Thoughts on Android

In the run-up before Apple officially unveils the new iPhone model, I decided now would be a great time to really give Google's Android operating system a try. That, and my iPhone 3GS has a cracked screen and I got a hold of a Nexus One to use free of charge. I'm by no means the first person to conduct such an experiment, so this review is far from comprehensive. Instead, I'm going to list some of the issues, both good and bad, that I encountered during my use. As always, your mileage may vary. In other words, there are no doubt more advantages and disadvantages than what I mention here; this is just my reaction as a user experience professional; this is not a comprehensive review.

One note: for this review I omitted any features (such as the awful trackball) that are distinctive to the Nexus One; I wanted to focus only on the operating system.

First, the good things.

• Android's notifications are good for the most part, although some should go away automatically without having to be cleared manually (e.g. applications that have installed successfully). Generally the idea of non-modal notifications is good, although I found myself missing the SMS previews on the iPhone, since with Android you have to remember to look at the notification bar. Overall I think I like Android's implementation better though and I still think Palm's WebOS is the clear winner here.
  
  
• Shortcuts to frequently-toggled settings like brightness, bluetooth, wi-fi, and syncing are right on the home screen, as well as other items aside from just web pages as on the iPhone. I'm sure there's a more elegant solution, but Android does this well, and it's extremely handy. Apple should take a lesson from this.
  
  
• Maps with navigation is great. The voice is terrible, but overall the execution is well done. One nice thing is that when getting directions, the app lets you choose your method of conveyance (car, transit, bicycle, foot) before getting directions, instead of after as on the iPhone. Right now this might be the biggest win for Google over the iPhone. If Apple doesn't unveil a navigation solution that doesn't require a 3rd party app and bank loan, it will be a major loss. Overall I think Apple's Maps application is better designed and easier to use, but the lack of navigation is a killer.
  
  
• One-touch access to Airplane Mode is nice, from pressing and holding the power button for about a second. Although I don't like how it takes one tap to indicate intent to power down the phone, and another tap to confirm before it actually shuts down. A better implementation would be to insert a delay that only requires attention if the button was pressed by mistake.
  
  
• Unlock pattern is a nice alternative to a code that is more easily stolen. People have said that your unlock pattern could be visible in the smudges on the screen, but in practice I think this is only true if the only thing you do is unlock your screen all day.
  
  
• Widgets are a nice option to get quick information from apps for which it makes sense (facebook, weather, news, etc). Hard to say how this competes with resources and affects battery life; I only have a few widgets but it didn't have a noticeable effect for me.
  
  
• Facebook and Twitter contact integration is a nice touch. I didn't think I'd like this but actually I do. 

And now, some things that aren't quite as good:

• The keyboard is not as good as the iPhone. When you tap on a key, both the iPhone and Android display a larger version of the key above where your finger pressed to highlight your selection. On the iPhone, this "helper key" is rooted to the key you are actually pressing where on Android, the helper key floats above the key you pressed. The effect is quite noticeable in helping you increase typing speed.
  
  Another gripe with the keyboard is the use of lower-case letters. While it seems logical that the case of the letters on the keyboard should always reflect what you're going to type, in practice it's much harder to recognize the keys with lower-case letters, so typing speed is reduced. The iPhone always displays upper case letters on the keys, and while it may seem counterintuitive, I think this is the better way to go.
  
  
• Settings are real-time. When turning on Airplane Mode for instance, the indicator doesn't trigger until the cellular radio is actually powered off. On the iPhone, while it takes a few seconds for this to actually happen, the indicator engages immediately while the process continues in the background. The Android implementation is very precise, but that comes at the expense of making it feel markedly slower.
  
  
• Can't sync calendars with anything but Google Calendar, at least not without 3rd party tools, which aren't free. If you have your calendars in iCal, as I do, better pony up for the Spanning Sync utility.
  
  
• Some device functionality is hidden behind menus, and you don't know when a screen may or may not have content in a menu because the button is always there. So you often have to explore by hitting the menu button just to see what's there, in essence the menu becomes somewhat of a crutch (though a much less unwieldy and more appealing crutch than on the BlackBerry OS) for developers and designers.
  
  The iPhone does away with menus entirely; requiring all navigations and options to be visible on-screen. Android makes you guess; if you're looking for a feature, there's a good chance that it lies somewhere in the menu. In practice this was not a crushing setback, for most applications it was pretty obvious what options would be in the menu, but it does make it harder to figure out everything that a particular app is capable of.
  
  
• Email sent notifications are not as clear as on the iPhone; you have to look at the data transfer indicator in the status bar which is not an accurate depiction, since other processes may be going on in the background. Also, you can't seem to delete a message before reading it (i.e. loading it fullscreen, which takes time); this is something I do all the time on my iPhone; often I can tell by the sender and subject that I don't want to read the email at all.
  
  
• When scrolling a list of contacts, the scrollbar is only selectable for a few seconds after manually scrolling the list (after a few seconds it shrinks down and isn't actionable until you start scrolling manually again). From my use this seems unnecessary, since almost all of my contacts (350+) fit in the space allotted anyway.
  
  
• Scrolling with momentum is broken. Both the iPhone and Android have scrolling with momentum, which is great. The problem is that on Android, when you scroll to the top or bottom of a list, it makes a hard stop instead of the comforting elastic bounce you see on the iPhone. To those who think that elastic bounce is merely eye candy, it actually completes the momentum effect, and it provides distinction between the two actions of scrolling to the ends of a list and stopping, vs. scrolling and stopping mid-list. In Android, these actions look exactly the same and so are harder to discern at a glance.
  
  
• Finally, the screen is not as precise and the UI in general is not as smooth as the iPhone. Things feel a little more jerky and often times I struggled to correctly engage an on-screen button while tapping it repeatedly.
  
  

Overall, Android is a very capable operating system. In my opinion it is not as polished or as well-designed as the iPhone OS. The iPhone really gets the details right, which make more of a difference than people realize. Google provided a very good base and because the environment is open to anyone who wants to write apps for it, it's possible that every single gripe I mentioned could be fixed (or may already be fixed) so that the experience could surpass the iPhone.

The downside to this, is that users will have to go out and find those better components, install them, and hope that they work. And if they don't work, you're beholden to each specific developer for fixes. On the iPhone you can't replace the default keyboard, but neither do you really need to; the iPhone keyboard (with autocorrect) is very, very good for what it is.

For my money, I'd rather use a product that works amazing out of the box with limited customization required. Out of the box, I think the iPhone OS beats Android hands down, which isn't to say Android isn't a very good OS; it is. With replacements and add-ons that are (theoretically) available for Android, I think Android has the potential to out-do the iPhone in almost every software aspect, but it's going to take time and considerable effort to achieve that.

Also, as a Mac user, the iPhone is much more tightly integrated with the operating system, making use of Address Book, iCal, and Mail to name a few. If you are a Mac user who doesn't have your digital life invested in Google services, this makes a very big difference.

I think that as a mass-market device, the iPhone is clearly the best way to go, since the tinkering and optimization required for a truly out-of-this-world experience with Android is more than most every user will want to put in. Again, that's not to say that the out-of-box Android experience isn't good, it's just not as good as the iPhone.