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bull3964 posted:'Doesn't bother me much' isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. That's pretty much my point. I'm not trying to say Touchwiz is BETTER than stock or anything, just that when it comes down to it it doesn't really matter that much. It's a bit unreasonable to dismiss an entire company's line of phones because "samsung bloatware" when the vast majority of people will not notice or care. Samsung's real sin, in my opinion, is removing SD cards and replaceable batteries from their phones. Recently here in Seattle we had a really bad power outage and we were in the dark for a good 24 hours. My Moto G, which I used as a flashlight (and also a way to stay sane) was sitting at about 5% (and I was mildly anxious about it) when the lights came back on. Sure would've been nice to have a spare battery sitting around like I did for my Note 4. Oh well. Doesn't happen that often and the next phone I get will definitely have that option, after this experience. There's gotta be SOMEONE who still makes phones with swappable batteries in 2017.  literally what This isn't the Apple thread, go there. That sure is a lot of words being put in my mouth when all I really said was "iPhones are also expensive". Christ.
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Aug 31, 2015 16:45
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Daily Forecast posted:That's pretty much my point. I'm not trying to say Touchwiz is BETTER than stock or anything, just that when it comes down to it it doesn't really matter that much. It's a bit unreasonable to dismiss an entire company's line of phones because "samsung bloatware" when the vast majority of people will not notice or care. Samsung's real sin, in my opinion, is removing SD cards and replaceable batteries from their phones. Recently here in Seattle we had a really bad power outage and we were in the dark for a good 24 hours. My Moto G, which I used as a flashlight (and also a way to stay sane) was sitting at about 5% (and I was mildly anxious about it) when the lights came back on. Sure would've been nice to have a spare battery sitting around like I did for my Note 4. I like that you can't see how the bull's point about how poor UX degrades people's perception in small ways they can't articulate but have a cumulative effect on the user's attitude toward the product and my point about how a company who cares about the experience of its users is beloved by those users are related. Can you really not tell that the two things are sides of the same coin?
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Aug 31, 2015 17:00
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Daily Forecast posted:That's pretty much my point. I'm not trying to say Touchwiz is BETTER than stock or anything, just that when it comes down to it it doesn't really matter that much. It's a bit unreasonable to dismiss an entire company's line of phones because "samsung bloatware" when the vast majority of people will not notice or care. It's also a bit unreasonable to put up with those minor annoyances when there are products on the market now that don't require to to compromise so much or make the compromise more palatable due to cost difference. That's a big thing that Samsung is running into now and part of the reason why they are losing momentum. It's the flipside of the coin. Samsung always used hardware as their strength to drive sales in spite of the software, now people are valuing the software experience more and realizing hardware is largely "good enough", not requiring the highest of high end specs. Daily Forecast posted:My Moto G, which I used as a flashlight (and also a way to stay sane) was sitting at about 5% (and I was mildly anxious about it) when the lights came back on. Sure would've been nice to have a spare battery sitting around like I did for my Note 4. At the risk of launching another battery debate... An edge case like that is better served by an external battery pack (even if you did have a removable battery.) I have a 12000 mAh pack always charged at home and a large external battery pack should be part of everyone's emergency preparedness kit in general. Even better is a lead acid jump start pack with either USB ports or a 12v port that you can put a car charger into. You could charge your phone for weeks on something like that in an emergency. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 17:02
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bull3964 posted:At the risk of launching another battery debate... Or even better those sealed LED flashlights that cost like a dollar and last forever.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:04
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LastInLine posted:I like that you can't see how the bull's point about how poor UX degrades people's perception in small ways they can't articulate but have a cumulative effect on the user's attitude toward the product and my point about how a company who cares about the experience of its users is beloved by those users are related. I guess people have different opinions on things, I know that's hard to accept. 'Poor user experience' could not be MORE subjective. bull3964 posted:At the risk of launching another battery debate... That is legit a good idea and I hadn't thought about it. I'll look into it, thanks. vv christ, thank you.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:05
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LastInLine posted:Apple fans are willing to pay for an experience they value at the retail end, in device use, and in post-sale support. Are you so angrily dismissive of their enjoyment of their product experience due to jealousy of the process, the buyers' ability to not have to prioritize price, or because you're aware that an equivalent experience does not exist for buyers of any other brand? Are you actually defending camping overnight to buy a loving consumer product. The fact it's apple is irrelevant.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:05
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CLAM DOWN posted:Are you actually defending camping overnight to buy a loving consumer product. The fact it's apple is irrelevant. The fact that it's being done at all must say something about their products. This can't be a difficult concept to grasp but I guess it needs to be spelled out: If people are willing to do this then it's because they really, really like the product and the experience of buying, using, and owning the product. People do not do this for other products in the same market niche, for example. How is this a bad thing for either party? The company making, selling, and servicing the product is making money which is ostensibly the reason why a company exists and the people buying their product are enjoying having done so. Please explain to me why this is a bad thing and should be ridiculed. Or is this the old myth that it's because these people are mindless drones who put no thought into what they buy and use at all and has absolutely nothing to say about the relationship the customers feel to the company selling them a product?
