• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Android Software Thread - Tasty Desserts, Tastier Apps

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm not a hater.

I'm just saying that if you're pointing towards the ability to use matte nano iPhone icons or text replacements for icons in addition to a giant useless clock that doesn't do anything but waste space as proof that the platform is much more "refined" than people give credit for then you just need to take go around the block a few more times and figure your life out.

Obviously it's a matter of personal preference and everyone's layout works best for them.. so take my opinion for what it is.

fwiw, here is my layout
2i6nw4n.jpg


Only have one homescreen and no widgets. I use ADW with animations turned off.
 
OK, so I still have no OTA for Froyo. I'd either like to install manually or play around with other ROMs. Problem is that when I connect my phone to my computer, it either doesn't want to recognize it's there or freezes when I *can* access it (and try to copy something over). It *is* mounted, too.

Running Windows 7 64-bit here.
 
Belfast said:
OK, so I still have no OTA for Froyo. I'd either like to install manually or play around with other ROMs. Problem is that when I connect my phone to my computer, it either doesn't want to recognize it's there or freezes when I *can* access it (and try to copy something over). It *is* mounted, too.

Running Windows 7 64-bit here.
Click to expand...

What phone do you have?
 
I love Android, I think it is hands down the best phone OS I have used. But, a lot of the criticism people have with it are completely 100% valid. Clunky is honestly the best word to describe it, in my opinion.

Froyo has sort of even made some of it worse. Like sending a picture after you've taken it. Now with froyo you have to wait for gallery to open up, click menu, click sharing and then click what service you want to send it with. Before you could just do this with the camera app. It takes probably 10 or 15 seconds and 2 extra taps to send a picture you've just taken. Things are supposed to get faster and more streamlined, not slower and more convoluted. People complain about os iteration fragmentation all the time, but Google needs to work on making their own apps consistent first. Every application operates differently. It's incredibly disjointed and frustrating.

Some sleek icons and a nice background on the homescreen can't change any of that.

All that being said, I'm still a tremendous fan. I just think that people need to be more aware and outspoken about it's frankly ridiculous design flaws.

Davidion said:
You know, I think that may have been the point.
Click to expand...
The point was that customizable is not the same as refined.
 
Jtwo said:
I love Android, I think it is hands down the best phone OS I have used. But, a lot of the criticism people have with it are completely 100% valid. Clunky is honestly the best word to describe it, in my opinion.

Froyo has sort of even made some of it worse. Like sending a picture after you've taken it. Now with froyo you have to wait for gallery to open up, click menu, click sharing and then click what service you want to send it with. Before you could just do this with the camera app. It takes probably 10 or 15 seconds and 2 extra taps to send a picture you've just taken. Things are supposed to get faster and more streamlined, not slower and more convoluted. People complain about os iteration fragmentation all the time, but Google needs to work on making their own apps consistent first. Every application operates differently. It's incredibly disjointed and frustrating.

Some sleek icons and a nice background on the homescreen can't change any of that.

All that being said, I'm still a tremendous fan. I just think that people need to be more aware and outspoken about it's frankly ridiculous design flaws.


The point was that customizable is not the same as refined.
Click to expand...


???

1. Take picture
2. Touch the preview of the last picture taken
3. Hit Share
4. Select Service

Thats all I have to do to upload a picture I just took. The picture loads almost immediately and my N1 is underclocked. Seems easy to me. I've been on Froyo for a while, what was it like before?
 
I have to go:

  1. Take picture
  2. tap preview [and wait for gallery to load up. Though I do have a droid which is much slower than newer phones even though it's overclocked. But your mileage may vary on this one.]
  3. tap menu
  4. tap share


Before, the preview would load within the camera app and I could share from there.
 
Jtwo said:
I have to go:

  1. Take picture
  2. tap preview [and wait for gallery to load up. Though I do have a droid which is much slower than newer phones even though it's overclocked. But your mileage may vary on this one.]
  3. tap menu
  4. tap share


Before, the preview would load within the camera app and I could share from there.
Click to expand...

