So I have tried Android and iOS now.

[MrX8503]

One point that I never see Android users bring up but I think is its greatest strength is cloud integration. My original Evo was way, way better integrated than my current iPhone. IMO, if I do switch back to Android it's not going to be for stupid things like settings toggles or customizations (which are generally horrible looking) but for Google's great cloud integration. And screen size.

iCloud is pretty sweet. It can basically mirror your iPhone/iPad when its plugged in, which is basically when you're in bed. All of it is pretty much transparent and you don't have to do anything. It also saves your app organization/folders.

 

[TuxDave]

I'm not a massive Facebook user and when I do I use Tinfoil but what can you do with the iOS version that you cant with the Android one?

Can you scroll down your news feed, find a post with a picture album, start panning through all the pictures on the same page? (Without basically opening the album first to load the pictures before browsing?)

Advantages is that you can go through your newsfeed faster with less page switching and if you were panning through photos and saw a post just below it, you can scroll down to read it, and scroll back up and keep panning.

I don't know if android does this but I thought it was one of the nicer features. The hidden panes on the left and right is a nice UI method as well. Right pane is Facebook chat and left pane are groups and everything else Facebook related



I found this and there seems to be serious stability issues in the reviews.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.katana

 

[jpeyton]

It's ok. I know Facebook wasn't launched when you were the target audience. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a good app.

I'm in my late 20s and I've had a Facebook account for 8 years now. The site has slowly evolved from a tool that supported social interaction to a crutch for people looking to avoid it. I haven't deleted my account (yet), but I haven't logged in at all for 4 months and I don't miss the emo status updates, game requests or baby pictures. Nor have I felt the need to post useless shit looking for validation from people I rarely see IRL just so my "timeline" has some activity on it.

I had a discussion with my friends and if Facebook turned into a premium service, say $4/month, a good number of them would pay for it, and can see their friends paying for it even if they wouldn't do it themselves. Clearly it's a relevant force with a certain demographics.

Yikes. I don't know who your friends are, but I don't know anyone besides a few teeny-bopper relatives who might actually pay for Facebook access. Facebook could kiss 90-95% of their users goodbye if they put up a paywall, and those users would migrate elsewhere. But I already see people wanting to migrate elsewhere right now, as Facebook is slowly turning into what MySpace was when its popularity declined.

 

[kyrax12]

I'm curious which Android phone you tried. Many of the vendors, particularly Samsung, had the notification settings long before anyone else did.

If you're on a Nexus then Cyanogenmod has one of the better (IMO) implementations of the settings as well.

Samsung Galaxy s2 and now I am on the iphone 5.

I am talking about those notifications where it pops up in the lock screen.

 

[kyrax12]

Facebook itself is dogfood, so I'm not surprised the app is either.

I find facebook to be one of the most useful sites to me.

 

[WelshBloke]

Can you scroll down your news feed, find a post with a picture album, start panning through all the pictures on the same page?...

Can I? No, as I said I use tinfoil but I remember the left and right panel thing from when I did use the official app.

 

[TuxDave]

Can I? No, as I said I use tinfoil but I remember the left and right panel thing from when I did use the official app.

I was implying you would download the official Facebook app to try it out so you can compare and contrast if you were really curious about the difference. But you don't have to.

 

[WelshBloke]

please if anyone has one they an't useing send it to me for something.

To be honest I'm not sure if I know my Facebook password...

Also that would let Facebook past my tinfoil barrier and into my sweet, sweet data.

Edit: err, not sure what happened with that quote. Was in reply to Tux

 

[Anubis]

Samsung Galaxy s2 and now I am on the iphone 5.

I am talking about those notifications where it pops up in the lock screen.

you can swipe down on the lock screen and see all notifications on android,
also specific aps will do the popup if you want them to. personally i hate it and turn it off

 

[Anubis]

Can you scroll down your news feed, find a post with a picture album, start panning through all the pictures on the same page? (Without basically opening the album first to load the pictures before browsing?)

no

Advantages is that you can go through your newsfeed faster with less page switching and if you were panning through photos and saw a post just below it, you can scroll down to read it, and scroll back up and keep panning.

I don't know if android does this but I thought it was one of the nicer features. The hidden panes on the left and right is a nice UI method as well. Right pane is Facebook chat and left pane are groups and everything else Facebook related

panes are the same i believe, right is chat (never used) and left has the menu for everything else (groups/events/...)

 

[Eug]

I have never had a Facebook account, ever. It pisses me off when I see ads for promotions only accessible on Facebook, but fortunately, those are pretty uncommon.

In fact, GM tried advertising on Facebook, and then pulled its account, because the effectiveness of Facebook advertising for selling cars was extremely low.

It also annoys me to see the pollution of iOS with Facebook integration, but I can understand why they did it.

iCloud is pretty sweet. It can basically mirror your iPhone/iPad when its plugged in, which is basically when you're in bed. All of it is pretty much transparent and you don't have to do anything. It also saves your app organization/folders.

One of my prequisites to switching my phone to Android is iCloud syncing. Fortunately, that does exist. That's also why I didn't consider Windows Phone 8. AFAIK, no iCloud syncing.

