My biggest problem with Android

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quackduck

Limp Gawd
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Ok recently I've switched to Android from iPhone, and my biggest problem is that the iPhone has a way, WAY larger selection of apps than Android does. ESPECIALLY in the game department. The iPhone has full-fledged RPGS and online FPS's, where as finding any decent games on android is very difficult.

In all honesty I love the Android platform, and the hardware is superior, but at the end of the day unless developers decide to switch (which I doubt they will because it's easier to program for the iPhone with a bigger return) I may end up going back.. to Apple.
 
I do agree with this to a point, I really miss my games collection. Non of the big players are on Android yet, and frankly most of the community games are shit. It isn't enough to make me go back to apple though, not by a long shot.

Pop-cap usually publishes for anything they possibly can, so hoping they get thier games over quick. I've already bought some of them for two platforms and won't have a problem doing it again.

I love the Andoid OS, but the quality of the apps overall is much lower.
 
darkpaw said:
I do agree with this to a point, I really miss my games collection. Non of the big players are on Android yet, and frankly most of the community games are shit. It isn't enough to make me go back to apple though, not by a long shot.

Pop-cap usually publishes for anything they possibly can, so hoping they get thier games over quick. I've already bought some of them for two platforms and won't have a problem doing it again.

I love the Andoid OS, but the quality of the apps overall is much lower.
Click to expand...
Which apps are you comparing? Every single App I have tends to be of very high quality.

Android developers have a WAY bigger challenge to work with... Probably about a 100 different phones to work on compatibility for, not to mention the fragmented versions of android (2.1 being the most common thankfully. )

That said, yes, the iPhone has way more games. I don;t game on my phone though, I have a PC and a few consoles for that...
 
All good and true comments...I went from iphone, to Evo 4G for 2 weeks, then back to iphone.....not because of games, apps, etc., but because of hardware issues....but I still agree. It's just an early adopter issue.
 
A ton of games for cells are written in Java

iPhone is written in objective C

Andriod is in Java. So transitioning them to Android shouldn't be much of an issue. The app base will take off as there are a lot more Java programmers than objective C ones.
 
0mega said:
Which apps are you comparing? Every single App I have tends to be of very high quality.
Click to expand...

The only apps I was refering to really are games, most all of the other misc apps I used on a day to day basis on my iPhone are on Android already.

The games selection is just crap though, complete and total crap. I have a lot of time to kill waiting for the bus/train where even my tablet isn't horribly useful, but I do like having some games to play. Out of the 10-20 I've tried so far on Android, only one of them held my interest for more than 10 minutes and that one stil is very low complexity.
 
darkpaw said:
The only apps I was refering to really are games, most all of the other misc apps I used on a day to day basis on my iPhone are on Android already.

The games selection is just crap though, complete and total crap. I have a lot of time to kill waiting for the bus/train where even my tablet isn't horribly useful, but I do like having some games to play. Out of the 10-20 I've tried so far on Android, only one of them held my interest for more than 10 minutes and that one stil is very low complexity.
Click to expand...
Pick up a SNES + GBA emulator. ;)
 
I agree about games but not anything else. All the apps I used on my iPhone 3G before I kicked it to the curb are on Android and they're virtually identical.

Games on Android is lacking a bit but there have been a few good ports like Zenonia. However, I find myself using my Droid less and less for gaming and I think I only have 4 games installed and two of those are emulators. I have a computer, consoles, and a DS for gaming. Even all the games I have on my iPhone 3G (iPod touch now basically) just sit there now and was like that a lot even when it was in use.

My phone is a tool. Not a plaything.
 
maybe you should watch TV on your evo using sprint TV app
it works really well
 
0mega said:
That said, yes, the iPhone has way more games. I don;t game on my phone though, I have a PC and a few consoles for that...
Click to expand...