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Aug 31, 2015 17:19
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Oh sweet look at all these new Android thread posts, must be some great or terrible Moto X news or something
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Aug 31, 2015 17:22
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Reminder that the US government calls iPhone users 'zombies'. Yeah, it's a loving awful thing. This is the Android thread, so we should stop talking about iPhones, but it's not just specifically them. Camping out for any product is terrible.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:24
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CLAM DOWN posted:Are you actually defending camping overnight to buy a loving consumer product. The fact it's apple is irrelevant. On one hand I agree, on the other hand I really don't care what people of different fandoms do if it makes them happy and doesn't hurt anyone else. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't all that far removed from the refresh-fest that is Nexus release time with people writing custom checker scripts and everyone freaking out when stuff goes in and out of stock.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:26
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FistEnergy posted:Oh sweet look at all these new Android thread posts, must be some great or terrible Moto X news or something 
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Aug 31, 2015 17:26
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LastInLine posted:The fact that it's being done at all must say something about their products. This can't be a difficult concept to grasp but I guess it needs to be spelled out: Do you actually not see a problem with camping out overnight or standing in line for loving hours to buy a retail product. jesus
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Aug 31, 2015 17:26
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CLAM DOWN posted:Do you actually not see a problem with camping out overnight or standing in line for loving hours to buy a retail product. I mean I think it's weird when people camp out for commercial poo poo (video games, sneakers, iPhones, etc.) but really who cares. Society's got bigger problems, but by all means choose camping out for iPhones to get mad about.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:32
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bull3964 posted:In the grand scheme of things, it isn't all that far removed from the refresh-fest that is Nexus release time with people writing custom checker scripts and everyone freaking out when stuff goes in and out of stock.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:33
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:How about that OPO launch? Well, I think we can all agree that OPO deserves to be ridiculed no matter what they do. I mean, a line has to be drawn somewhere.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:36
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CLAM DOWN posted:Do you actually not see a problem with camping out overnight or standing in line for loving hours to buy a retail product. I wouldn't do it, but I certainly don't see a problem with it. In fact I'd say I see more of a problem with an entity valued in the millions or billions of dollars continuing year after year to manufacture, distribute, sell, and support a product line just to lose money on every sale. One of these behaviors is completely irrational whereas the other is just someone who has time on their hands doing something they enjoy. One of the behaviors actively makes the world worse though pollution and industrial waste whereas the the other harms no one. I asked you to explain why it's a bad thing and you didn't so I'll just assume you can't (which is certainly the case, because it's not and you're wrong).
