Latest Android Release Still Lagging Behind iOS?

General Discussion
1

Seriously, I have been told that you guys have more Android people working on the platform than iOS (true?)

Why is Android so broken compared to iOS and everything available on iOS is listed as soon on Android?

As far as I can confirm, the following items are/were broken on Android compared to iOS:

-Presence for some… Me included, it just isn’t reliable. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t, no settings change on my phone.
-CarouselTile on Android doesn’t show past images, breaks camera functionality
-Charting doesn’t work on Android, works fine on iOS. (New charting methods in the works?)
-Shake to show names in things doesn’t show last row of names (FIXED)
-Unable to remove a value from device tile setting and reset it back to NULL (FIXED)
-Can’t move a tile to end of the list of things, it falls back to original spot.
-Dragged tile positions in things just are lost, randomly resets, just reorders without reason
-Almost impossible to click and resize geofence area on map. (took me 20 tap and holds to get it to resize)

I just wish that we would see parity on Android and not release notes that say, new features, just not for Android, coming soon…

“When you create three rows in the Dashboard, you’ll see a quick tip about re-ordering them (to remove it, simply long press any row, drag, and drop). –iOS only, Android forthcoming”

“As needed, you are now able to pull down to refresh the Dashboard. –iOS only, Android forthcoming”

Just venting, but seriously, ST buy some Nexus 5’s for your developers, or CEO, make them live the pain that us Android users have to as second class citizens with superior hardware.

Android devices make up over 70% of smartphones on the market, over 50% of web / mobile traffic.

iPhones only account for the same 20% they have had since 2009. iOS on iPhones is NOT a growing market segment. It is a saturated segment.
(Source, IDC)

Also, cost per device winner is clearly Android at 215 per device where iPhone is 600+…

You are selling a product to people who can’t afford the high end, but support high end phones over lower end. It doesn’t make sense…

So please, please, get the Android version up to par with iOS and then lead with Android.

Rant over…

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2

Will I have not experienced these issues, I do agree that the Android app needs some cleaning up. And you need a better way of handling the tiles and devices. Just too cumbersome to manage many devices on the device. Now, if you had a web portal that worked with tablets it could do the heavy lifting. Then people could customize the app on the mobile devices to handle simple things that are done often.

3

Funny you said that. Apparently, not everyone agree. ST is only sold in US so Android’s world market share does not matter.

4

I think the point here is android and apple are now on the same playing field. Android and Apple are now not going after seperate markets. They are both fighting for the same pool.

Unfortunately companies tend to lag behind the changing tides. Companies that make it are ones that see the changes coming and change with it. If you want to be in the IoT space you need to support android and iOS equally. End of story. There is no denying that Android is just as capable an operating system as iOS. If you think otherwise you’re blind and kidding yourself and everyone around you.

Moral of the story is, get on the band wagon or get left behind.

Companies need to start realizing that hardware and OS need to be of no consequence to the user. If I am on the web, iOS, Android, or any other platform that is said to be “supported” I should get the exact same experience. OS agnosticism is going to be key for EVERY company in the next 10 years. Companies that figure that out will make it. Those that don’t… Won’t.

Regardless of what platform you prefer you can not deny the other platforms existence. Especially when a company says its fully “supported”.

5

I think Android as now generally is more difficult to develop for than iOS - hardware fragmentation and OS fragmentation generates too many variations that needs to be considered. On the other hand Android’s flexibility and openness for customization potentially allows more functionality than iOS counterpart. Unfortunately right now the cons seem to overwhelm the pros because I don’t see much advantage of flexibility but only the disadvantage of fragmentation

But this fundamental difference will blur, as Google is trying hard to take better control of the platform and discourage fragmentation and Apple started opening up its iOS with extensibility and inter-app communication. So I hope that platform parity and deeper system level integration are both coming soon. I just wish app’s user experience could drastically improve. Although I’m a fan of ST, its app is least favorite element. Convoluted and rough to use, to my taste.

6

^This… plus the development environment itself. Google is working to improve things, but they have a long way to go.

7

Agreed with the Google environment. I suspect that they will consolidate the ChromeOS environment with the Android environment and make it much easier to create applications in support of the environments. While they still have a way to go, as I develop applications, I look to make sure that anyone who wants to use my code can. I understand that it can, and is a nightmare supporting multiple OS’s. However, in todays world this is necessary.

I use Android, and am happy with the OS. But, I know that other people have other preferences, and I want them to enjoy my applications as well.

8

Its not be only necessary, but you need to have the SAME experience on every device/platform.

I work at a very large tech company as a IT manager/PM… I would get fired tomorrow if my team developed a mobile app like this.

I know some of this comes down to money… But for instance… The mode quick change drop down on the left panel flyout not being on android is just a stupid mistake to make.

Or arranging tiles in the lights section of the dashboard…

Or the graphing display issue…

These are not things that depend on the hardware. People like to hide behind the “Google is just harder though”… paradigm. You know what I want to see? A company that doesn’t make excuses and just gets things done. When did America become a bunch of whiney lazy people? What do you think would of happened if John Adams would of been like “but the British are scary and they have guns I’m going home”… Or if Lincoln was like “the south is scary so I don’t want to fight for slavery to end… Its too hard”… Or if Edison gave up the first 900 times he didn’t make a working lightbulb… Or if they didn’t build the railroad system because there were mountains in the way… Stop whining about how hard something is, find a solution, and move on to the next problem. People have a tendency to try and blame other things for why something is happening or why it isn’t working, but the fact of the matter is, they just don’t care, or have the fortitude to keep going.

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

  • Albert Einstein
9

While I get what you’re saying… (and just for grins) as a PM, ask your engineers to compare the IDEs available for Android to XCode and the Cocoa frameworks. It really is akin to tinkertoys versus jet engine mechanics. I can count on one hand the number of apps that are better (or as well executed) on Android as they are on iOS. Even Google’s own apps are usually better executed on the latter.

I am just sayin’, that without seeing the codebase, it’s unfair to assume that some minor missing details are just that, and not major hurdles.

10

If you look at marketshare, iOS Handsets have leveled out at 20% since 2009. It hasn’t changed much for 5 years.

Android has skyrocketed in adoption since 2009. Also, smart handset prices have plummeted since 2009, except for Apple.

Anyway, I think it is highly hypocritical to support iOS first and Android second, when selling a $99 hub to the masses but need a $600 phone to control it with full functionality. (sure you can set it up on Android, but still the fact remains this platform should embrace Android first and equally)

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