Google Android

[micahboland]

frankly I'd rather be lied to about this than about, say, battery life.

Frankly, I'd rather hear humble honesty than arrogant lies, but then again, maybe I'm just not used to US-style media relations


Anyhoo, on a positive topic:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/201 ... ndroid.ars

Mike, how does this impact on your programming?

 

[mikelove]

Frankly, I'd rather hear humble honesty than arrogant lies, but then again, maybe I'm just not used to US-style media relations

Fair enough, but in 11 years of following the mobile industry I have yet to see "humble honesty" in a press conference from anyone

Anyhoo, on a positive topic:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/201 ... ndroid.ars

Mike, how does this impact on your programming?

It's saving us a little time since we can program around Fragments originally rather than adapting to them later, but ultimately since Fragments were designed to be an easy migration from Activities anyway it's not exactly a game-changer.

 

[numble]

So are you going to buy a gazillion tablets to test everything out on?

 

[mikelove]

So are you going to buy a gazillion tablets to test everything out on?

Only a few, given my oft-repeated commitment to a short official compatibility list. Probably including a Motorola Xoom and the new one Samsung's launching in two weeks, but given the number of HTC-specific bug fixes we've had to implement already, I'm not sure whether we should cover them / fix their inevitable tablet bugs or ignore them / encourage people not to buy HTC devices to run Pleco.

 

[micahboland]

given the number of HTC-specific bug fixes we've had to implement already, I'm not sure whether we should cover them / fix their inevitable tablet bugs or ignore them / encourage people not to buy HTC devices to run Pleco.

I was just wondering, are these bugs device specific, android version specific, htc sense version specific...
ie is there any common factor in these bugs, or are they seemingly arbitrary with different bugs affecting different devices?

 

[mikelove]

I was just wondering, are these bugs device specific, android version specific, htc sense version specific...
ie is there any common factor in these bugs, or are they seemingly arbitrary with different bugs affecting different device

Seem to be universal and driver-related; for example, their OpenGL driver doesn't clear its background buffers properly (reports on developer forums suggest this applies to just about every HTC model, but Samsung and Motorola devices clear them correctly, and FWIW so do iPhones). And their camera driver adjusts its resolution without telling us and, when queried about which resolution it's currently using, reports the wrong resolution - we literally have some code which checks to see if the frame of video is the correct number of bytes for the resolution the camera says it's using and, if not, makes a guess based on commonly-supported resolutions as to which resolution it's actually using. Other devices certainly have bugs too, but at the moment our impression is that the HTC ones seem to be the most numerous / severe.

That being said, most of our testing so far has been confined to the Big Three - we don't have a single Sony Ericsson device on hand now, for example - so we don't know what level of trouble we might encounter with them. However, outside of Samsung / HTC / Motorola there really isn't any other Android vendor we actually need to support, in the sense that we'd be losing a huge percentage of our potential sales if we didn't support them, and so the likely solution to serious bugs on other manufacturers' devices will be to simply advise people not to run Pleco on those devices.

 

[mikelove]

BTW, might have the first official screenshots for you guys early next week, at least of OCR. (which will look somewhat similar to iPhone aside from the use of Droid Sans - might make more sense to take an "action shot" instead, actually)

 

[Zeldor]

mike:

I am not sure it that's correct order. I'd say it's more like [rough order]:

1. Samsung - it looks like they want to be the biggest player when it comes to making Android devices. They have whole range of Galaxies, phones and tablets [Galaxy S 1&2, 5500, 5800... and 3 tabs soon].
2. LG - they are back in the game. Optimus 2X has already arrived to some customers. Their 3D phone will soon. Their tablets too, and they have quite good reviews. Optimus 2X is the first superphone to ship - and it's considerably cheaper than Atrix or new Galaxy S, so it should get a bunch of users [probably myself included].
3. HTC - still lots of devices, hard to say what their goal is though. I'd try at least Wildfire 2, it should be quite popular phone. But well, I am not planning to buy any HTC device anyway.
4. Motorola - just Atrix, which seems to be more like a gadget, not real tool. Xoom is extremely overpriced and I doubt they can get away with it [or anyone except Apple atm].

I am able to test Pleco on Samsung i5500 any time you want. Optimux 2X is coming around May here.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for that summary.

LG gets a few penalty points for the same reason that HTC does - we had a horrible time maintaining compatibility with their custom UI shells on Windows Mobile - screwed up handwriting recognition to no end. They also don't appear to be in the same league as Samsung/HTC/Motorola yet market-share-wise, though the numbers may shift in the next few quarters...

