ANDROID Phones are for girls!!!!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Thanks for the heads up. Perhaps beta testing a new app. Android certainly isnt going away
 
What's a computer?

:off:please stay on topic:off:


*sigh*


I don't believe they exist. There are only droids or *****ey iphones or a few really old people have something called a blackberry, where they check "email" something originally carried by the pony express before the invention of text.
 
Nope, quite the opposite. I think in terms of accessibility and modification it will outshine the Apple products before to long.

Ahh! awesome! I think it already does.

well, I hope I didn't overstep my bounds, but no question it jumpstarted that thread!:mug:
 
Ahh! awesome! I think it already does.

well, I hope I didn't overstep my bounds, but no question it jumpstarted that thread!:mug:

Ironically, if you were using the Android app, you wouldn't have seen it unless it got bumped up under "current" or you specifically checked the HBT announcements. I was a little worried myself that tx was thinking of ditching the app.

BTW, can I interest you in some rubber nipples?
 
TxBrew said:
Nope, quite the opposite. I think in terms of accessibility and modification it will outshine the Apple products before to long.

Being able to modify your phone is nice, but I am still wary of droids for one reason, viruses. If they were not capable of being infected, I might have chosen one over my Iphone.
 
Being able to modify your phone is nice, but I am still wary of droids for one reason, viruses. If they were not capable of being infected, I might have chosen one over my Iphone.

I have looked at all kinds of crazy crap. no viruses.

On a PC computer vs apple, I am right there with you. On a mobile device running google software, I disagree.

Apple is an evil genius. The reports of "safety" with the iphone are meant to scare you away from droids, and make you pay apple for music, apps whatever.

My google chromebook is virus proof guaranteed PC.

Not saying that they are necessarilly the same, but it is a different world from PC computers vs macbooks (in which apple delivers a decisive victory)
 
Nope, quite the opposite. I think in terms of accessibility and modification it will outshine the Apple products before to long.

Meanwhile, nowadays it totally sucks. I cannot count the number of times it has crashed on me. And attaching images to a post is an extremely iffy proposition. About 50% of the time it gives me the message "this application has crashed" when I try. I have essentially given up using the HBT android app due to the problems I have had with it. I would love to see it become as stable and usable as the iOS version, but so far I have not seen that level of quality.
 
There's plenty of Android users here. I have the app. I have to say, I find it extremely limiting. That's why I didn't reply.

Couple it with my dislike for the Android keyboard (my only gripe with my S3) and I have trouble keeping the patience to finish a single post. I'd rather just scroll around the page in Chrome on the phone if I have to post.
 
Yeah I also agree with thadius856 on the point about the keyboard on the S3. It is so frustrating to use that I find it difficult to compose a post, and then when I do get one finished, having the app randomly crash just sends me over the edge.
 
Being able to modify your phone is nice, but I am still wary of droids for one reason, viruses. If they were not capable of being infected, I might have chosen one over my Iphone.

Apple propaganda! As far as I know, there is only 2 ways to "infect" an Android. Dowloading a spy app in the play store, which Google has gotten much better about cleaning up, or allowing your phone to download and run apps from outside websites. Iphones have excellent security with very little freedom while Android has great freedom with little risk.
 
Keyboards in Android are very easily replaced or customized to suit an individual need. As are many aspects of the Linux-kernel-based operating system. This is Linux's (and its derivatives) greatest strength, and why detractors like to label that as "fragmentation" (FUD).

I don't buy Apple products because I don't like being told how my tools are going to work for me. But they are still very high quality products, albeit hugely overpriced for what you get.

I used to use the HBT app, but it's been a long time since I did. Still, I found the app useful.
 
Keyboards in Android are very easily replaced or customized to suit an individual need. As are many aspects of the Linux-kernel-based operating system. This is Linux's (and its derivatives) greatest strength, and why detractors like to label that as "fragmentation" (FUD).

