SGS2, why does everyone love it? Here's why I don't...

[pandemonium]

Steve Jobs took Apple to where they are because he was completely anal about the small things like this. If I were in charge of the SGS2 department, I would be anal like him, too.

Not to disagree with you, but he was also litigationally vengeful to make sure that his company controlled a leading position in at least 'one' market. One has to question those motives.

The open market has made several solutions for poor OEM standards, of which are a perfectly valid option for most people.

 

[Radeon962]

GoSMS and ICS keyboard work perfect for me in landscape or portrait.

 

[soccerballtux]

here's some portrait pics. The last one I set text to "tiny".
Yeah I'm aware of market alternatives...I was just hoping the SGS2 had everything "ironed out".

 

[soccerballtux]

Not to disagree with you, but he was also litigationally vengeful to make sure that his company controlled a leading position in at least 'one' market. One has to question those motives.

The open market has made several solutions for poor OEM standards, of which are a perfectly valid option for most people.

yeah he definitely had OCD or something problems.
So did Hitler. That's what made him great. Crazy, but smart enough to not go completely crazy until you can't do anything about it. :godwin:
free market-- yeah. Personally, hopefully HTC will get their tail in gear, last phone of theirs I used wasn't annoying with stuff like this at all.

 

[poofyhairguy]

what I'm saying is that it took me 10 minutes of use to determine that they desperately need to
-decrease the DPI setting in build.prop
-come up with a solution for the bobbing textbox + word-suggestion issue (exists with Swype also, rendering default android keyboard as the only choice), and
-make the keyboard shorter (vertically)

But you see, that is your thoughts of what needs to be changed that are greatly influenced by the iPhone.

For some people, the higher DPI and one inch icons are a good thing. My wife's grandmother LOVES my SGS2 over any iPhone because she can easily see what to do on the screen. Plus it is not completely within Samsung's control- Google controls the market and sets the DPI standard for phones.

And not everyone likes a shorter keyboard. Heck, you would flip if you saw the keyboard I use (thumb keyboard)- it adds extra vertical rows for directional keys on portrait mode. The honest truth is that I don't need to see what was written before to respond. Sure coming from an iPhone that was a change, but I find it is not hard to look at a message and then bang out a response without looking at it again. I couldn't go back to iOS's keyboard without directional keys now.

Basically it all comes down to preferences, and your preferences have been shaped by the iPhone. That is your standard. But it you had never seen and iPhone before, maybe you would have preferred the SGS2 defaults.

Or not, I get what you are saying that the iPhone has more overall polish. Problem is that the man behind that level of OCD is gone, and it remains to be seen if there is another human on the planet that can do what he did. MS has never approached Apple's level of polish despite many more resources for a long time, and Google hasn't even tried to get near Apple's level. Basically that level of polish is something you can't buy, you have to be born with it.

Who knows, without Jobs eventually in something like 10 years maybe Apple won't be so polished.....

 

[soccerballtux]

I guess my brain is stupid, I need to look at previous responses, bad short term memory of something I just read. It's why I do multiple separate posts vs using multi-quite because I can't remember what I was going to say.

I think Microsoft has figured it out to some extent. Xbox360 + XNA + whatever DirectX manifestation they have, is a fantastic platform to develop for thanks to their good development tools, learned having had experience with Visual Studio etc, and is very well-paired hardware (3 in-order dual threaded CPUs provide plenty of computer power vs Sony's Cell which was designed with the intention of decoding their hi-bandwidth Blurays, at a time when CPUs weren't anywhere near fast enough and GPU decoding hadn't come around yet. As a result it has (mostly) useless SPEs and 1/3rd the processing power of the Xbox360's CPU (same PowerPC cores except only 1 of them not 3).
Their phones nicely refined too, just nothing to write home about because they're too simplistic/boring and don't have exciting hardware specs.

I think Google is in the stages that Microsoft was 15 years ago, new to all this and trying to come up with something good (Windows 2000).

 

[MrX8503]

Wow thats teribad. It reminds me why I don't have an Android phone. Its little things like this scattered all over the OS that drives my frustration up a wall. The SGSII is a solid device but software is mediocre. If I make a transition to Android, I'll have to research a device for days so that I can avoid these software annoyances.

EDIT: One thing that annoys me with keyboards is the suggestion bar that pops up above the keyboard that tries to predict what you're typing. It takes up screen real estate, for goodness sakes, get rid of that damn thing.

 

[kyrax12]

whoa anyone want to compare it with iOS text input?

 

[Zaap]

Threads like this emphasizes my belief that Android just isn't for people that are "stuck on stock."

You can change every aspect of the phone, and load up any keyboard you want. And it's not difficult to do. Why you'd waste two seconds complaining about stock anything is beyond me.

For those that can't seem to figure it out: most stock from the OEM with Android is simply the bare minimum. Samsung and others aren't wasting resources to reinvent the wheel- the basic software is just something give you the barest basics before the lightbulb goes off in your head that there's better software a mere download away.

This is like a thread bitching about notepad in Windows or something.

 

[Spoooon]

iPhone 4S



Stock SMS on ICS, lots of room for my text, don't get to see other texts (in landscape).

I think that's just what you're going to deal with when you have a software keyboard anyway.