Who is saying iphone gaming is a replacement for PC and console gaming? It clearly isn't. I hope you can think up at least a few locations where a portable gaming system is useful. A better statement would be "I don't game on my phone though, I have a DS/PSP for that." But I always have an iphone on me and rarely carry either of those around.
 
obs said:
Who is saying iphone gaming is a replacement for PC and console gaming? It clearly isn't. I hope you can think up at least a few locations where a portable gaming system is useful. A better statement would be "I don't game on my phone though, I have a DS/PSP for that." But I always have an iphone on me and rarely carry either of those around.
Click to expand...

Yea, that's where I'm at. I don't even have a DS or a PSP because I HATE carrying them around, but I always have my phone. So some decent games to play on it would be nice.
 
Pretty much that. I have a DS and 2 PSPs, but haven't touched either in over a year. I've only got so much pocket space and already need to carry two cell phones on a daily basis. Thats the primary reason I got rid of my Zune as well even though I loved the Zune pass.
 
I'm just curious. Why do people like to play games on their phones?
 
Until recently (droid) the android selection of phones had pretty shitty gpu performance. Now there are many phones with decent gpu performance rivaling the iphone and the android platform is gaining popularity games will start to come over to the platform.
 
Zenonia (also on iPhone)
N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance (Online FPS)
Robo Defense (TD)
Uniwar (Turn based strategy)
Gangstar: West Coast Hustle (GTA Type Game)

These are just some games you should check out. The hardware is starting to get better (ie 1Ghz CPUs and dedicated GPUs) so I am guessing the quality of games will improve very soon as well.
 
A greater percentage of Droid apps are also free, but then again, iPhone has ten times the amount of apps.

Sigh... my BlackBerry feels so neglected.
 
rive22 said:
I'm just curious. Why do people like to play games on their phones?
Click to expand...

I'm a gamer, its what I do. I don't care, computer, console, hand held, phone, if I have nothing else to do I want to have some games to play. I actually owned an ngage for a few years since that was the only phone that had any significant gaming capability at the time.

Thanks for the list puppetmaster, will check some of those out. Robo defense is the one that has interested me the most so far. I had Zenonia on the iPhone, but the controls tended to drive me nuts. I'm not very big on touch screen emulations of joy sticks, so have mostly stuck to the strategy and puzzle genres for my phones.
 
I remember back in high school kids used to play games on their calculators. What was it, the TI-100? the big graphing calculator. You could load stupid games on it. Most of them were text based games.
 
Max-Powers said:
I remember back in high school kids used to play games on their calculators. What was it, the TI-100? the big graphing calculator. You could load stupid games on it. Most of them were text based games.
Click to expand...

yes people still do that today, I know guys who spent HOURS playing calculator games in study hall. And in math class.
 
My HP calc still has some games loaded on it college. I remember trying to play poker with my lab partner via the IR connection.

So glad the idea of IR wireless is mostly dead now.
 
Max-Powers said:
I remember back in high school kids used to play games on their calculators. What was it, the TI-100? the big graphing calculator. You could load stupid games on it. Most of them were text based games.
Click to expand...
Ti-83 and 84.


The games are much better now
 
ComputerBox34 said:
Ti-83 and 84.


The games are much better now
Click to expand...

I was playing Mario on my TI-92 in Trig senior year of high school. Then I ended up getting through Diff Eq with only a scientific calculator (it wasn't allowed until then, but at that point the graphic calculator wasn't going to be much help because it couldn't show steps)

A friend of mine and I played games using an OS extension called "Doors" and through that we could load games and stuff on the flash memory. Ahh, those were the days...
 
Never played a single game on any phone I've ever owned. After a year with an iPhone, Android hooked me within the first 15 minutes. Why? No fucking iTunes controlling (more often than not restricting) everything I want to put on/remove from my phone. Drag and drop, FTW!
 
I just broke my ATT contract to get the EVO. I was using a Windows mobile phone and am totally excited about all of the Android apps that will now be available to me.
 