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Aug 31, 2015 17:36
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Daily Forecast posted:"Most people don't care about touchwiz" is pretty much inevitable fact, so I'm not sure what you're trying to even say here. Daily Forecast posted:Here's the thing: stock Android is loving garbage for the vast majority of smartphone users Daily Forecast posted:Something bubbly and friendly like Touchwiz is perfect for non power users (who are such a vanishingly small market that they're irrelevant) Daily Forecast posted:and Samsung knows this. Daily Forecast posted:I mean, what, did you think that literally one of out every two Android phones ever sold is a Samsung because they are a bad company with terrible phones? Samsung being the biggest android phone seller is not incongruent with the position that TW is not good. So, anyway I go on to read more posts in the thread... Daily Forecast posted:That's pretty much my point. I'm not trying to say Touchwiz is BETTER than stock or anything, just that when it comes down to it it doesn't really matter that much. Daily Forecast posted:Here's the thing: stock Android is loving garbage for the vast majority of smartphone users CLAM DOWN posted:Do you actually not see a problem with camping out overnight or standing in line for loving hours to buy a retail product. He could think it's stupid, but that's irrelevant to the point he's making. He's saying Apple is making a product that people like so much they will do those things, and companies should be encouraged to make products as good as possible.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:36
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Thermopyle posted:Hmm, what did Daily Forecast just say up thread? (BTW, I agree that TW doesn't matter that much to most people.) Maybe a bad wording, I'm not saying that stock android itself is garbage, because I prefer and use it myself. I guess my point was that there's relatively nobody with a Samsung phone saying "oh, if only this phone had stock android! then surely my life would be improved!" I guess what I meant is that it's a garbage argument or debating point. The fact is, the market that matters doesn't give a poo poo and would see literally zero benefit from moving to stock. And Touchwiz could be/very well is better for the average (read: non-enthusiast somethingawful shitposter) smartphone user because the options are more colorful/obvious. I like using Stock, but the settings menu in Touchwiz is just as good if not better (categorized, icon-based) and people who rail about how the settings menu is a 'clusterfuck' (it's really, really not) are just jumping on the anti-Samsung bandwagon because I guess they have to be obstinate hispters who hate popular things. Samsung phones are fine, Touchwiz is fine. The company needs to change its business model in response to industry trends, but hell, maybe they don't need to seeing as literally every single phone I see people using at work is either a Note 4, an S6, or and iPhone. People ask me what phone my Moto G is all the time and when I tell them it's a Motorola I get asked "uh, motorola??? who dat" Daily Forecast fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 17:45
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Maybe he's an adult and doesn't really worry about how people choose to spend their time as long as it doesn't negatively affect other people. I think the rampant consumerism in society is a valid concern but yeah, there are bigger problems. And it's outside the scope of this thread, sorry.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:58
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Daily Forecast posted:Maybe a bad wording, I'm not saying that stock android itself is garbage, because I prefer and use it myself. I guess my point was that there's relatively nobody with a Samsung phone saying "oh, if only this phone had stock android! then surely my life would be improved!" Yes, but what bull was trying to illustrate (and I thought, did so well) was that the average user isn't complaining because they're happy with the product as it is, they aren't complaining because they don't have the language and context necessary to express their unhappiness with the user experience. And if that is the case (which there's no way to measure if it is or isn't) then perhaps Samsung would do better to do few changes for changes' sake and options for options' sake and focus on additions that bring a more cohesive and enjoyable overall user experience? I'm certain it was Desk Lamp a few months ago who made a good point regarding Samsung being the only Android OEM who has any hope at all of generating true enthusiasm from a fanbase and he was exactly right. He was also right that the way to do this is through differentiation in the software. I will say it right now: Samsung should not use "stock" or "vanilla" Android. I totally agree with that. I feel like the disconnect here is that you feel that the number of users of TouchWiz is enough evidence to say that there are enthusiastic fans and the people disagreeing with you are saying that those people are not actually fans. Those who disagree are saying that TouchWiz is not providing an overall experience that anyone is enthusiastic about, regardless of the sales numbers, and it seems to the ones who disagree with you that you are saying that it does not need to be improved because it is selling enough as-is (which it isn't).