You may consider it a great strength, I consider it break-even at best. So far as I can tell, it means that commercial android phone vendors don't spend a lot of time working on refining these tools to make them as robust and user-friendly as they could, because they figure someone else will spend those resources and do it for them. So then you have a bunch of small 3rd party and open source solutions, many of which are 80% really great but suffer from some flaw that makes them aggravating, with the occasional gem which actually works well but is often difficult to find amidst all the cruft.

As a user I want my keyboard to "just work" right out of the box. I don't want to spend hours or even minutes sifting through and trying out new keyboard applications (some of which I might even have to pay for as a bonus) just to find the one I like best. That is not my idea of fun. I want it to work right when I turn on the phone the first time. I don't mind hunting down an application to add functionality to my phone, but a keyboard is pretty basic functionality for a smartphone and it should work pretty darn well without user intervention.
 
You may consider it a great strength, I consider it break-even at best. So far as I can tell, it means that commercial android phone vendors don't spend a lot of time working on refining these tools to make them as robust and user-friendly as they could, because they figure someone else will spend those resources and do it for them. So then you have a bunch of small 3rd party and open source solutions, many of which are 80% really great but suffer from some flaw that makes them aggravating, with the occasional gem which actually works well but is often difficult to find amidst all the cruft.

As a user I want my keyboard to "just work" right out of the box. I don't want to spend hours or even minutes sifting through and trying out new keyboard applications (some of which I might even have to pay for as a bonus) just to find the one I like best. That is not my idea of fun. I want it to work right when I turn on the phone the first time. I don't mind hunting down an application to add functionality to my phone, but a keyboard is pretty basic functionality for a smartphone and it should work pretty darn well without user intervention.

No arguments about the first part, but that's why I own a Nexus device.

As for the second, if your are not a DIY type of guy, Linux/Android/FOSS is not for you. You'd be better served with an Apple product.
 
I am a DIY type of guy, but COME ON there is no reason I shouldn't have a working keyboard out of the box. It is disingenuous to call Android a smart phone without that basic functionality nailed down.


Usability is important. For some reason the open source community as a general rule doesn't like spending time on improving usability, though. As a general rule, the best they have come up with so far is to copy commercial vendors who DO spend time on that. Apparently it's not interesting to make your widget user-friendly once you have basic functionality hammered out.
 
I am a DIY type of guy, but COME ON there is no reason I shouldn't have a working keyboard out of the box. It is disingenuous to call Android a smart phone without that basic functionality nailed down.


Usability is important. For some reason the open source community as a general rule doesn't like spending time on improving usability, though. As a general rule, the best they have come up with so far is to copy commercial vendors who DO spend time on that. Apparently it's not interesting to make your widget user-friendly once you have basic functionality hammered out.

What one person likes, another doesn't. So each droid should read your mind before you open it?

I have used the iphone keyboard, HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?????????

My out of the box droid seems to have the same one (maybe slight variation where symbols are found)
 
The difference is that this one has horribad prediction, I guess. I type one thing and it chooses a completely different, nonsensical word EVERY DAMN TIME. I very carefully click on exactly the letters I want to spell a word, and it still decides I am typing something else. Using the swype keyboard is actually worse in my experience. I swipe across exactly where the letters are for the word I want, and it gives me a word that doesn't even begin with the same letter I used. WTF?

I find it horribly frustrating. I thought the iphone was a bit annoying as you do often get the wrong word, but it's nowhere near the same frequency as I get on android. Typing short text messages is annoying, and an email or post on a forum is downright frustrating.


I am using a galaxy S3. So, perhaps different software--I dunno.
 
The difference is that this one has horribad prediction, I guess. I type one thing and it chooses a completely different, nonsensical word EVERY DAMN TIME. I very carefully click on exactly the letters I want to spell a word, and it still decides I am typing something else. Using the swype keyboard is actually worse in my experience. I swipe across exactly where the letters are for the word I want, and it gives me a word that doesn't even begin with the same letter I used. WTF?