The Xoom doesn't seem like a very good "first popular Android tablet," no, if for no other reason then the fact that name is worryingly similar to that of another well-known overhyped Apple-imitating flop, the Zune. Samsung's new one might be a better bet - I really am liking the Samsung Galaxy S, it can't hold a candle to my iPhone 4 but among non-Apple smartphones I'd put it ahead of everything except a few of the better Treos.

But really I think the biggest issue for Android tablets is that there are too many of them showing up at the same time and, unlike with Android phones, the cell carriers aren't in a position to act as gatekeepers / selective promoters - everybody gets to sell a different one. And consumers confounded with a dozen Android tablet choices may opt for the iPad simply to avoid having to make a decision.

There's also a huge question mark looming on the horizon, Amazon; it seems almost certain that they'll launch an Android tablet this year, and at least in the US there's probably no other company in a position to move as many units of a single Android tablet model as they are.

 

[Zeldor]

You have also read that article that said that Amazon is best suited to create an iPad's rival? It could be really good product - I'd love to get something that would be good for Pleco, ebooks, browsing. I don't want any stupid 3D and I won't be watching movies on 10".

Anyway, new LG phones seem to be quite similar to iPhone4 when it comes to hardware [except Tegra of course], especially similar display. And it's <500 euro unlocked, Samsung Galaxy SII is around 700. iPhone 4 too.

And yeah, everyone tries to stick their own UI modifications, skins, custom fonts and other weird stuff. Luckily it shouldn't be so hard to change it to stock Android [at least on most devices, dunno about Atrix, it needs all that custom stuff for docking abilities].

 

[Michael Kupka]

Hi Mike,

Wow, yesterday, my Birthday came and went without an Android version of Pleco being available.


I started doing Android development last fall, and have delayed replacing my Palm 755p for only 1 reason. I kept using my Pal 755p because you don't have a Android version available. Well, I broke down and bought a new phone 2 weeks ago, and I sure miss have Pleco in my pocket everywhere I go. I left my previous job just over a month ago and no longer travel to China every other month, so I guess I can live without Pleco until the summer, when I plan to go back for a family vacation.

Any word on when your Android version will be available? FYI, if you need Beta Testers, please let me know. I am an experienced software engineer and familiar with Android development tools so if you need log files, etc, it's no problem for me to grab them and send them to you.

Thanks for having a great product, I miss having it already.

 

[mikelove]

You have also read that article that said that Amazon is best suited to create an iPad's rival? It could be really good product - I'd love to get something that would be good for Pleco, ebooks, browsing. I don't want any stupid 3D and I won't be watching movies on 10".

Didn't read an article, it just seems very likely if they're offering an Android app store. Which it now appears is going to have some nifty exclusive apps, so the fragmentation situation could get very ugly indeed...

Any word on when your Android version will be available? FYI, if you need Beta Testers, please let me know. I am an experienced software engineer and familiar with Android development tools so if you need log files, etc, it's no problem for me to grab them and send them to you.

Unfortunately no, after everybody took my vague suggestion about last December far too seriously I've now decided it's best not to even give out hints.

And thanks for the offer of help. Lots of stuff is actually working pretty well now, but it really doesn't make sense to do a beta until the app is almost finished (at least the basic parts): we'd be creating a lot of extra work for ourselves in documenting / supporting it, managing all of the feedback / bug reports, etc, and until the app is almost ready that would probably cost us more time than we'd gain from the extra testing help; at the moment we're still generating more than enough bug reports ourselves to keep us occupied

 

[numble]

westmeadboy - nice to see you back in the thick of this again The screen-scaling thing has never been one of your better arguments, though, for the very reason that numble points out - there's a big difference between resizing an interface for a tablet (which happened automatically the first time we ran Pleco on an iPad after setting the "supports iPad" property flag - i.e., told it it shouldn't just run the thing in an iPhone simulator) and adding new UI controls etc to take advantage of the extra space.

Hmmm, it seems I've done a bad job of explaining what you call "screen-scaling" because that was never my argument. I've never said that auto-scaling is good enough so I don't know why people think I did. I can only assume it comes from false assumptions about how Android supports multiple hardware configurations.

Android devs are already designing their apps with large-screens in mind (because the possibility has been there for more than one year), so if a gPad comes along, then their app may already have an optimization for that general screen size (AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT SCREEN SCALING!).

Here's another attempt to explain it (to show its not my argument thats bad, just your interpretation of it )...

