android presents and figure out what they do then... discover "oh, you just 4 finger swipe" on the iDevice. The iDevices just seem to have a lot of interactions that you just won't ever discover on your own.
That being said, I really wish Android devices were as polished as the iPhone. I just don't think the ways that you interact with the system and their intuitiveness are a place where Apple wins out.
That's how I feel using an iOS device - death by a thousand papercuts. All the apps are on the home screens, no dedicated back button...I can only use it for a few minutes before getting frustrated.
And apparently iOS doesn't have any public transit directions in the maps app? In 2012?! Are you fucking shitting me?
Yep. If you go for public transit instructions, the Maps app will geolocate and prompt you to download a third party transit direction app that "might" be most appropriate.
It's going to go over like a lead balloon next week - I find Google's transit maps invaluable.
Given the relative popularity of mass transit inside and outside the US, I'm wondering if we're going to see greater divergence between iOS's US and non-US market share after iOS 6.
I'm also wondering if that's why this mistake was possible - too many suburban US decisionmakers who didn't understand in their gut why mass transit was a huge deal to a lot of people.
I'm an Australian living in Japan and this absolutely is a game changer for me. If anything I would think it affects many other countries more than the US.
> Even in Japan you can use apps like Hyperdia for the JR and subways.
That doesn't change the fact that Google Maps provides a complete, end-to-end solution for getting from point A to point B, using any combination of public transit options and walking.
For example, when I was in Japan, I was able to enter the addresses of the starting and ending points, and then get a list of travel options, with the total time and cost included for comparison. You can't get that if you're using a JR/subway-specific app.
Moreover, you can't just tap on an address in another app and have it take you directly to the Google Maps app anymore.
> The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit and at the beginning didn't have many cities and so many providers have apps available.
Yeah, and the original iPhone also didn't have any 3rd party apps. That doesn't mean it's acceptable in 2012 not to have 3rd party apps. It really doesn't matter what things were like before Google Transit launched. All that matters is the current situation, which is that Apple fucked up big time by allowing such a huge regression to get into a release version of iOS.
Germany got support just a couple of days ago. That said, so far it only covers trains -- which also tells you that being marked green in that page doesn't say much about the extent of the support -- so for the most part I'm (happily) stuck with my existing dedicated public transport app.
UK here.. I use this feature multiple times a day. If it's not available, for me, it is a game changer.
Moreover, Google transit was introduced in 2007, even before iPhone 3G, so I don't understand what do you mean by "The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit"
I feel the same way about iPhones. I can never find a damn thing on them. Though, got a new GS3 recently and agree with all you've said.
I could harp on with Cyanogenmod, Cyanogenmod, Cyanogenmod... but really the issue is that they try to sell high-end phones to non-technical people, which you can't really blame them for.
The big phone manufacturers really need to figure out a way to have two versions of their products: one marketed to technical people and one marketed to non-technical people.
Hell, make the contract on the technical one come without a warranty for software so that people can flash whatever ROM on there with impunity. I've never given a crap about warranty's because I know that my intended use of pretty much every electronic device I've ever owned will break the warranty but not the device...
"Where are the apps? Is... Oh. Are these all of the apps or some of the apps? Where are all of the apps?"
Did you pick up someone else's phone? When you initialize an account for the first time (as someone who's done this a bunch with custom ROMs on Android), there will be tutorial overlays on the screen explaining the answers to those questions.
I mean - if you pick up the device of someone else, without getting any introduction (and - a slight bias?), isn't that kind of expected?
I'd argue that we could have similar reactions to iOS, Web OS, S60, S40 etc.. Or really in any interaction. If you didn't read about iOS or never used one of these devices, the home button is _not_ intuitive to figure out. Ignoring all the following warts and hidden features.
So your recollection of your Android experience is probably spot on, but not surprising for me. I cannot imagine that, with the effort you invested in that example session with an Android device, you'd be able to 'grasp' any other platform.
Especially if, as this comment I'm replying to seems to indicate, you just grab the customized device of someone else.
I don't know if I have any grand thesis, I'm just complaining into a textbox.
