“Android boosted by blind dogma”
BNET.com has published an editorial decrying the blind rush to support Android when so many problems remain with the OS.
They note developers complain the platform is slow, the browser and mail client is bad, the on-screen keyboard sluggish, and, according to William Volk, CEO of mobile app vendor Playscreen, said the Google Checkout experience for purchasing apps is “unacceptable to the vast majority of Android users.”
Alex Kerr, founder of mobile app vendor Phone Thing Ltd., feels the popularity Android enjoys amongst the tech crowd has less to do with its actual attribute than to the antipathy many developers feel towards Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Nokia’s Symbian.
“The whole thing stinks of religious dogma, as with the old PC/Mac/Linux wars…There’s way too much emotional opinion floating around, resting on blind dogma,” he posted on a professional mobile developer forum.
Read the full article at BNET.com here.
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As the demo guy for InnoPath, where we do MDM/OTA customer care, I have had the pleasure of working with a whole bunch of phones from random RTOSs, WinMo 5.0, 6.0, 6.1, 6.5, Symbian S60, Android, RIM etc etc etc. While I like the flexibility and Exchange support that come with Windows Mobile, there is no doubt that there are very serious usability problems with that OS that in many cases Android simply does not have. Many find it hard to use WimMo w/o a stylus, few have such issues with Android. To be sure, there are issues with Android which is far from perfect, but should Google ever get over their aversion to ActiveSync I reckon Android will then become for many a no brainer. I am sad to see all the delays that keep hitting WinMo as the platform does need a fairly comprehensive refresh if not a cleansheet rebuild.
Hoping for some big screen Snapdragon love from HTC…..
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yss Reply:
August 25th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Wow, you sound like one of the preachers. “Many”, “few”, “no brainer”…
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the only reason we think of using android is because it is "open" like winmo and has a capacitive screen.
its pretty also but pretty isnt everything. my winmo 6.5 looks way prettier than iphone and droid.
this is from someone who was thinking of going to droid. but…im going to wait it out for a capacitive winmo phone
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This is pretty much true in my opinion. Frankly speaking, I've seen absolutely nothing compelling about Andriod that would convince me to switch. The whole thing is really just hype from geeks.
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I was just sent a Hero as an upgrade to my Touch HD. Frankly after a little use the hero has gone on eBay. The biggest problem was what many think of as a strength, the capacitive screen.
The problem is i CANT use a stylus, when (despite claims to the contrary) i really need to. The keyboard is to small and slow for my fingers, i just cant type with it. In landscape its better, but i dont want to use it like that.
I did like the interface and the market is really nice, but it feels so much more restrictive than Winmo. File browsers are poor, having to manually mount the SD card is a real pain, the screen, the keyboard.. it just isnt there.
Pretty much the same goes for the iPhone as well. Capacitive screns may need less pressure and be more accurate, but what god is that when a centimetre wide finger is all you can use. I prefer the option of both finger and a stylus, which results in far greater accuracy in the end.
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is it just me, or is that article kinda backwards? claiming android's success is attributable to a sort of religious dogma type following is ridiculous. if anything, android's success is the exact opposite. it is wildly popular amongst those that are sick of apple's blind following, those that want no dogma at all when it comes to their mobile os, those that believe open source is the way to go. if a developer doesn't like something about it, they can actually do something about it and make the desired changes. this is the absolute antithesis of blindly following a brand like apple.
additionally, not all android is google. the first phones to use it were google branded, but there are plenty coming that will be android devices rather than the "google experience" implementation of android that we saw in the G-1. the author further demonstrated his ignorance on the subject writing there is only one android phone so far. there are actually three on the market as of today, with a fourth (the hero) coming in the next two months, and several others (industry experts claiming over a dozen) before the end of the year.
yeah, not a fan of this article at all…
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i had to get a new phone since my tilt died. and i gotta say, andriod isn't nearly as complete as other mobile os'..but i find myself rethinking buying a windows mobile phone again (wm6.5 anyways)
i don't have any of the slow down problems i see mentioned..then again..i don't use stock roms, so that could be the case there. but android gets constant updates, and thats what i find exciting about using an android phone.
as for the article itself..sounds more like a sour fanboy worried about android taking off to me.
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Article is dead on … Android gets a lot of accolades and predictions of greatness, but every experience I've had with Android shows it to be a severely lacking OS. Sure it's easy to make an OS user-friendly if it can't do anything.
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Personally, I think this guy has no idea what he’s talking about. I’m sitting here with my Android powered HTC Hero from Sprint and its absolutely awesome. The browser rocks and the mail client is very good too. The market is very fast and easy to search/install apps. Also, the Sense UI developed by HTC is phenomenal. The phone is very powerful and fast overall. The dude that wrote this article is crazy, granted the article is a little dated, so he didn’t know what I know now.
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