Your going to go back because there isn't enough games? Dude it's phone. Go get yourself a PSP.
 
quackduck said:
Ok recently I've switched to Android from iPhone, and my biggest problem is that the iPhone has a way, WAY larger selection of apps than Android does. ESPECIALLY in the game department. The iPhone has full-fledged RPGS and online FPS's, where as finding any decent games on android is very difficult.

In all honesty I love the Android platform, and the hardware is superior, but at the end of the day unless developers decide to switch (which I doubt they will because it's easier to program for the iPhone with a bigger return) I may end up going back.. to Apple.
Click to expand...

I knew that going from iPhone to Android, and you should have done some more research before shipping. I went from a iPhone 3GS to a HTC EVO and I like the switch. I do miss the quality of apps but I certainly don't miss ATT or Apple.

Just go to Google and search for "Android Games" and you'll find compilation videos like 100 best Android games with the names so you can go try them. The highest quality games now are the Gameloft games, but you have to go their website to get them for Android... they're not on the Marketplace yet.
 
quackduck said:
(which I doubt they will because it's easier to program for the iPhone with a bigger return)
Click to expand...

I agreed with you for the most part all the way until this statement. While it is true that developing for iPhone has a better ROI for investers at the moment that wont hold true for much longer and developers are well aware of the $$$ that can be had on Android.

A few things need to take place before this really happens
1. Android market needs an overhaul in search and listings. Also the OTA syncing needs to be fully implemented with an online store.
2. More countries need to be able to sell paid paid apps and more countries need to be able to buy apps. I know Google knows this and is working on it
3. We need to slow down major updates. From what I can tell Froyo and then possibly Gingerbread will be the last "quick" major updates.

Google knows where its shortfalls are and they are working feverishly to fix them...you can believe that. At the end of the day Android is a much more appealling platform than iPhone, it's not quite at the maturity level YET

Android is activating close to 200,000 handsets everyday...the developers will come :)
 
Why game on a phone? Well why web browse on a phone when u have laptops? why not game when u have such powerful devices these days?
 
XLeezardx said:
Why game on a phone? Well why web browse on a phone when u have laptops? why not game when u have such powerful devices these days?
Click to expand...

because i always have my phone with me. Plus, there are quality phone games out there. Games that I want to play reguardless of platform.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
A ton of games for cells are written in Java

iPhone is written in objective C

Andriod is in Java. So transitioning them to Android shouldn't be much of an issue. The app base will take off as there are a lot more Java programmers than objective C ones.
Click to expand...

Most decent Android apps are written using the NDK - in other words, they are written in C++

And trust me, you don't WANT to see Java cell games ported to Android. If you want to see what kind of crap results from that, just search the market for "me4android" or "free4android" and download one of their J2ME "ports"
 
I switched from a 3gs to a nexus one to get on a chapear plan with better coverage. I'm happy saving money and getting better coverage, but android 2.2 is terrible to use. The hardware in my N1 is vastly superior to the 3gs, yet the user interface is dramatically slower. Syncing with exchange is inconsistent, especially meetings. The browser is slow and glitchy when looking at pages with lots of text and graphics. The absolute worst thing about android is the google lockin, which to me is infinitely worse than being locked in to itunes. Just try to delete your google account from an android phone after you set it up; it straight up tells you that the phone does not work without a google account. I don't necessarily trust google with my data, yet in order to use the phone that I bought it has to be synced up with the google mothership, which is utter bullshit. If apple required you to have a .mac account and forced you to sync the phone to that account it would cause a huge shit storm, yet google gets a pass.

Are you OK with a company having records of the following?
Your location (various google products)
Your email (gmail)
Your calendar (google calendar)
Your documents (google docs)
Your voicemail, phone calls, and text messages (google voice)
Your financial information (google checkout)
Your instant messenger conversations (google talk)
Your search history (google search)
and probably a bunch of other shit I am forgetting about...