I can think of three types of screen-configuration logic:

1. Scale (as if you were in photoshop and resized)
2. Intelligent scale - where you define the same layout for all configurations such that, for example, content panes will expand accordingly, but controls will retain their physical (dpi) size. This is a bit like when you resize your browser window. Side note - woah, how do all those websites survive all those on-the-fly screen configuration changes!?
3. Screen-configuration specific layouts - the app should look completely different on a large-screen TV to a watch phone.

Now, I'm not sure which the original iPhone apps fits into. I asked once before and the answer seemed to be (2). But maybe its (1)?
(3) is for when the iPad came along.

Here's how those scenarios play out in the Android world:

1. Very old apps (pre 1.5) or very badly written apps (less than 10% of Market I guess) will result in this type of scaling
2. Most simple apps will use this approach
3. More complex apps will have completely different layouts for larger/hdpi screens. This might mean extra panels of buttons etc that you would not see on devices like the HTC Tattoo (small screen).

I've been talking about (3) for the whole of today's debate.

My point is this. Many Android devs have already taken tablet-type hardware configurations into account and so if a gPad was released, it would not be much work (if any) to have the app working to a good standard on that device. Granted, you would need to put more work in at the beginning to make it look good on a variety of configurations, but as you are seeing with the iPhone (with the promise of one configuration for all) that scenario is inevitable.

If you have built your app from the ground up with that in mind, then you will win in the long run and you won't piss off so many of your users when the next latest and greatest device comes out.

Mike, what percentage of Pleco's iPad-specific code (code that would never be used in the iPhone version) is not screen-configuration-related?

Nearly 1-year late, but the experience with XOOM proves this largely incorrect. Even some "tablet-optimized" apps were stretched out and displayed incorrectly, looking much worse than a 2x iPhone app on the iPad.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380798,00.asp

The bad news is that there aren't many apps optimized for Honeycomb yet. Even though it's listed as a free app for tablets, download Conan O'Brien's Team Coco app and it looks borderline-horrible on the Xoom. Everything from the resolution of videos to the navigation menu looks bad, as it was designed for a smaller screen and an older version of Android. This is common throughout the Market's apps. Apple's solution to apps that were designed for iPhone but loaded on to an iPad was far more elegant—tap to zoom in, knowing that everything will look less sharp, or choose to view the app at its original size. The Android Market is chock full of apps that will offer a disappointing experience on the Xoom; here's hoping developers start developing for Honeycomb, and the Market is soon populated with more palatable stuff.

 

[westmeadboy]

Nearly 1-year late, but the experience with XOOM proves this largely incorrect. Even some "tablet-optimized" apps were stretched out and displayed incorrectly, looking much worse than a 2x iPhone app on the iPad.

Oh numble, great to have you back - we've missed you so much! Always such insightful and balanced comments, bringing such positive contributions to the discussion. People were beginning to worry Google Android might no longer be your Most Active Topic. Interesting for someone who doesn't actually use or like Android.

Anyway, to your point. Android apps don't get "stretched out" unless they are one of the very few that is coded badly and built for Android 1.1 (2 years old). Maybe you have examples?

EDIT: edited to clarify that I'm talking about the poster's comments and not the poster - sorry for the confusion!

 

[numble]

Nearly 1-year late, but the experience with XOOM proves this largely incorrect. Even some "tablet-optimized" apps were stretched out and displayed incorrectly, looking much worse than a 2x iPhone app on the iPad.

Oh numble, great to have you back - we've missed you so much! Always so insightful and balanced, bringing such positive contributions to the discussion. People were beginning to worry Google Android might no longer be your Most Active Topic. Interesting for someone who doesn't actually use or like Android.

Anyway, to your point. Android apps don't get "stretched out" unless they are one of the very few that is coded badly and built for Android 1.1 (2 years old). Maybe you have examples?

The Team Coco app, which is for 2.1 and up, and has labeled itself as "tablet optimized."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLWJMtTT5w
Start at the 5:25 mark.

There is only 1 Android thread, and 50 or so iOS threads. You'll see that I post over 3 times more in there, including the iOS beta forum.

 

[westmeadboy]

The Team Coco app, which is for 2.1 and up, and has labeled itself as "tablet optimized."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLWJMtTT5w
Start at the 5:25 mark.

That's just a badly coded app.

Also this is nothing to do with the stretching out you mentioned before. iPhone apps just double in size (i.e. buttons become twice as big, which is silly because my fingers don't get twice as big when I use a tablet). On Android, things don't stretch, they get relaid out so buttons remain the same physical size and content panes fill available space. Most people would agree that iPhone apps on the iPad are extremely ugly when running full screen. It's not great on Android either, but generally better (for non-optimized apps).

 

[numble]

The Team Coco app, which is for 2.1 and up, and has labeled itself as "tablet optimized."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLWJMtTT5w
Start at the 5:25 mark.

