Galaxy Nexus vs iPhone 4s

[burwil]

I used my webOS experience to point out what I feel are still shortcomings in Android, so I guess I was half off topic. I have only played with iOS so I didn't feel I should comment directly on it. On the other hand, I've played with my wife's Fascinate over the past year and have 3 days more ICS experience than most users here have. (I only know of 2 other users running ICS on the Fascinate.)

Fair enough!

 

[ohiomoto]

I loved the simplicity of WebOS, but while I think Android ads some complexity to the UI, it is necessary.
I used to fight the old Palm hardware, even after overclocking it. It still was so laggy that there were times you couldn't unlock it to pick up a phone call. I don't miss that, so don't poo poo the chase for hardware specs.

I'm not poo pooing the specs. That's why I'm looking at other options. I'm talking about the people like my brother-in-law, an avid Android supporter, who was pretty impressed webOS after using in on my phone. He knew nothing about it, because Palm never had a phone that interested him. The only reason I got the Pre Plus was because I wanted the free hotspot it came with. Then I fell in love with the software, not the phone.

I've had 2 Pre Plus phones. One took to overclocking really well. It runs about as good as ICS on the Fascinate if you could believe that. The other one seemed to have some lag with the screen or wouldn't always registrar user input. I don't particularly love my Palm phones and I think lack of solid hardware options is the main reason Palm failed.

ICS (I have played with it on multiple occasions) is the closest to WebOS yet. We get what look like cards that we can swipe to close. The search is very similar to "Just Type". I think given the choices we have available, it's the choice to make.

Really? Sure, we get a semblance of a card, but it's just a list of recently used apps. Some are running as some are not. Furthermore, when you dismiss an app form the list, it doesn't actually kill the app. It just removes it from the list and lets the app continue to use resources and drain your battery.

And while the notifications are better than before, you still can't interact with them. Notifications in webOS are like widgets in Android. You can interact with the application from the notification. In Pandora you can pause, skip or give a song the thumbs up or down, or tell Pandora to not play it for a while. You can do all of that from the notification without going back to the card it's running in.

So while I do agree that ICS is probably the best option at this point, I'm not as impressed with ICS as I expected to be. I do appreciate the better hardware and the more complete functionality of the OS and it's apps, but I don't think the UI is even close to webOS which makes me a little sad.

BTW, the search window in ICS is only searching google right now. Maybe I'm missing something but it's not anything like "Just Type" in webOS.

 

[theduder]

I'm not poo pooing the specs. That's why I'm looking at other options. I'm talking about the people like my brother-in-law, an avid Android supporter, who was pretty impressed webOS after using in on my phone. He knew nothing about it, because Palm never had a phone that interested him. The only reason I got the Pre Plus was because I wanted the free hotspot it came with. Then I fell in love with the software, not the phone.

Yes. Incredible software.

I've had 2 Pre Plus phones. One took to overclocking really well. It runs about as good as ICS on the Fascinate if you could believe that. The other one seemed to have some lag with the screen or wouldn't always registrar user input. I don't particularly love my Palm phones and I think lack of solid hardware options is the main reason Palm failed.

I had hacked my pre minus to run 2.1. Less memory than the plus.

Really? Sure, we get a semblance of a card, but it's just a list of recently used apps. Some are running as some are not. Furthermore, when you dismiss an app form the list, it doesn't actually kill the app. It just removes it from the list and lets the app continue to use resources and drain your battery.

Are you sure these aren't just apps that relaunch after you kill them? Did we ever know when or if this happened in WebOS?

And while the notifications are better than before, you still can't interact with them. Notifications in webOS are like widgets in Android. You can interact with the application from the notification. In Pandora you can pause, skip or give a song the thumbs up or down, or tell Pandora to not play it for a while. You can do all of that from the notification without going back to the card it's running in.

Notifications work exactly like this in Android even in revs earlier than ICS. You press the gmail alert, it spawns the gmail app so you can read the email. Same for any other applications. Maybe I don't understand you, but to me the notifications are just as capable and do mostly the same thing.

ICS gives us music controls on the lock screen. I'm not convinced that kind of control belongs in a notification system. By definition these are not even similar things. Widgets are fine.

So while I do agree that ICS is probably the best option at this point, I'm not as impressed with ICS as I expected to be. I do appreciate the better hardware and the more complete functionality of the OS and it's apps, but I don't think the UI is even close to webOS which makes me a little sad.

BTW, the search window in ICS is only searching google right now. Maybe I'm missing something but it's not anything like "Just Type" in webOS.

You can configure the search bar to search whatever you want. You select and deselect things like contacts, etc... Once you add more, it can be used like just type. I just checked and the settings have a possible 17 apps that can be searched.

 

[anon(512898)]

Notifications work exactly like this in Android even in revs earlier than ICS. You press the gmail alert, it spawns the gmail app so you can read the email. Same for any other applications. Maybe I don't understand you, but to me the notifications are just as capable and do mostly the same thing.