Bottom-basement minute-one functionality in Android still seems to be in flux, and it's bothersome to me. Hardware buttons become software buttons become contextual buttons become hardware buttons again. Launchers are now widgets are now resizable widgets are now autolayout widgets are now fixed. PIN unlock is now dot unlock is now swipe unlock is now picture unlock is now face unlock is now biometric unlock is now passcode unlock. It all depends on a matrix of Carrier, Manufacturer, Customization, and Major Version that makes it difficult to guess what you're going to expect when you up to a new phone, a new line, a new family, or pick up someone else's device and try to be productive.
On one hand you've got a profound proliferation of designs targeted at a profound proliferation of markets, which is good. But on the other hand you've got these evolving fiefdoms of UI that impose their own vision on top of a platform that is increasingly under the control of Google's own vision. (for instance the end of theming and other 4.0 era mandates) The relearning costs are enormous for the tech-uninvolved and the UI-blind. We don't experience them because we're fluent.
This gray goo platform is now shipping a half billion units a year and the market is still trying to figure out if there should even be a back button. It's unsettling.
One thing that has been bugging me in ICS and JB is how small textfields behave, especially in text-messages. I tend to write long sms's and occasionally want to change a word from the middle. The 'knob' the author mentions does a good job if I want to get back to the beginning, but I haven't found a way to scroll back to the middle with it. Rolling the typefield itself helps, but after doing that the knob is still very prone to getting me straight back to the beginning/end. Navigation in textfields feels awkward. If I'm scolding the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, do tell, I'd like to hear if it's just me or does someone else feel the same.
Interesting viewpoint. I know Google has said they did usability tests and found users didn't know what back would do a lot of the time and disliked it. Google's solution was to provide up navigation instead, which stays within the app. This is the < arrow at the top left of the standard action bar pattern now. I guess the original post had a point that back navigation could have been made more consistent as well, however.
My biggest gripe? The fact that they got rid of square menu boxes with icons for long thin rectangular labels. Try mashing "Dismiss" on your alarm at 5am when you need to hit a little thin bar on the screen. "Snooze" you pressed? NO! I meant to hit Dismiss! I understand that some menus now have too many options to fit into a grid of boxes, but it would be nice to have boxes for <5 options and rectangle labels for >5.
One I just noticed with the NS4G: there is no documentation on how to get to Google Now, they talk about the Galaxy Nexus, but never mention its predecessor. How do you get to it? The search button... swiping up does not work whatsoever.
And I HATE how my contacts are white and everything else is a dark grey to black theme.
I had a Jelly Bean phone and finally got rid of it because of this back button issue. Hate to say it, Apple might not have all the features under the sun, all the buttons, all the noises, all the icons, all the knobs, but whatever they have is done right and at the end of the day, that is what matters.
Gmail on Android is especially bad when it comes to the back button: 1) you are in some app 2) a new email arrives and you open it trough the notification bar 3) you read the email and do whatever with it 4) hit back and you are staring at the home screen. Arghhh this one is driving me insane.
I can't stand reading this guy's article. I've been an Android user for 3+ years. The functionality of the back button just comes natural to me at this point.
The back button has always moved from an inner screen of an app back to the main app screen. It's ALWAYS done that. If they were to "fix" it for people who can't figure that out, they'd piss of every day android users.
Scenario: Text message received, using a web browser currently. Bob says: "Hey did you remember to ask Joe about that thing?". What is your next move? You respond to Bob, and you hit _BACK_, scroll to Joe's thread, and ask Joe about that thing.
This is intended functionality. Translating that into a manual friendly context is not really that easy. The majority of people these days don't even read manuals. If you can't figure it out, then get an iOS device. I feel like the back button is pretty straight forward (irony).
Do Google devs all work in silos? Is there any unified vision for how a 'product' should end up? Or is it just a race to push features into a general project plan and stamp a version on it?
Jelly Bean push to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus also led to a bunch of charging problems which I'm not the only one to have, yet still cannot find solutions to.
To fix this they inexplicably added a second iOS-style header back button (which is called Up even though it is normally shown with a left pointer). The combination of two back buttons and the difficulty of understanding it, even for developers who have read the long style guide[1], is an absolutely baffling design decision. There is no way that users can intuitively learn what these buttons do. Add the inconsistent implementations and it's a usability nightmare.
[1] http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html