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Aug 31, 2015 18:02
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The Theme store is a good step in the right direction. People should be free to make their phones as ugly as possible without resorting to root. Customized list on the notification shade is also a good step, but it should be taken to it's logical conclusion and allow you to remove elements as well if you want a fully minimalist experience. I just want to see notifications on my notification shade, not settings (unless I pull down twice or do two finger.) You can use the google now launcher which helps, though I would argue having 'stock' behavior for the lock screen should also be a toggle in settings somewhere. Above all, anything that can be an app should be an app and only use standard APIs. This is what moto does so well and one of the reasons why they can update their phones so fast.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:17
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LastInLine posted:Samsung would do better to do few changes for changes' sake and options for options' sake and focus on additions that bring a more cohesive and enjoyable overall user experience? Gonna wish for a unicorn while you're at it? Samsung has zero motivation to change something that clearly works and sells phones. Even so, isn't the S6's touchwiz far and away better than any before it? I dunno, I haven't used it. It's the same reason new phones, Android or iOS, are literally the exact same year to year except a better camera and a bigger screen. And didn't Samsung start this whole phablet trend? So they're even innovating more than most.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:21
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Daily Forecast posted:Gonna wish for a unicorn while you're at it? Samsung has zero motivation to change something that clearly works and sells phones.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:27
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It seems like Samsung (and Apple/LG) are about to have a bit of a rude awakening now that 3/4 of the US carriers have stopped subsidizing phones. $600-800+ is a bitter pill to swallow for most people, even if it's done in a payment plan, because there are so many solid performers in the midrange Android market right now. When that $30/month drops off the monthly bill and the phone is theirs, people are going to be significantly less likely to jump straight to the next big thing. Except apple fans I guess because they are inexplicably retarded about mindlessly buying apple things. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 31, 2015 18:33
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Daily Forecast posted:Gonna wish for a unicorn while you're at it? Samsung has zero motivation to change something that clearly works and sells phones. Even so, isn't the S6's touchwiz far and away better than any before it? I dunno, I haven't used it. Your opinion seems to be that TW sells phones. Does it? No one here knows, but sales numbers do not mean that TW sells phones. There's a huge variety of dimensions that people judge their potential phone purchase on. TW just has to be not bad enough to outweigh all the other factors. People might be buying Samsung phones specifically because they have TW. Or people could just tolerate TW because they don't know what else is possible.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:34
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Zom Aur posted:When it comes to samsungs, at least back in the s2 days, it used a PIT instead of a "regular" partition table. The way you repartitioned the s2 was by uploading a new PIT-file. Heh, I just repartitioned my Note last week with a PIT file. I did not know about the hazards, not that the phone is worth anything these days. 6GB for apps is a godsend, since with stock 2GB you basically couldn't even update your apps.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:40
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bull3964 posted:Well, I think we can all agree that OPO deserves to be ridiculed no matter what they do. I mean, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Can we all just get along and agree on something like this?
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Aug 31, 2015 18:41
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Maybe he's an adult and doesn't really worry about how people choose to spend their time as long as it doesn't negatively affect other people. lol I'll use this next time someone makes fun of wasting hours flashing roms to make a Samsung usable
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Aug 31, 2015 18:45
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RVProfootballer posted:lol I'll use this next time someone makes fun of wasting hours flashing roms to make a Sarnsung usable That doesn't happen because they're wasting their own time, hth
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Aug 31, 2015 18:50
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Syrinxx posted:Except apple fans I guess because they are inexplicably retarded about mindlessly buying apple things. It would really be cool to talk about Android without constantly having random Apple non sequiturs injected into the conversation that worsen your argument. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 18:59
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Ihmemies posted:Heh, I just repartitioned my Note last week with a PIT file. I did not know about the hazards, not that the phone is worth anything these days. 6GB for apps is a godsend, since with stock 2GB you basically couldn't even update your apps. Thankfully, this won't be a problem on more current devices. Anything that didn't originally have a version before ICS won't have a separate data/app partition.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:02
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Zom Aur posted:Yeah, I was in the same boat, but I got a new phone instead and gave the s2 to a friend. I'd buy a S6 Active since I assume it would be at least as durable as my plastic Note, but Samsung doesn't sell it yet in Europe. quote:Thankfully, this won't be a problem on more current devices. Anything that didn't originally have a version before ICS won't have a separate data/app partition. It would be interesting to hear more about this design decision. I've always formatted my drives to one partition, so why they thought several partitions in a phone with very limited capacity might be a good idea?
