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Android L is now smoother, faster, nicer looking than iOS
- Thread starter ecrispy
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Thanks, interesting read. If this becomes a problem, I'll be buying unbranded and unlocked devices for now on. Depending on knowledge if my carrier locked down the bootloader for whatever specific device. With most US carriers, some devices have bootloader locked and other models don't.
I was initially excited with Lollipop and I still am. But after watching several videos of it, there are a few things that now feel underwhelming.
- Don't like the white background in the drawer. I prefer the transparency offered by default KitKat and custom launchers. Easy fix.
- The lockscreen full of notifications doesn't look appealing to me. It reminds me of iOS' which looks hideous and cluttered. OEM skins can probably make that better or I will switch back using Moto X's Active Display clones like DynamicNotifications or AcDisplay which gives me screen on time adjustments and have a cleaner look.
- Thinks the recent app menu looks better than iOS' even though the rolodex/card stack animation copied Safari's tabs. But the left or right gesture to close apps would get in the way of All In One Gesture for me. I prefer Sense's swipe up to close or MIUI with its one-press to close ALL apps.
- I realized Material Design might get in the way with some of my gesture swipes when I initially thought they would complement each other very well with the sliding effect.
- Animations are great and all, but they can kill battery. And I probably will stop noticing some of the visual eye candy once I use Nova Prime as the default launcher and change it to animations I prefer. Honestly, when you start getting used to launchers or a custom skin for so long, the visual effects of stock Android starts to become unnoticeable. When I went from Sense 5 with JB 4.1.2 to MIUI with KK 4.4.2, I hardly noticed any changes on Android since both phones are heavily skinned.
- And the one I was looking forward to the most - Project Volta (aka as Project Roadrunner). Basically a power saving option for stock Android devices? I don't like how the status bar and on-screen buttons turns red. Google discovered waking up the screen for one second can kill two minutes of standby time. So this is better when screen is off or when batt is below 20% and you want to squeeze the most out of it if an outlet isn't around. No real improvements for SOT? So many OEM's already have power saving modes on their skins and sometimes done better like Sony's or MIUI which can prevent auto-starts for apps and doesn't need Greenify. The phones with real stamina are the ones with a long SOT by default without the need of a crippling power saver.
My favorite features might come from under the hood like Tap & Go, ART is now default, better caching, and Google taking a page from Apple's ID/password requirement for stolen devices. And that Easter egg with the Flappy Bird clone seems really cool. I also would love double tap to wake screen but I don't expect it on all devices and who knows how much that can affect battery life with the sensors turned on? LG's KnockCodes is better for less accidental wakeups.
Android's weakness is the inconsistency across each custom ROM and UI skin. It can be changed for better or worse. It's also one of my favorite reasons because I do enjoy the varied UI schemes and believe OEM's ideas can sometimes be better than Google's own ideas. But I think each Android update is more exciting for Nexus fans while folks like me wouldn't notice it as much once we start using a custom skin and preferred launcher.
Lollipop will be a great update as Tap & Go is a great feature alone but it will be the most noticeable for the Android purists/Nexus owners as most OEM's will exclude features or use custom skins/launchers to obscure Lollipop's natural flow and experience.
- Don't like the white background in the drawer. I prefer the transparency offered by default KitKat and custom launchers. Easy fix.
- The lockscreen full of notifications doesn't look appealing to me. It reminds me of iOS' which looks hideous and cluttered. OEM skins can probably make that better or I will switch back using Moto X's Active Display clones like DynamicNotifications or AcDisplay which gives me screen on time adjustments and have a cleaner look.
- Thinks the recent app menu looks better than iOS' even though the rolodex/card stack animation copied Safari's tabs. But the left or right gesture to close apps would get in the way of All In One Gesture for me. I prefer Sense's swipe up to close or MIUI with its one-press to close ALL apps.
- I realized Material Design might get in the way with some of my gesture swipes when I initially thought they would complement each other very well with the sliding effect.
- Animations are great and all, but they can kill battery. And I probably will stop noticing some of the visual eye candy once I use Nova Prime as the default launcher and change it to animations I prefer. Honestly, when you start getting used to launchers or a custom skin for so long, the visual effects of stock Android starts to become unnoticeable. When I went from Sense 5 with JB 4.1.2 to MIUI with KK 4.4.2, I hardly noticed any changes on Android since both phones are heavily skinned.
- And the one I was looking forward to the most - Project Volta (aka as Project Roadrunner). Basically a power saving option for stock Android devices? I don't like how the status bar and on-screen buttons turns red. Google discovered waking up the screen for one second can kill two minutes of standby time. So this is better when screen is off or when batt is below 20% and you want to squeeze the most out of it if an outlet isn't around. No real improvements for SOT? So many OEM's already have power saving modes on their skins and sometimes done better like Sony's or MIUI which can prevent auto-starts for apps and doesn't need Greenify. The phones with real stamina are the ones with a long SOT by default without the need of a crippling power saver.
My favorite features might come from under the hood like Tap & Go, ART is now default, better caching, and Google taking a page from Apple's ID/password requirement for stolen devices. And that Easter egg with the Flappy Bird clone seems really cool. I also would love double tap to wake screen but I don't expect it on all devices and who knows how much that can affect battery life with the sensors turned on? LG's KnockCodes is better for less accidental wakeups.
