Galaxy S Android and iOS iPhone 3GS - Hands On experience

I have been using iPhone 3GS on 3G at Seoul, korea for almost a year. Back to Pune, India I decided to buy the famous Andorid 2.1 Eclair , Galaxy S (I9000) Samsung phone. I was delighted to have a large 4” Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz snapdragon processor. But as I started to use, it fell short of my expectations compared to my previous iPhone 3GS.  Well, here are few good things and bad things about Galaxy S in short

What i Liked about Galaxy S -

• Large AMOLED screen.
• Same look and feel like iphone. So no learning.
• Samsung has very well integrated SNS (Social Network Service - Facebook, Twitter, Gmail).
• The Contacts book can show latest SNS updates for each contact.  You can comment and post from there
• The Dialer has T9 search that directly match contacts in adress book as you type numbers. Unfortunately it only matches the First Name field.
  
• The best is wifi Hotspot. The mobile acts as the wifi hotspot and my wife can use my internet plan to browse internet on her phone (iPhone), even when i am on Edge service. Horribly in India 3G service is not with every operator. Big scams have hit.
  
• Good 5MP camera but without Flash.  HD video recording.

 

What i hate about Galaxy S and Android -

• The most important thing is SPEED. Even after a 1GHz processor the phone behaves like a old 200Hhz Nokia phone. Having used Nokia N97, I think Symbian system is far better in performance then Anroid.
• The Phone hangs constantly and there is a known Lag problem for Android and Galaxy S. Things just dont show up. Funny is when someone calls, the phone rings and i dont see the screen activated with Accept button. Its black for few seconds. Very shameful.
• I just miss the iPhone Gestures for keypad to place curser and select text. Android has a horrible mechanism to select text. You have to change the mode of keypad to 4way Arrow buttons. Then use thse arrow buttons to move the cursor. Very shameful and unusable. 
• They keyboard is very slugish and Predictive text is a big nonsense. It types all the wrong words. iPhone spell check and auto correction is far better then foolish word prediction android.
• Galaxy S has a hardware problem with Proximity sensor. Most of the time when you hold the phone to your ears the screen dosent go off and your chic hits the Big Cancel button.
• The auto rotation of screen is also buggy. Even if you change the phone orientation, the screen hangs in the pervious orientation. You need to shake the phone hard to unlock the buggy roation Gyroscope.
• Samsung Galaxy S which use Kie as desktop software to sync data has bugs. My Galaxy is not recognized by Kie. This problem is written everwhere on internet and Samsung has done nothing.
• Samsung has perfectly copied the iPhone as a typical Korean company always does. The Galazy S shape is having similar corner radius like iphone. Even the home button is similar to iphone, only its square instead of circular. The number of hardware button location is also copied from iPhone. The look and feel of for icons docs and homescreen is exactly like iPhone. 
• Samsung is not a Responsible and dedicated company like Apple. They are not worried for Galaxy S  bugs as they have many other mobiles to sell. Samsung phones come with bugs and they never correct it. They just discontinue the phone and release new model.  Samsung makes around  Apple only has one phone. Apple is CUSTOMER caring company. They will release patch immediately to eveyone if there is aproblem.

Generic Anroid Problems -

• As compared to Apple iOS operating system for iPhone, the Android OS is horrible. Even Symbian is far better then Anroid. Only that Symbian is not designed for touch interfaces.  The Android OS is not smooth like iphone. The scrolling or paging is jurkey and hangs. I have hardly seen any application crash in iPhone. But Android and Galaxy S are full with application crashes, not respongind, exception errors, and what not.. 
• The Emailing application takes lot of time to load emails. It dosent scroll properly.  You cannot edit the quoted email text.
• There is no Copy and Paste from email to other apps or from Internet pages to other apps. This was one of the best features in iOS.
• Not the worst part. Just compare Android and iPhone app from the same company. Example the most popular- Facebook.  Facebook app for iPhone will be beautiful, but for Android it will be half backed. eg. when you click any comments it wil leave the native app and go to browser. Half done work.  Not only this app, take Skype. Skype dosent work in many android phones.  I have notices that the same company makes a perfectly designed App for iPhone but when it comes for Android, they just throw some code to say that they also have android app.  Why is this ? Is it because they follow Apple Human Interface Guidelines properly and for Android they dare to make all mistakes ?

Advantages of Android over iOS (iPhone)

• The best part of Android, i think is, they have allowed more freedom to apps developers to access native OS features and apps. Eg. You can attach a file from your SD card. Or write to the calendar and photos. For iPhone, the native apps cannot be touched or modified by 3rd party apps. The apps developers have to import data and make another copy in their apps database. 
• Android can be customized by handset manufacturers to make their unique homescreens and dialers and SNS integrations. But i heard this is going to stop.
• Well, you can replace battery and add external memory card.
• Have better camera and FM radio. iPhone dosent have Radio.