 

[iahk]

Hmm, for me, the whole purpose of larger screens were so you didn't have to go to landscape mode to type accurately.

I was fine typing with the 4.3" screen on my EVO in portrait mode.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I remember having that problem on 2.3. I just tried it on ICS and its actually perfectly sized. Then again, I never use landscape for anything but videos and sometimes webpages.

 

[gorcorps]

Hmm, for me, the whole purpose of larger screens were so you didn't have to go to landscape mode to type accurately.

I was fine typing with the 4.3" screen on my EVO in portrait mode.

True story. I don't type in landscape mode at all, but did on the iphone.

 

[soccerballtux]

Hmm, for me, the whole purpose of larger screens were so you didn't have to go to landscape mode to type accurately.

I was fine typing with the 4.3" screen on my EVO in portrait mode.

this is true. I didn't feel like I needed to but one can definitely type faster and so I prefer it for writing longer texts, messaging a friend while watching a movie I just keep in landscape, etc.

 

[soccerballtux]

iPhone 4S



Stock SMS on ICS, lots of room for my text, don't get to see other texts (in landscape).

I think that's just what you're going to deal with when you have a software keyboard anyway.

ok, so if Iphone is that way now I don't feel so bad.

yes, that ICS looks just perfect and is what I would want were this my phone.

 

[soccerballtux]

This is like a thread bitching about notepad in Windows or something.

you know funny you mention that last week actually I found a bug in notepad in xp where if you have written text, saved, and then continue writing text, and then go back and start doing a couple selections, cuts pastes copies etc, and then save again, and then try to do some more selections it bugs way out. Very odd.

 

[bearxor]

True story. I don't type in landscape mode at all, but did on the iphone.

I never type in landscape mode on the iPhone. Why anyone would want to type in landscape mode on a small screen is beyond me. Maybe if I had a Galaxy Nexus I would, with the increased resolution.

 

[MrX8503]

iPhone 4S



Stock SMS on ICS, lots of room for my text, don't get to see other texts (in landscape).

I think that's just what you're going to deal with when you have a software keyboard anyway.

I can see 3 lines of text in the speech bubble on my iPhone in landscape mode. Only one line is viewable on yours because....well you only have one line. You can swipe the keyboard down to hide it if you want to see more of the sms convo.

Both have its pluses and minuses. One thing I want to point out is that on ICS, the recipients previous message isn't viewable while you're typing. Well, that's what I'm interpreting from your image, I haven't used ICS myself.

 

[soccerballtux]

Both have its pluses and minuses. One thing I want to point out is that on ICS, the recipients previous message isn't viewable while you're typing.

at least it's one or the other, compared with the first pic I posted where it's both lol.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Wow thats teribad. It reminds me why I don't have an Android phone. Its little things like this scattered all over the OS that drives my frustration up a wall. The SGSII is a solid device but software is mediocre. If I make a transition to Android, I'll have to research a device for days so that I can avoid these software annoyances.

EDIT: One thing that annoys me with keyboards is the suggestion bar that pops up above the keyboard that tries to predict what you're typing. It takes up screen real estate, for goodness sakes, get rid of that damn thing.

So the software is mediocre because there is a minor issue with the worst of the three keyboards that ship installed on the Galaxy S2? There is no reason to use the Samsung keypad in the first place since you already have Swype and the stock Gingerbread keyboard.

If I remember correctly that suggestion box is actually disabled by default on the Samsung keypad in the first place.

 

[MrX8503]

at least it's one or the other, compared with the first pic I posted where it's both lol.

Yeah at least its just one or the other. Real estate on a phone while typing is important for it to be comfortable to use. On my iPhone I don't use landscape and in portrait mode you can see an entire 160 txt msg and still have room for keyboard and what you're typing.

 

[MrX8503]

So the software is mediocre because there is a minor issue with the worst of the three keyboards that ship installed on the Galaxy S2? There is no reason to use the Samsung keypad in the first place since you already have Swype and the stock Gingerbread keyboard.

I'm not a fan of Swype of either, but the stock keyboard is something I could live with. For the majority of Android's features that are customized by cellphone manufacturers, I'm not a fan of. Usability goes down the drain with all the customizations and skins.

 

[Spoooon]

I can see 3 lines of text in the speech bubble on my iPhone in landscape mode. Only one line is viewable on yours because....well you only have one line. You can swipe the keyboard down to hide it if you want to see more of the sms convo.

Both have its pluses and minuses. One thing I want to point out is that on ICS, the recipients previous message isn't viewable while you're typing. Well, that's what I'm interpreting from your image, I haven't used ICS myself.

Yeah, it hides previous messages. I haven't used a 3rd party SMS app in a long time, so can't remember if handcent or gosms is different (pretty sure they are though).

You could argue the merits of both. Regardless, the OP's screenshot is not the way to go.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I'm not a fan of Swype of either, but the stock keyboard is something I could live with. For the majority of Android's features that are customized by cellphone manufacturers, I'm not a fan of. Usability goes down the drain with all the customizations and skins.

I'd agree for Blur and Sense but I actually like TouchWiz 4.0 quite a bit more than stock Gingerbread. Unfortunately Samsung is the only manufacturer that actually seems interested in using their skin to improve Android.

 

[Zaap]

For me, nothing beats Thumb Keyboard.

Choice rules. Lack of it sucks.