I find it horribly frustrating. I thought the iphone was a bit annoying as you do often get the wrong word, but it's nowhere near the same frequency as I get on android. Typing short text messages is annoying, and an email or post on a forum is downright frustrating.

THIS^ I can get behind.

In the immortal words of (some african american guy) to Chevy Chase..."Hey F*CK yo predictive text"

turned that crap off DAY 1.
 
I am a DIY type of guy, but COME ON there is no reason I shouldn't have a working keyboard out of the box. It is disingenuous to call Android a smart phone without that basic functionality nailed down.


Usability is important. For some reason the open source community as a general rule doesn't like spending time on improving usability, though. As a general rule, the best they have come up with so far is to copy commercial vendors who DO spend time on that. Apparently it's not interesting to make your widget user-friendly once you have basic functionality hammered out.

You don't really get an Android phone unless you buy a Google (Nexus) device with vanilla Android. What you have is Samsung's Touch UX (or whatever they're calling it now). Included with their "skin" is their own keyboard.

There's good reason why there has been such a big push from Google for the various manufacturers to stop skinning Android like they do: they're not making it better as a whole.

It's kind of like how I don't run "Linux", I run Ubuntu's Linux distribution. Some people like Ubuntu's take, others do not.

NOW, as for your commentary about FOSS: getting it working is the first priority and everything else has to take a back seat because nobody is getting paid to do the work. Usability does come in time, but not nearly as fast as it would if you had Apple money to dump into it.

A strong case could be made for Android still being the most polished Linux product yet. But it took Google money to get it that far.

The difference is that this one has horribad prediction, I guess. I type one thing and it chooses a completely different, nonsensical word EVERY DAMN TIME. I very carefully click on exactly the letters I want to spell a word, and it still decides I am typing something else. Using the swype keyboard is actually worse in my experience. I swipe across exactly where the letters are for the word I want, and it gives me a word that doesn't even begin with the same letter I used. WTF?

I find it horribly frustrating. I thought the iphone was a bit annoying as you do often get the wrong word, but it's nowhere near the same frequency as I get on android. Typing short text messages is annoying, and an email or post on a forum is downright frustrating.


I am using a galaxy S3. So, perhaps different software--I dunno.

I would highly recommend using SwiftKey if you want a good keyboard on your S3. It isn't free, but it's not prohibitively expensive either. But that's only if you want working predictive text. I don't have any suggestions for you if you need something else.
 
NOW, as for your commentary about FOSS: getting it working is the first priority and everything else has to take a back seat because nobody is getting paid to do the work. Usability does come in time, but not nearly as fast as it would if you had Apple money to dump into it.

That's just the thing. The problem with FOSS in many cases is that developers, as a rule, like adding lots of features. What they DON'T generally like is taking one feature and polishing the hell out of it so that it works flawlessly. As a developer, I admit that redesigning a UI several times is not at the top of my enjoyable programming tasks, but it DOES make the software a better experience. You can omit a lot of features and still have a devoted user base if your software is substantially more usable.

Apple didn't dump lots of money into the iPhone on their first iteration. Well, they DID, but not on developing tons of features. They took the money they would have spent duplicating lots of features which already existed in lots of phones at the time, but didn't get into iOS v1.0, and instead focused on making the usability of iOS the most important thing. The keyboard predictive text was generally useful and not a hindrance. The UI libraries shared between applications was well thought out and intuitive, which made it easier for users to learn how to use new applications, and easier for them to accomplish common tasks. There were TONS of features missing, but the UI was good enough to sell millions of phones despite that. I mean we are talking about a phone which didn't even support 3G, which almost every other new phone did at the time of its release.


So I think the FOSS community could learn a few lessons on how less can be more. Scale down the feature creep, and take some of that time to improve the features that are already there.
 