That's just a badly coded app.

Also this is nothing to do with the stretching out you mentioned before. iPhone apps just double in size (i.e. buttons become twice as big, which is silly because my fingers don't get twice as big when I use a tablet). On Android, things don't stretch, they get relaid out so buttons remain the same physical size and content panes fill available space. Most people would agree that iPhone apps on the iPad are extremely ugly when running full screen. It's not great on Android either, but generally better (for non-optimized apps).

PC Magazine doesn't agree. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380798,00.asp

The bad news is that there aren't many apps optimized for Honeycomb yet. Even though it's listed as a free app for tablets, download Conan O'Brien's Team Coco app and it looks borderline-horrible on the Xoom. Everything from the resolution of videos to the navigation menu looks bad, as it was designed for a smaller screen and an older version of Android. This is common throughout the Market's apps.Apple's solution to apps that were designed for iPhone but loaded on to an iPad was far more elegant—tap to zoom in, knowing that everything will look less sharp, or choose to view the app at its original size. The Android Market is chock full of apps that will offer a disappointing experience on the Xoom; here's hoping developers start developing for Honeycomb, and the Market is soon populated with more palatable stuff.

Or Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20110 ... rld/153837

However, only a few tablet-specific Android apps take advantage of the Xoom's larger screen; the new USA Today tablet app does. (Two weeks ago, in my original comparison, the smartphone version of USA Today wouldn't load on the Xoom, though it did install.) More typically, "tablet" apps remain stretched renditions of the smartphone version. Amazon.com's Kindle app, for example, displays one too-wide-to-read page when in landscape orientation, rather than two facing pages as on the iPad 2. The Xoom doesn't display such legacy apps in a smartphone-sized window, as the iPad 2 does, to clue you in. Additionally, I haven't found Android apps that auto-adjust their display and capabilities depending on whether they're running on a smartphone or tablet -- a feature that has quickly become very common in the iOS world.

Or Techrepublic: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/ ... nting/7866

App experience is a letdown - Google didn’t do a very good job of lining up app developers to update their apps for the tablet experience before launching the Xoom. As a result, there were only 16 tablet-ready apps when the Xoom launched. That number is growing and there are some really nice apps — like CNN, AccuWeather, Pulse News Reader, and USA Today — but it’s not enough to make the Xoom very useful. And even some of the tablet-optimized apps like the Amazon Kindle app are still very rough around the edges. As a result, you end up using apps optimized for smaller screens and that get badly stretched when you open them on the Xoom. I wish Honeycomb would let you open these apps in smaller smartphone-sized windows and then you could use 2-3 of them side-by-side, cut-and-paste between them, and multitask.

 

[mikelove]

Oh numble, great to have you back - we've missed you so much! Always so insightful and balanced, bringing such positive contributions to the discussion. People were beginning to worry Google Android might no longer be your Most Active Topic. Interesting for someone who doesn't actually use or like Android.

Honestly, ad hominem attacks are not helping the Android cause at this point - anyone who was going to pick Android over iOS for personal / cultural reasons already has, and the remaining undecideds just view this whole business as the computer nerd equivalent of Sox-Yankees. Being anti-Android doesn't make one's opinions on it invalid, any more than not liking Steve Jobs is a reason to choose one mobile platform over another... and how much time have you spent using an iPhone 4 or an iPad lately anyway?

My own anti-Android sentiments are becoming better-informed with each passing day. Audio frameworks, for example: this week I discovered that Windows Mobile in 2005 had better and more reliable audio APIs than Android 2.2. No way to play encoded audio from a memory buffer, terrible time synchronization (not too important for our current app, but we were doing some experiments for a future feature we're cooking up), long delays to start an audio playback session even though you're just dumping raw PCM into it, the usual variety of device-specific bugs... OpenAL in 2.3 might theoretically fix this, but it's not clear whether the drivers will actually work like they're supposed to and hardly anybody's using 2.3 yet anyway.

Luckily, the business part of my brain notices the colossal amount of email we're getting about Android and reminds the programmer part of my brain what college tuition is likely to cost in the 2030s, so in spite of my feelings you'll all be getting a lovely version of Pleco on Android soon...

 

[westmeadboy]

A while back you wrote:

Wow, really? Y'know, I used to think iOS was vastly superior, but after seeing PC World put Android 2.2 #1 in its top products list... well I guess that settles it, Android must be better, the magazine said so.

Oh well, we can just pack in the whole iOS development operation and undergo company-wide lobotomies in order to make ourselves enjoy programming in Java...