Thats odd. I wonder why you have to hit menu and I don't.

EDIT: I believe the reason Google changed the camera app was so that individual Google apps could be updated without a total overhaul of the entire OS. They localized all image uploading to the Gallery app so there wouldn't be any redundancy. Thats my take anyway.
 
Jtwo said:
The point was that customizable is not the same as refined.
Click to expand...

Then what was all that nonsense about big clock widgets and "unusable themes"?

The very point of having big clock widgets is to be able to tell the time at a simple glance, something that's decidedly harder to do with the mini clock in the corner. As for being customizable, how does that not at least contribute considerable to user experience and "refinement"? It's cool that your grid layout works for you but I fucking hate navigating through icon grids; that shit may have been novel three years ago.

As for your photo gallery issue, I'm not sure what's going on there since I don't have Froyo, but even going into gallery and sifting through the most recent pictures to send them out doesn't take that long, and I have a beater Cliq xt.
 
Davidion said:
Then what was all that nonsense about big clock widgets and "unusable themes"?

The very point of having big clock widgets is to be able to tell the time at a simple glance, something that's decidedly harder to do with the mini clock in the corner. As for being customizable, how does that not at least contribute considerable to user experience and "refinement"?
Click to expand...
He was just saying that some of the examples with notable giant clocks looked super sleek and wondered how iOS users could look at those screenshots and still say Android is unrefined, and I told him how somehone could think that, because I see those screenshots and think that.


As for my gallery issue, this is really weird, because when I go to the picture I'm greeted with this before I'm able to select share and then click what service I want to use.
9tlovp.jpg
 
Jtwo said:
He was just saying that some of the examples with notable giant clocks looked super sleek and wondered how iOS users could look at those screenshots and still say Android is unrefined, and I told him how somehone could think that, because I see those screenshots and think that.


As for my gallery issue, this is really weird, because when I go to the picture I'm greeted with this before I'm able to select share and then click what service I want to use.
Click to expand...

Duly noted.

Maybe that gallery button is just a droid thing? I've a couple of friends who have froyo and I've never seen that before...
 
Maybe, I don't know. I am running cyanogen, but I can't for the life of me imagine that's something they changed or included.
 
I only get the share/delete/more screen after I click menu.
 
Jamesfrom818 said:
Looking at all of these slick and varied themes and skins, I just can't get how iOS users can say that Android is clunky or unrefined.
Click to expand...
Eh. Huh?
Google themselves admit that they are now just working on improving " the user experience beyond what it already is, so to really have a polished experience."
Android offers a ridiculous amount of customizations, true, but stock Android has a ways to go before it'll be as polished as iOS, webOS, possibly WP7.
Not to mention one can jailbreak an iOS device to have similar levels of customization.
 
I still don't see whats so polished about iOS. I had an iPod Touch for a year before it died on me. It just looks like Android's app drawer that goes left and right instead of up and down. iOS is also severely lacking in the notifications department.

Google did say that they're looking to improve upon the UI but I think its already pretty awesome right now. I can't wait for Gingerbread and whatever H dessert they chose for the update after.
 
mrnorush said:
I like how it went from :lol x 20 to next 6-7 posts "toning it down"
Click to expand...
Is this directed at me? Because my reaction on that ridiculous text string to tell you the time and charging percentage hasn't changed. I in no way toned down my position, all this UI bullshit is in no way refinement. That's all I've been trying to say. Though, customization for those who want it is a good thing, everyone agrees on that.
 
I happen to like stock Android, it's why I rooted my phone in the first place (damn HTC Sense). It's simple, it's functional, and that's all I really need in a UI. I wouldn't mind a more robust Power Control widget, though, even from modders.
 