What i miss in Android -

• There is no good music player like iTunes. There is no desktop iTunes like app to sync music and take backup of data
• Upgrading of Android OS is hell and country dependent. iPhone OS is updated globally at the same time. I am Still waiting for Android 2.2 Fryo update to my Galaxy S for India
• Wort part is, the Samsung Kie desktop sync app for Galaxy S is only for PC and Windows. I have Mac and i have no option to update my Galaxy S. I think Google is paying every handset company to not to have a Mac OS desktop app.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog

Handset Manufacturer's role in future Mobile UX

Mobile Trends

For last 5ys or so, we have seen a gradual transition of mobile popularity from a simple feature phone to a feature rich smart phone. I think, this transitions is also fueled by growth of social networking websites, collaborative gamings, music downloads, 3G/4G, LTE services, easy GPS access, etc. Whenever i see any mobile Advertisement, they show facebook and messenger chats on the mobile homescreens. The importance of handset hardware and form-factor is diminishing. Its shown as mear rectangular block with a large screen.  The software & content delivery is overtaking it. The TV and newspaper Ads dont show the mobile form factor, but the Apps Icons on the homescreen. The whole focus has shifted. 

Mobile OS companies and their strategies

See the full gallery on posterous

Because of good ecosystem trend set by Apple(iPhone) and Google Android, any developer in the world can realize his idea into a Mobile App and sell it too. The design and beauty of a mobile is now not limited to the small in-house UI team who usually dont have time.  The earlier smart OS was only dominated by Microsoft who made windows mobile OS by just copying the PC ui without thinking mobile user needs. They did provided a dirty appendix called "Stylus" to solved their own "non-Touchable Tiny-Icon" problems. And users were left with carrying another gadget(Stylus) like PC mouse.  Microsoft also made a half cooked OS and left to handset manufacturers to clean the design and make it usable. This also provided UI teams in handset companies like (LG, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, etc) a chance to provide a differentiating unique UI for their brand even if all were using same windows OS. But actual Users had to suffer for OS updates as they had to depend on the handset manufacturer rather then Microsoft. This was because, the handset company had screwed the OS with their customization and direct update is not possible now. This case is true for Android too as you cannot easily upgrade the OS. Well, Google at least releases new updates frequently as against Microsoft doing one update after 2-3yrs.  Apple is the only company where any user can update OS immediately after Apple releases new OS, no matter which part of world he is and which carrier he is on. This strategy is now being copied by Google and Microsoft. Going forward, Google and Microsoft will not allow for UI customization by handset comapny, which is very good, provided Google and Microsoft do not make half baked UIs. 

Another famous smart phone is Symbian OS based phones by Nokia. This OS was only used by Nokia untill this year. I personally like Symbian more then windows. It was easy and not the PC way atleast. But I wonder why Nokia didnt made any Apps store, and made it horribly difficult for developer to develop apps and impossible for users to download it. They never did it untill now, may be 2009, as they see a threat from Apple. To get a symbian app you have to go to some 3rd party website, download it, then transfer that .sis file to your phone, then certify it and install it. Well, Symbian was not allowed for any other company other then Nokia. But Windows mobile was licensed to other hardware manufacturers. Nokia has now abandoned this Symbian OS as it was originally designed for buttons based ui. Now its the time of Gestures and touch screens and symbian is an outdated OS. So you have to rewrite it from scratch. I think they are looking at LiMo OS or MeGo.  Similarly, Microsoft Windows mobile OS was neither for good for touch screen, nor for hardware buttons UI. Till date, iPhone and Android are the only full touch screen and gesture based UIs. 

Its just shame that Microsoft and Nokia never cared for end to end experience. Nokia has recently in 2009 put the ovi.com store to make the apps for Symbian OS. Microsoft is still dreaming of the Window 7 OS to be launched late 2010. 

 

The Big Question for Mobile UI Designers in Handset companies ?

OK, the smart phone is all about creating a scalable and easy OS. This OS is supposed to be invisible and the Apps more visible.

If smartphones OS are going to get cheap and developers around the world are going to build apps on the smart OS, thus making the phone(eg.iphone) better and better everyday, then what are UX designers in handset companies going to do ? Is there any role left for UX designers of handset companies in defining future mobile UI. ? Because 90% of UI is done by Apps developers and their designers. 

Handset company will only provide industrial design, large good capacitive screen, Good camera and all kinds of sensors. Then its upto Apps developers and their designer to build that phone and give it a shape.

Posted via email from Sameer Chavan's Design Blog