Anyone on Android not willing to use SwiftKey or not willing to pay the 2-3$ for it should not have the right to complain about the word predictions and should have their phone taken away from them and donated to someone who actually have a clue. (Even SwiftKey I set at manual correction mode but it's damn brilliant in general... Sometimes I press the suggestions 3-4 times in a row)

I'm CONSTANTLY using the Android app. If it goes away, I think I'll stop contributing. That's how much I hate using the site on my phone (and I own a Galaxy Note so imagine on a smaller phone).
 
You may consider it a great strength, I consider it break-even at best. So far as I can tell, it means that commercial android phone vendors don't spend a lot of time working on refining these tools to make them as robust and user-friendly as they could, because they figure someone else will spend those resources and do it for them. So then you have a bunch of small 3rd party and open source solutions, many of which are 80% really great but suffer from some flaw that makes them aggravating, with the occasional gem which actually works well but is often difficult to find amidst all the cruft.

As a user I want my keyboard to "just work" right out of the box. I don't want to spend hours or even minutes sifting through and trying out new keyboard applications (some of which I might even have to pay for as a bonus) just to find the one I like best. That is not my idea of fun. I want it to work right when I turn on the phone the first time. I don't mind hunting down an application to add functionality to my phone, but a keyboard is pretty basic functionality for a smartphone and it should work pretty darn well without user intervention.

The first paragraph is entirely flawed. While in a convoluted way you can come up with that theory. Android devices are made by different manufacturers who want to come up with their own stamp. Samsung wants you to go back and get Samsung, Motorola wants you go back and get Motorola, Google just wants you to stick to Android. The stock keyboard in Android works great, I've also really enjoyed Swype, and a few other keyboards. The thing with Android is there is always an option. if you don't like the iOS keyboard, or messaging system, that's it, you have to hate the phone. With android you can just go use something else. Stock Android does everything as well or better than iOS. I have the Galaxy Nexus on android 4.1 and I can do any task as easily and as quickly as on iOS. And it doesn't even have the latest version of Android*


As far as the second paragraph, I opened the box to all my phones and found their keyboards functional. Some less than others (I switched my Droid X to swype) but I've been using the Stock Android Keyboard on my Galaxy Nexus for the most part, I have Swype on it as well, but I'd ditched it lately as I find the stock works better 90% of the time. And 4.2 stock is supposedly so much better (I've yet to get my hands on it, see asterisk below)


*Didn't want to derail my response but screw you Verizon, I'm somewhat seriously considering going back to a basic phone on Verizon and switching to T-Mobile for my smartphone to get actual Nexus functionality, seriously Verizon is the worst, they can go to hell)
 
If you havin app problems, I feel bad for you, son.
I got 99 problems but, surfinghbtwithsomeappthatpeopleseemtohavealotofproblemswithwhenIcouldjustsurfthewholeweblikearegulardamnpersonandnothaveanyisuesatall aint one.
 
If you havin app problems, I feel bad for you, son.
I got 99 problems but, surfinghbtwithsomeappthatpeopleseemtohavealotofproblemswithwhenIcouldjustsurfthewholeweblikearegulardamnpersonandnothaveanyisuesatall aint one.

And da funk is that? Some kind of magic that puts spaces every so many letters? Damn voodoo.
 
+1 on SwiftKey. Went from a DROID X to the S3. SwiftKey made a huge difference. For me, even with the "issues" HBT would not exist without the android app. Use this thing for everything.
 
Anyone on Android not willing to use SwiftKey or not willing to pay the 2-3$ for it should not have the right to complain about the word predictions and should have their phone taken away from them and donated to someone who actually have a clue.


Oh, the keyboard doesn't work very well on android? NO PROBLEM there's another app you can purchase which is fantastic! How about text messaging? NO PROBLEM, $5 please. Camera? Another $1 purchase will set you straight!