Jtwo said:
Is this directed at me? Because my reaction on that ridiculous text string to tell you the time and charging percentage hasn't changed. I in no way toned down my position, all this UI bullshit is in no way refinement. That's all I've been trying to say. Though, customization for those who want it is a good thing, everyone agrees on that.
Click to expand...

The whole point of customization is to refine the user experience and to make things look better. There were enough widgets and apps mentioned in this thread that improves the UX (switchpro, launcherpro, music widget, etc) aside from the text clock (or the HTC style clock) that you happen to not like.
 
Ezenzer said:
That's actually just Beautiful Home's clock using the blackcashmere skin. The weather portion is cropped out via launcherpro plus. ^_^

oripshot.png
[
Click to expand...

Does that skin have a specific transparent background variant or is that another option? I can't get mine to be transparent like yours (there's the "flip card" look behind it).
 
Can anyone please please guide me on how to access the US Market on my Galaxy S? I am outside the US and well, most of the good stuff is not accessible here. I read about a process which required rooting the phone and downloading a third-party app to gain access but is there another way to do the same? I needs me some app loving...
 
Brownmonkey said:
Are those icons part of the theme? If not link please :D
Click to expand...

The text icons are indeed part of the theme, which can be found here.

teiresias said:
Does that skin have a specific transparent background variant or is that another option? I can't get mine to be transparent like yours (there's the "flip card" look behind it).
Click to expand...

Nah, Beautiful Home has a "Hide Background/Naked" option that's independent to skins.

bwid.png
 
So I have just got my hands on the Desire on Orange.

Is there an easy way to root it, so I can get rid of the shit they've put on? ATM, I've no plans to put on a custom rom.
 
Can anyone suggest a good clock/alarm/stopwatch/countdown application like the default clock that comes with Sense UI?

That and a decent dialer, and I'll finally be able to honestly say I don't miss anything from Sense UI.
 
I just installed Samdroid 1.3.1 on my Spica and holy fuck. Shit's awesome yo. Everything is snappy as hell and I no longer get choppy mp3 playback when using the Music Player while the Google Listen service is on.

Also, a fuckton of free space with all the bloatware out!
 
Had a nerdy day today with my Galaxy S, decided to update the firmware with Odin, was running JF3 and am now on JM5. No Froyo goodness, but this seems to be the most stable of the roms that Samsung-Firmware have released. Using Odin was a piece of piss, took a while to restore all the apps + data with Titanium but now up and running again. Phone feels a bit more snappier, and Samsung have thrown in a task manager as well. Oh, and GPS has taken the place of Bluetooth in the notification drop down menu.

Be interested to see if there is any change to the battery life, I've been charing it every night since I got it, although at the moment I still am playing with the phone at every opportunity :/
 
So I just got a Samsung Captivate, I have all of the basic app's that people have recommended. However I see a lot of visual customization being done to peoples phones, how can I do this and how can I conserve my battery better? I have brightness turned all the way down and I have the ATK app that helps shut down the background running progs.
 
Slizz said:
So I just got a Samsung Captivate, I have all of the basic app's that people have recommended. However I see a lot of visual customization being done to peoples phones, how can I do this and how can I conserve my battery better? I have brightness turned all the way down and I have the ATK app that helps shut down the background running progs.
Click to expand...

LauncherPro - for dock + dock customization via icons

ATK - get rid of it you dont need it.

Personally i keep brightness on my EVO set to Auto.
 
What is everyone's recommendation for a messenger? I used Meebo for a bit and liked it, curious if there is anything else better.

Jtwo, what is that notification for on the top left?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Best DVD ripping software?
2
177
ReBurn replied
Android: All of a sudden videos on default play muted in the Photos app(not Google Photos)
7
401
diffusionx replied
Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year
46
5K
Pejo replied
  • Locked
You guys broke the site on Android with desktop view
5
254
Dacvak replied
The cancer thread. Yes the CANCER thread!
2
93
697
John Marston replied
Top Bottom