OK guys, sorry for the late reply, I’ve been abroad and just come back.
To address the points I was making about polish, I think what I am getting at here is a few years ago, the amount of features being added starts to slowly diminish as we run out of new ideas of what to do. At this point, for me, it should be about quality of life improvements like bug fixes and just making it a consistent and pleasant experience.
However, for me, Google don’t seem to have a clear vision of what they want to do, and where they want to be, which seems to be completely at odds with say, Apple, who add features only once they work properly.
Lets for example look at the difference between Apple’s and Google’s dark theme implementation (I might add that re-introducing dark mode need not have happened at all since they had a perfectly serviceable dark theme in the form of Holo back in the ICS days).
Apple’s is designed with carefully chosen dark hues that are easy on the eye. They made sure all of the Apple apps are themed in time for its main release (actually, they were mostly done for the beta), and not only that, they ensure that the user knows about it as soon as the OS is updated. They also offer an inbuilt facility to schedule the dark mode for dark hours. Finally, my understanding is that 3rd party developers will have to adhere to the OS concepts since they may be forced to remove the app completely from the store. This is a fantastically slick implementation compared with the Google version.
In contrast, on Android, half the apps aren’t even updated (gmail being a major omission, despite claims that it’s been rolled weeks ago, I STILL don’t have it), some of those that do have it are half baked - such as the Google Search where it is dark, but I have black text on a dark grey background on some of the suggestions, and sometimes the status bar icons and text also go black. Then when you actually do the search, its white! This one of the main parts of the OS, and it looks pathetic. There’s no scheduling possibilities unless resorting to hacks, and the design of the thing is heavy handed using pure blacks nearly everywhere, it just looks absolutely amateurish. It’s far worse than Windows Phone 7’s implementation that was more than a decade ago let alone Apple’s version. Finally unlike Apple google will not insist on any developer sticking to any standard, which is painfully obvious when you start using the 2 phones.
Even away from that it lacks polish. Some apps are still on Material Design 1, some are on 2. The new gestures system has broken existing gestures (like the side swipe for hamburger menus) or made it so being dumped back at the home screen or going back when you meant to scroll down happens a little too regularly for my comfort. It also doesn’t look great, on some apps it still takes up a small bar at the bottom rather than being full screen like an iPhone which looks even worse on a screen with curved edges as the top looks perfectly curved while the bottom is crudely cut off. Speaking of gestures, going back to the home screen, sometimes the animation is smooth, other times, its choppy. Also I noticed enabling the gestures means that buttons on the edge of the screen can be difficult to press as they often dont respond.
The new share screen is inconsistent, with apps appearing in different places, sometimes you need to scroll down, other times sideways, what a mess.
They STILL don’t have a decent Airdrop equivalent, and even if they do get on eventually we’ll have to wait for everyone else to get Android 10.
The bluetooth menu still only displays 3 devices once you go into settings, so half the time I STILL need to press again to get a full list of devices. In Android 8 you could use a simple menu from the notification toggles.
The music playing lockscreen looks awful and amateurish, it’s just a blurred colour of the album art which looks like I’m looking at it through a frosted glass window.
They still have not addressed the fingerprint sensor unlocking the phone when its in a pocket (OnePlus did introduce such a measure). Double tap to wake still doesn’t always work. They’ve made notifications more difficult to dismiss.
That’s not even addressing the long time bugs that still haven’t been fixed, like the Google search app back button behaviour being totally different if you happen to switch to some other app while reading an article on the news feed. In fact, the back button consistency generally has been awful ever since its inception. 10 major updates and no attempt made to fix it.
I’m really starting to feel Android 10 is Windows 10’s cousin on mobile now, and I don’t like it. Windows 10 is god awful as well.
I hope this helps clarify my position. In comparison, my iPad is stable, consistent and beautiful to use, not perfect, but a LOT better in nearly every aspect. Lets not even go there with Google’s laughable attempts at tablets (ex Pixel C owner here). Also where is the Pixel watch that matches the Apple Watch? Or the headphones?
You can have me down as a moaner all you want guys, and I realise this forum is full of complete Android fan-boys who can’t see the woods for the trees, but these issues are real to me, and have made me seriously take a look at Apple devices for the first time since the iPhone 4. That is clearly not a good thing. I have actually WANTED to take Google’s side in this little war, but they’ve made it so hard to like them. So yeah, along with their so-so software, their hardware which now lags behind most of the competition despite costing as much or more, they’ve practically held my hand and took me into the competitions eco-sphere!
All valid points, but until I can copy media/files from my PC to my phone without having to use third party software or iTunes then it's a no go.
For all the problems Android has, the restrictions of iOS are still too much.