Notifications in android just launch the relevant activity for the application that the notification belongs to. The way I understood what he said was that in web os applications could have controls in the notification, eg the music notification that shows the song playing in android would also have a play/pause button and skip forward/backward buttons so you would not even need to launch the music player activity.

 

[theduder]

Notifications in android just launch the relevant activity for the application that the notification belongs to. The way I understood what he said was that in web os applications could have controls in the notification, eg the music notification that shows the song playing in android would also have a play/pause button and skip forward/backward buttons so you would not even need to launch the music player activity.

I understood him and went on to say that I don't think that sort of thing belongs in notifications.

Controls are controls, notifications are notifications. WebOS has really limited screen space, and imo it made zero sense to tie up notification space with control elements. Luckily, very few people coded much beyond notifications.

I personally think a software widget is the right place to combine multiple functions like controls, notifications, tracking updates, etc...

 

[JoJoCal19]

iOS is a great OS. It's super easy to use, extremely fluid and the most reliable OS. It's great for people new to smartphones, people who are horrible with technology, and older people. My mother in law is HORRIBLE with technology and she got an iP4 this year and had no problems getting going immediately with it. That says a lot about how easy to use it is. Having said that, I love my iPhone 4 but I feel like I'm using the same device as when I got the original iPhone in 2007, save for finally getting copy and paste, mms and multitasking. I miss Android and after my Fascinate I'm glad there are finally Android devices worthy of my money. I can't wait for my GNex to arrive (bro-law is supposed to get stock later this week). I hate looking at the same rows of icons. I hate having to go into apps to do everything and I especially hate having to dig through multiple menus to change basic settings. I hate being told what I can and can't install on my phone and what I can and can't set for tones, settings, etc. The iP4 is a real good phone and will stay around as an iPod touch but it's going to take a helluva lot of magic for Apple to bring me back (read: completely new OS).

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

Having owned a pre (actually 5 in 5 months because of the worst build quality on the planet) I was more than willing to switch to a Hero with less specs and no GPU at the time because the pre was completely useless. What is the point of multi-tasking if 1 card open is "too many cards open" I know they never really fixed this issue since the HP Touchpad I played with in the store had the same issue. I for one am glad someone took WebOS out back on shot it dead. It should have died with Palm. The only thing I really liked with WebOS was the theming. It was simple and in general, they all looked great. But not being able to answer a phone call because your phone can't wake up enough for touch input is unsettling. Horrible memory management.

Back on topic. I don't really care what iOS has to offer. I owned an iPhone 4 for 3 weeks and couldn't wait to drop kick it into a river... or level head myself and sell it to someone who was going to run it on cricket. Is iOS 5 an improvement, sure, but it brought its own bagage and bugs with it (funny, since it took them 18 months to release it).

 

[ohiomoto]

Are you sure these aren't just apps that relaunch after you kill them? Did we ever know when or if this happened in WebOS? ...

You can configure the search bar to search whatever you want. You select and deselect things like contacts, etc... Once you add more, it can be used like just type. I just checked and the settings have a possible 17 apps that can be searched.

As far as the apps not being stopped when being dismissed, it seems like it might be a mixed bag. Some apps seem to die. Others leave what appears to be services running and others just keep running. I dismissed Pandora, it kept playing music. I dismissed Navigation and the GPS receiver kept running. Maybe it's supposed to do that, maybe it's how the app was developed, maybe ICS has a bug, maybe my ROM was built from bad source code... Not sure, but the behavior I experienced was unexpected.

Thanks for pointing our the configuration for the search bar. I found it and you are right, it is similar to just type. I would like to see options for Market Place, Maps and Email added, but it looks good.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the notifications. The other thing I'm struggling with is the navigation on Android, but I'll get use to it I guess...I hope. LOL

@Andrew Ruffolo, I believe you, because I have heard of other "too many card" issues. Never once got the too many cards error on my Pre Plus or Touch Pad. I had 30 cards running on my Pre and I gave up trying. Never tried to kill the Touchpad though. I could see how that would ruin your webOS experience. Like I said, I think hardware killed webOS.

 

[ohiomoto]

Couple of ICS notes.

First I made a comment about notifications not having actions in ICS like I was use to in webOS. Well, the stock music app in ICS does have user controls nested in the notification. So it can be done. My guess is that overtime, apps like Pandora and Slacker will be updated to use this feature.

I've also been slightly frustrated how ICS implements multitasking to the UI. I had a chance to play with a honeycomb tablet and I realize that ICS on the Nexus will have a dedicated button for this function. This seems to work a little better IMO. I think I might still prefer a single button/gesture area like iPhone/Palm used, but I think ICS on the GN will be a little better than the 4 button setup it uses on the Fascinate.

 

[ManBearPig618]

I like the dedicated multitasking button..seems much more natural to me - but then again, I can't stand multitasking on iOS with that double press nonsense.