Android's weakness is the inconsistency across each custom ROM and UI skin. It can be changed for better or worse. It's also one of my favorite reasons because I do enjoy the varied UI schemes and believe OEM's ideas can sometimes be better than Google's own ideas. But I think each Android update is more exciting for Nexus fans while folks like me wouldn't notice it as much once we start using a custom skin and preferred launcher.
Lollipop will be a great update as Tap & Go is a great feature alone but it will be the most noticeable for the Android purists/Nexus owners as most OEM's will exclude features or use custom skins/launchers to obscure Lollipop's natural flow and experience.
Excellent points. But I think animations won't take much of a toll, they are all on the gnu (better be). Project Volta like you said has been a bit of a disappointment, its big feature requires dev to take advantage of to really work (combining tasks).
IMO the real big gains in L are the brand new camera and audio layers which will give native access to camera and reduced audio latency (but not as low as iOS).
btw great to hear you mention MIUI, my fav rom which had so many great features years ago !!
Another big thing with L is Google is for the first time marketing Android directly, have a premium phone on all carriers and appear serious about treating it as a product, not just a license to sell.
it's a good thing that you prefer it because you have no options to make it your own. Apple's way or the highway. Nice.
I am quite okay with a lot of that as i want simplicity in my phone, but like the broad selection of apps and accessories.
To me time is money, which is the reason I don't like fiddling with my phone.
great, why are you in this forum section?
you are wasting more time here than would be required for any 'phone fiddling'
It's okay, it's my time. Why are you here? The last I looked these were macrumors forums.
I'm here for this section and the ios hacks section.
This section is becoming overwhelmed with seemingly self conscious iOS holy war fighters
Time is money to everyone. That's obvious. There's no "fiddling" either. Androids have exactly the same simplicity as iPhones. In fact, I'd argue there's less of a learning curve for the basic functions. No need to install or learn iTunes, sync'ing, etc. Just plug and play if you wish.
The fiddling you call it, is the capability expansion that takes the device well beyond what an iPhone can do and thus resulting in a more productive device with a greater long term benefit. There are plenty of examples post over the past few weeks in this section.
Props to wanting simplicity but know that Android has that and from an accessory standpoint just as many if not more than iPhones.
Really, this is an android vs IOS comparison. What did you expect?
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Time is not money to everyone, some people just don't care. Really I'm glad you like your o/s and phone. So do I. Over and out.
I've seen some benchmarks for the Nexus 9....kinda wonky but if true, the A8X bests the K1 by a decent margin in multicore score....whereas the K1 wins in single-core score.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nexu...gra-K1-outperforms-Apple-iPhone-6s-A8_id61825
And here's some GPU comparisons
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Appl...-neck-and-neck-with-Nexus-9s-Tegra-K1_id62070
Both devices though are quite a bit ahead in their respective platforms though.....the most powerful Android and iOS devices out there. Very impressive stuff.
Everyone says iOS is simple to use. I found the settings menu on iOS is way more complicated than stock android.
I don't believe any benchmark has been calibrated yet for Android running 64bit CPU's. The Nexus 9 could be faster or slower than those benchmarks and the single core and multicore readings might be bass-ackwards. Gonna have to wait and see.
I'm sure it is plenty fast and I'm still stuck debating which tablet to get between iPad Air 2 and the Nexus 9. Kind of leaning towards the iPad right now though. Tough decision.
Geekbench 3 is calibrated against a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo I believe. Not sure if there would be any discrepancies as there was no additional calibration with 64-bit iOS either.
Unless you are talking software optimization on the OS side and not on the benchmarking software.
I would argue that time is money for everyone. Unless you're out of a job or bring in nothing, but even then, it's not about money, but the value of your time doing something else productive or fun.
To me, the settings are not complicated. What required learning is where the settings the located.
IMO all the mobile OS's have their own learning curve, none of them is really obvious or intuitive. When people say something is easy, its usually because they've gotten used to it. Whats easy for one person is complex to another.
Unless looking through settings IS someone's idea of fun, hehe. I kinda like doing it the first time I get a new phone, but after that I never want to be stuck in settings.
If what you said was true when all things are taken into account I would love to read the reactions here to that.
All we have heard about over the last year or two on these forums, when Apple's multicore scores were lower and single core was higher, was that mutlicore did not matter, it was only single core that mattered on these devices.
I wonder if the same attitude will carry on if the Nexus 9 has better single core but worse mutlicore speeds.
Will multicore magically become what's important
If what you said was true when all things are taken into account I would love to read the reactions here to that.
All we have heard about over the last year or two on these forums, when Apple's multicore scores were lower and single core was higher, was that mutlicore did not matter, it was only single core that mattered on these devices.
I wonder if the same attitude will carry on if the Nexus 9 has better single core but worse mutlicore speeds.
Will multicore magically become what's important
On a tablet with 10 hours of battery life, looking At multicore makes sense. To conserve battery life on a phone extensive multitasking is the epitome of poor battery life.