How do you think that makes you come across?

Being anti-Android doesn't make one's opinions on it invalid, any more than not liking Steve Jobs is a reason to choose one mobile platform over another...

Mike - this is silly. No one is saying being anti-Android makes one's opinion invalid. Where did you get that one from?

You're anti Android but I have total respect for you and your opinions. That's not to say I agree with them all, but that's not how I classify validity.

... and how much time have you spent using an iPhone 4 or an iPad lately anyway?

Probably about the same amount of time numble has spent using an Android device. I did own an iPod Touch for almost a year, so it's not like I don't know anything about iOS. I wonder if numble has spent as long using Android as I have using iOS... He's definitely spent more time on Android discussions than I have in iOS discussions though.

The big difference is, I don't spend all my time on iOS forums, rubbishing stuff I don't like. I find it negative and mean-spirited. I spend the vast majority of my time discrediting all the misinformation that goes on in this topic. It's all defensive. I don't come here and start introducing a load of negative things about iOS and I don't do it on other forums either.

Can you appreciate this point, Mike?

I don't even dislike Apple, Steve Jobs or Apple products in general. I have absolutely no problem with people liking them and for the huge success. But I don't want to buy an iPhone or an iPad (unless maybe for business reasons) because it just doesn't suit my needs. I have even recommended those devices to people in the past once I have evaluated their requirements. So I'm definitely not an i-Hater!

I tried for a long time to keep this thread Android-only, but you rejected that approach so it's turned into a sad fanboy debate

But on a positive note, I do think this topic (which I started 2.5 years ago) has been a major driving factor in getting you to develop an Android version - so I'm really pleased all the effort is paying off!

Looking forward to using Pleco on my Nexus One

 

[numble]

A while back you wrote:

Wow, really? Y'know, I used to think iOS was vastly superior, but after seeing PC World put Android 2.2 #1 in its top products list... well I guess that settles it, Android must be better, the magazine said so.

Oh well, we can just pack in the whole iOS development operation and undergo company-wide lobotomies in order to make ourselves enjoy programming in Java...

How do you think that makes you come across?

Being anti-Android doesn't make one's opinions on it invalid, any more than not liking Steve Jobs is a reason to choose one mobile platform over another...

Mike - this is silly. No one is saying being anti-Android makes one's opinion invalid. Where did you get that one from?

You're anti Android but I have total respect for you and your opinions. That's not to say I agree with them all, but that's not how I classify validity.

... and how much time have you spent using an iPhone 4 or an iPad lately anyway?

Probably about the same amount of time numble has spent using an Android device. I did own an iPod Touch for almost a year, so it's not like I don't know anything about iOS. I wonder if numble has spent as long using Android as I have using iOS... He's definitely spent more time on Android discussions than I have in iOS discussions though.

The big difference is, I don't spend all my time on iOS forums, rubbishing stuff I don't like. I find it negative and mean-spirited. I spend the vast majority of my time discrediting all the misinformation that goes on in this topic. It's all defensive. I don't come here and start introducing a load of negative things about iOS and I don't do it on other forums either.

Can you appreciate this point, Mike?

I don't even dislike Apple, Steve Jobs or Apple products in general. I have absolutely no problem with people liking them and for the huge success. But I don't want to buy an iPhone or an iPad (unless maybe for business reasons) because it just doesn't suit my needs. I have even recommended those devices to people in the past once I have evaluated their requirements. So I'm definitely not an i-Hater!

I tried for a long time to keep this thread Android-only, but you rejected that approach so it's turned into a sad fanboy debate

But on a positive note, I do think this topic (which I started 2.5 years ago) has been a major driving factor in getting you to develop an Android version - so I'm really pleased all the effort is paying off!

Looking forward to using Pleco on my Nexus One

I spend my tine in a lot of Pleco threads, even in the Windows Phone 7, Blackberry Playbook and HP Touchpad threads, even the one about a Chinese menu service--you seem to just be on a pro-Android crusade. You might see me coming off as spreading rubbish, but I think you might be spreading much more laudatory praise than Android warrants, and I'm just providing a reality check, such as when you said a year ago that many Android apps were going to scale to tablets elegantly. You've put random links in here about Apple, including misinformation, Android being rated whatever, and all have nothing to do with Pleco, except praising Android or putting down Apple. They're not iOS forums or Android forums, they're Pleco forums. I'm not in the iOS threads talking about how great Apple is, or putting down Android, I'm talking about Pleco. I've made numerous suggestions about Pleco features, and there probably will be a ton more once iOS 5 comes along, and it's annoying to see Pleco iOS on hold while it's being rewritten.