 

[Anubis]

same way i feel about "following us on twitter"

yea thats not gonna happen

 

[Eug]

I don't have a twitter account either.

Yeah, so companies: following you on twitter ain't gonna happen. Just post it on your damn webpage.

 

[jpeyton]

In other news, Australian police are concerned that Apple Maps has been stranding people in the middle of a national park: http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/mor...oncerned-with-apple-ios-6-mapping-system.html

 

[Capt Caveman]

Currently in the process of tranferring from an iPhone to Nexus 4. Both have their pluses and minuses.

Being a fanboy for either side is beyond lame.

 

[lopri]

I agree that iOS interface is getting annoying as the time goes by. iOS'es bottom line is it's built for full-screen apps, so it's unfriendly to multitasking compared to Android. As you acquire more apps, it becomes tedious to find what you need. I try what I can to organize the icons for easier access, but I still find myself flipping back and forth looking for an app that I need at a given moment.

Android has the same issue to an extent, but there are more room for customization, plus there is also an iOS-like section that lists every app installed in a system as a fallback (in alphabetical order, which helps). I also like the easier access to "recent" apps. On iOS, to go back to the previous apps I have to flip the screen back and forth yet again. Context menu (i.e. "Open with..," "Send to," "Download using," etc,.) is also something that I cannot live without now that I have some experience on Android.

The best thing about Android, though, is that I can simply hook it up to a PC and drag and drop into wherever I want to, without the need of bloated/unnecessary middle-man apps. No nonsense "sync," "import," or "verify." just WYSIWYG.

 

[Eug]

I find the lack of a middle-man app for Android quite irritating actually.

No desktop/laptop based device updater, and backups are third party and inconsistent.

BTW, it's insanely stupid you can't easily set up the Nexus 7 without an active WiFi connection.

 

[XenIneX]

I agree that iOS interface is getting annoying as the time goes by. iOS'es bottom line is it's built for full-screen apps, so it's unfriendly to multitasking compared to Android. As you acquire more apps, it becomes tedious to find what you need. I try what I can to organize the icons for easier access, but I still find myself flipping back and forth looking for an app that I need at a given moment.

Folders. Learn them; live them; love them.

I've got all my iPad's apps on one screen. According to my Settings:About page, that's 261 apps -- all no more than two taps away. (Yes, I could get rid of 2/3 of them and never notice the difference; I'm lazy.)

In theory, you could fit up to 400 apps per screen on an iPad; or (I think...) 256 on an iPhone 5 or 144 on an earlier iPhone.

 

[lopri]

I use folders already. Thank you.

 

[Red Storm]

Folders. Learn them; live them; love them.

I've got all my iPad's apps on one screen. According to my Settings:About page, that's 261 apps -- all no more than two taps away. (Yes, I could get rid of 2/3 of them and never notice the difference; I'm lazy.)

In theory, you could fit up to 400 apps per screen on an iPad; or (I think...) 256 on an iPhone 5 or 144 on an earlier iPhone.

Gridception is one of the big reasons why I left iOS for Android. Along with other basic, essential features.

 

[bearxor]

I just can't imagine that people use more than a dozen apps on a regular basis. Am I the only one that just puts the main things I use on a page so you just always know where they are?

This is why I'm not really happy with iOS or Android. Sure, Android stuffs everything in to an "app drawer" but I'm still going to make shortcuts on the desktop for stuff I use. So if I have 30 icons on my desktop (which is the count I have on my RAZR HD right now) then I don't really see any advantage of the Android way.

I'm just a bored of an icon grid as everybody is. But I don't see a magical solution in any alternative platform. There needs to be a complete rethink about this. iOS was a great idea because the interface type was so new what they did made the most sense. Android took a more traditional desktop approach, with essentially a "program menu" with desktop widgets. WP tried a slightly different approach, but I'm still going to be pinning little icons to a screen and scrolling through them and then using a program menu to find less used stuff.

 

[jpeyton]

All I see is a large amount of wasted screen space.

A tablet, moreso than a smartphone, is just begging for home screen customization to make better use of all that resolution. And no, folders in a grid doesn't count as customization.

 

[Capt Caveman]

All I see is a large amount of wasted screen space.

A tablet, moreso than a smartphone, is just begging for home screen customization to make better use of all that resolution. And no, folders in a grid doesn't count as customization.

And too bad, Android has crap for tablet customized apps. I'm a Nexus 10 owner.

 

[Anubis]

I just can't imagine that people use more than a dozen apps on a regular basis. Am I the only one that just puts the main things I use on a page so you just always know where they are?

.

no its what i also do and to not make it a jumbled mess of icons i use 5 home screens to organize certian things in certian places

 

[notposting]

In other news, Australian police are concerned that Apple Maps has been stranding people in the middle of a national park: http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/mor...oncerned-with-apple-ios-6-mapping-system.html

Had a sister in law visit last weekend with her husband, they were getting ready to check out some houses for rent, she pulls out her iPhone to look up directions and immediately started grousing because he had let it update to iOS 6 and the maps had sucked ever since I laughed.

As for the rest of the thread...everyone could solve their problems and use WP