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168 points okeumeni | 5 comments | 16 Oct 10 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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nkurz ◴[16 Oct 10 18:03 UTC] No.1798425[source]▶
I've heard the "fit and finish" argument frequently, both in print and in person as the owner of an HTC Incredible. I don't really see it myself, though. Sure there are a lot of junky looking 3rd party apps, but this is true of iPhone as well. Unlike early Windows vs Mac, I don't have this reaction to the base system.

What are people reacting to when they say this? Or is it just a canned response?

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zzzmarcus ◴[16 Oct 10 18:21 UTC] No.1798470[source]▶
I'm a full-time Android developer. I alternate between using a Nexus One and an iPhone 4 as my main phones.

One of the big differences is that iOS devices have hardware accelerated graphics. You don't really notice how weak transitions and animations are on Android until you get used to using an iPhone. It's a subtle difference, but it's real and it makes a difference.

Other "fit and finish" advantages that the iPhone has: -The lack of a back button. On Android it's great in theory, but in practice it's unpredictable. Depending on where you are it might kick you out of the app you're in or it might take you up a level in the hierarchy or it might take you to the previous document you viewed. The iPhone is better for avoiding this ambiguous navigation.

-A single place for storing apps. It's frustrating running out of space for apps on Android and having to worry about moving them to the SD card. On the iPhone you have games that are bigger than 1gb and you don't have to think twice about installing them or about where they go.

-The iPhone's app store is still better than the Android Market. There are good apps in both, but the iPhone still makes it much easier to discover the best apps. Between having Genius, lists like top grossing and most downloaded, better categories, and better reviews it's just overall a nicer experience.

-The iPhone's music player is better. It has the downside of requiring sync with iTunes but once you have your music on there it's much nicer. It's easier and faster to browse. It's got features like Genius and 2x speed for audiobooks and coverflow, which despite not being super useful, runs fast and smooth.

-The iPhone's camera is faster than any Android device's camera I've tried. It makes a big difference when you're trying to capture a fleeting moment if the shutter lags half a second from the time you press the button. On the iPhone it's instantaneous.

-It's a new feature on the iPhone, but folders for home screen icons is great. The default Android launcher feels outdated.

All that having been said, there are a ton of nice things on Android. Built in voice nav is awesome, being able to share data between apps, the way intents are handled and the ability to set defaults is nice, and there are a ton of other things I love about Android, but since you asked about what people are talking about when they say the iPhone has fit and finish, these are the big ones in my opinion.

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1. pavlov ◴[16 Oct 10 18:59 UTC] No.1798580[source]▶
One of the big differences is that iOS devices have hardware accelerated graphics. You don't really notice how weak transitions and animations are on Android until you get used to using an iPhone. It's a subtle difference, but it's real and it makes a difference.

It's weird that Android still doesn't have this. Even tired old Symbian is now using GPU acceleration for display compositing...

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2. num1 ◴[16 Oct 10 19:10 UTC] No.1798605[source]▶
There's a bug in the tracker but it's been shut down for now. The google rep's answer was "This is something we've investigated a couple of years ago already and that we revisit regularly. Of course we thought of using the GPU, but there are non-trivial issues on many Android devices (a G1-class device for instance supports only one OpenGL context at a time, which would prevent you from using any OpenGL based app like games or augmented reality apps.) In our past experiments we even found many cases in which using the GPU was slower than normal rendering. New devices might allow us to overcome the past limitations that made GPU support a not-so-good solution. The "choppiness" and "lagginess" you are mentioning are more often related to heavy garbage collection than drawing performance"

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

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3. CitizenKane ◴[16 Oct 10 19:11 UTC] No.1798609[source]▶
This is something that is actually pretty tricky. The GPUs on many devices don't allow multiple OpenGL contexts to be created. So in the case of Android, the animations are done in software and the currently running application can create an OpenGL context. This generally makes for slow animations (and unfortunately worse battery life).

What can be done is that the system can create an OpenGL context, and then proxy all other calls (from other apps) through that context with a minor performance hit. This is something that the original iPhone had actually done. However, I think this might be somewhat challenging when working with different mobile GPUs and their quirks.

So while on the surface it's a very simple problem, in practice it can be very hard.

4. jfb ◴[16 Oct 10 19:26 UTC] No.1798655[source]▶
This is (another area) where Apple's strictly controlled hardware platform fully specified and understood trumps Android's carrier friendliness. Because we consumers aren't the market for mobile phones, however, I don't expect iOS to "win" -- to maintain current marketshare. I also expect Apple to be seriously challenged in terms of user experience by WP7, but never by Android.

DISCLAIMER: Former Apple engineer, reasonably unreasonable fanboy.

5. spiffworks ◴[17 Oct 10 04:56 UTC] No.1799707[source]▶
No phone left behind?