Sure, you can try to not use a lot of these services, and you might even have some success at that. But the fact remains:

1. Why should I be required to sync my phone with a company that I don't necessarily trust
2. Why should I have to go out of my way to avoid being roped in to most of the google services listed above


In short, I think android is a pretty mediocre attempt to copy a cell phone OS that came out over 3 years ago. But they did manage to one up Apple in the evil department by REQUIRING you to sync your phone with an account hosted on their servers.

As soon as the iPhone is available on a carrier other than AT&T I'll be dropping Android as quickly as possible.
 
MikeyB said:
I switched from a 3gs to a nexus one to get on a chapear plan with better coverage. I'm happy saving money and getting better coverage, but android 2.2 is terrible to use. The hardware in my N1 is vastly superior to the 3gs, yet the user interface is dramatically slower. Syncing with exchange is inconsistent, especially meetings. The browser is slow and glitchy when looking at pages with lots of text and graphics. The absolute worst thing about android is the google lockin, which to me is infinitely worse than being locked in to itunes. Just try to delete your google account from an android phone after you set it up; it straight up tells you that the phone does not work without a google account. I don't necessarily trust google with my data, yet in order to use the phone that I bought it has to be synced up with the google mothership, which is utter bullshit. If apple required you to have a .mac account and forced you to sync the phone to that account it would cause a huge shit storm, yet google gets a pass.

Are you OK with a company having records of the following?
Your location (various google products)
Your email (gmail)
Your calendar (google calendar)
Your documents (google docs)
Your voicemail, phone calls, and text messages (google voice)
Your financial information (google checkout)
Your instant messenger conversations (google talk)
Your search history (google search)
and probably a bunch of other shit I am forgetting about...

Sure, you can try to not use a lot of these services, and you might even have some success at that. But the fact remains:

1. Why should I be required to sync my phone with a company that I don't necessarily trust
2. Why should I have to go out of my way to avoid being roped in to most of the google services listed above


In short, I think android is a pretty mediocre attempt to copy a cell phone OS that came out over 3 years ago. But they did manage to one up Apple in the evil department by REQUIRING you to sync your phone with an account hosted on their servers.

As soon as the iPhone is available on a carrier other than AT&T I'll be dropping Android as quickly as possible.
Click to expand...

I think that tinfoil hat is a little to tight on your head. If I had an upgrade available when the iPhone 4 came out I might have one. After using Android, iOS makes me fucking cringe.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
I think that tinfoil hat is a little to tight on your head. If I had an upgrade available when the iPhone 4 came out I might have one. After using Android, iOS makes me fucking cringe.
Click to expand...

I'm connected to my Google account on my iPhone through an Exchange account. It is very convenient that Google allows this. As I've been trying out Android phones over the last month, all I had to do was log in and all of my info was there. Apple's Mail, iCal, and Address Book apps on my Mac also allow me to sign into my Google account.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
After using Android, iOS makes me fucking cringe.
Click to expand...
^^ This! After a year with my 3GS and that abomination known as iTunes, Android on my Incredible won me over in 15 minutes. IMO, iTunes has become the creature that Apple ridiculed in their famous 1984 commercial.

The antenna issue aside, I still think the iPhone 4 is the best hardware for a smartphone. I'm hoping that Q4's crop of new Android phones closes the gap.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
I think that tinfoil hat is a little to tight on your head. If I had an upgrade available when the iPhone 4 came out I might have one. After using Android, iOS makes me fucking cringe.
Click to expand...

He's pointing out the truth why ridicule him for that? There have been security issues with Google (much like almost all companies with electronic data). With the Android all the information is there and connected in context.

Speaking of contacts.

I've run into another problem with the Android OS, all my contacts are synched via "First Last name", instead of "Last, First".

Having a load of business contacts, this in not good. There are plenty of people that I am not on a first name basis.

For the life of me I can't figure out on google contacts of how to switch it around. I've searched for solutions (ironically with Bing) and really couldn't find an easy solution. One of the solutions is to retype everything. Umm, no.

What I did like was that google contacts found a couple of duplicates and fixed them quickly. Like name with phone on one contact and name and email on another. Real slick.
 
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