Yes, Android is so much better because I get to choose which apps I want to buy to replace all the crappy ones that come installed on the phone I just paid $300 for. I have only had this phone for 4 months and I am already thinking about buying out the contract just to avoid having to use it anymore. Speaking of which, my galaxy s3 is also the worst navigator on the planet. Google Maps is GREAT! Except it doesn't work at all on my phone for navigation because it can never figure out exactly where I am. Turn-by-turn directions don't work AT ALL. Makes business travel so much fun. I have to print out physical maps just like I did back in 1998.


Sorry for the thread derail, I'm done.
 
And you'd be sacrificing other things. Like multi-tasking, widgets, and many other great functions.

Not sure what you mean here. I had multi-tasking on my iphone 4. So far I haven't found a widget that I actually like on this phone. I installed a weather widget, because unlike iphone it doesn't have a useful one by default, but even though I tried 5 or 6 of them they all sucked. Same goes for stock tickers, another thing iphone has by default which works fantastic. Tried several on android, they are all clunky and somewhat useless. One of them was close, but I could only put 5 symbols into it before it said I couldn't enter any more.
 
Not sure what you mean here. I had multi-tasking on my iphone 4. So far I haven't found a widget that I actually like on this phone. I installed a weather widget, because unlike iphone it doesn't have a useful one by default, but even though I tried 5 or 6 of them they all sucked. Same goes for stock tickers, another thing iphone has by default which works fantastic. Tried several on android, they are all clunky and somewhat useless. One of them was close, but I could only put 5 symbols into it before it said I couldn't enter any more.

You did not have multitasking. You may have thought that you did, but you didn't.

As far as widgets you mentioned 2 widgets and your own personal preferences. I've ran several different weather and clock widgets I enjoy. Don't use stocks because I'm not active in the market no reason for that. I actively use my power management widget (wifi on/off, bluetooth on/off, gps on/off, sync on/off and backlight adjuster) my flashlight widget, my google now widget, my pandora widget, Google Sound Search (like Shazaam but totally free) and many more

I also enjoy having a homescreen, not an all the time applist. I like that much more than iOS and it's far and away my favorite Android Feature. Since I can prioritize with apps I often use (such as face book, instagram, flashlight widget, my google apps folder, gallery, settings) and have my app drawer where I leave can access the stuff I use less often (like Games) Not to mention that I have the bar at the bottom where I have my 4 most used apps that work there (Browser, camera, contacts and phone) I can access from any part of my phone. part of my home screen.
 
OK well I guess we'll just have to disagree. Not sure what you mean by "not really multitasking". If you mean multi-threading, then maybe that's true but I don't care at all. I can context-switch between multiple tasks which is all I care about.

Perhaps you've never actually used an iphone, but I do all the same stuff you describe on one. They aren't called exactly the same thing, but they are functionally the same. Anyway I don't mean for this to be iOS vs android, so much as I cannot stand that my S3 lacks a lot of usability compared to my previous phone. Before things would "just work" now it seems like I have to do a little extra work to get the same result. Another example: for whatever reason what used to take me a maximum of 2-3 clicks to call my wife on my old phone, now takes a MINIMUM of 3 clicks on my s3. I have added her to my favorites, but for some reason android likes to shuffle my favorites list around, and when I click on my wife's entry it doesn't just call her, but instead asks me which phone number I want to use. Which sucks because I have 6 different phone numbers in there under her entry. How about automatically calling the one I set as the default?!?! Nope, got to click on that one specifically, EVERY TIME. Why? NO IDEA.


EDIT: also, don't think the multi-threading thing is true anyway. I specifically recall using multiple apps at the same time. e.g. using a game while listening to music and tracking my running in a different app.
 
I have an ipad ( I know not an iPhone) and an s3. I wish I would have got the galaxy tab instead of the ipad. Some things just don't work on my ipad and it pisses me off. My ipad was expensive, and now is glitchy with my contacts, email and calendars ( which I use daily).
 
Back
Top