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Aug 31, 2015 19:10
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I use a 5C for work and it's pretty great at that. Thanks for listening, thread.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:16
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Ihmemies posted:It would be interesting to hear more about this design decision. I've always formatted my drives to one partition, so why they thought several partitions in a phone with very limited capacity might be a good idea? A separate partition just for the internal storage might be good for when you plug it into a PC. You'd just see your regular files and not app-data. Of course, moving apps to the SD-card or the storage partition was popular in the gingerbread days anyways, so there's probably some hidden .android folder there already either way. Now most phones don't even do the USB-storage thing, it usually goes as an MTP-device instead. I'm just guessing though. I haven't actually looked into this.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:22
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bull3964 posted:One of my friends had their work change from iPhones to Galaxy S4S. She's a UX designer by trade. She often came to me with 'android' questions since I've used it forever. I lost track of how many times I had to say things like "Huh, I haven't seen that before" or "I'm not sure because that's not the way stock android works." What things had you not seen before? What kind of issues could you not resolve because they were different to stock? This kind of thing could be a very valid point if you could bring up something more specific and less vague. I'm trying to figure out just what you can do so simply on Moto's UI that you can't do on TW. bull3964 posted:For example, my Turbo also has the ability to sense whether or not you are looking at the screen. There was a single prompt asking me when I first setup if I wanted to use Attentive display and there are two toggle settings under Display in the main settings to leave the display on if there's face detection and time the display out quicker if it doesn't see a face. There isn't some quick setting toggle for it or some widget or anything like that. I actually had to just now look to see what the setting was called in the settings because I set it once and forgot about it because it just works. There's zero practical reason to need a toggle for this or a persistent notification telling me it's on and working. That's precisely how it works in TW as well, you just turn the setting on and forget about it, I don't see the point in toggling SmartStay on and off either. However IF you want to have the toggle on your notification bar for whatever reason, then you can put it there like Klowns does, we don't get to decide that that is using the phone wrong if that is what they enjoy. How does that degrade the user experience in any way? Your notifications are all still there easily distinguishable and accessible, you can still access the expanded notification shade with a two finger swipe. Now I do agree that it should also allow you to decide whether you want to have any toggles up there at all, but the argument that the toggles simply being there is a detriment I cannot agree with, especially when actual users of these phones are chiming in to say that they like them. bull3964 posted:However, on top of everything else right now, Samsung phones are hard to recommend anymore because they simply cost too drat much. The era of the $600-$800 smartphone is dead and Samsung seems pathologically unable to make a decent, well supported, mid to low end device. The sooner they address this, the better. I can see what you're saying with this, and Motorola is definitely introducing a new paradigm with the new G. But to say that the age of premium smartphones is already over is a little premature given the fact that the Galaxy flagships remain the only successful line of Android smartphones. Motorola, despite their awesome phones, have yet to turn a profit and it's almost safe to assume the Galaxy S6 will outsell the Moto G by a considerable margin. bull3964 posted:Don't mistake "difficult" for "not enjoyable to use." It's not a difficult thing to be bombarded by quick notification toggles, but it does get annoying that your priority notifications are halfway down the screen because so much space is taken up by settings you weren't in there to access in the first place. To be fair, when most people respond "doesn't bother me much" it's usually in response to vague statements that their UI is somehow bad. You could ask an average smartphone user how they tolerate their "lovely stock Android UI" and they'd probably give you the same answer since most people don't rave about their phone's UI or even care, since the smartphone experience is mostly derived from apps. LastInLine posted:is this the old myth that it's because these people are mindless drones who put no thought into what they buy and use at all and has absolutely nothing to say about the relationship the customers feel to the company selling them a product? LastInLine posted:Yes, but what bull was trying to illustrate (and I thought, did so well) was that the average user isn't complaining because they're happy with the product as it is, they aren't complaining because they don't have the language and context necessary to express their unhappiness with the user experience. And if that is the case (which there's no way to measure if it is or isn't) then perhaps Samsung would do better to do few changes for changes' sake and options for options' sake and focus on additions that bring a more cohesive and enjoyable overall user experience? The fact remains, the Galaxy line is the most successful line of Android phones, the only smartphones that have ever challenged the iPhone. Marketing 101 begins with the product and you simply cannot successfully challenge the iPhone with a subpar product. Why claim the iPhone's sales numbers are evidence of its quality while simultaneously claiming the Galaxy's numbers are not?
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Aug 31, 2015 19:34
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I don't care so much about Touchwiz, just the bad software engineering from Samsung's OEM Android builds. The hacks they do for their own convenience that cause memory leaks, for example. Or (incorrectly) embedding Android support library code into the image, so that it breaks any application code that bundles it because the classloader finds the built-in one first. Or the litany of other Samsung-only bugs and issues you run into if you work on an Android app with any sufficient reach. If you want to see what kind of horror Samsung is, consider that the UI toolkit for Tizen, the OS they'd build from scratch themselves, is based upon Enlightenment. Remember Enlightenment, that perpetually-unfinished X11 window manager that got semi popular in the late 90s/early 00s because you could skin the everliving crap out of it? Yeah, that same one.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:56
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Grr. Latest supposed specs on the 2015 N5 say 2700mah battery. Was hoping for a bigger number. :/ Won't stop me from buying one based on just that spec, though. Still 10% bigger than the original.
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Aug 31, 2015 20:08
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ilkhan posted:Grr. You can't really predict much from just one number. The only real important metrics are real-world testing.
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Aug 31, 2015 20:24
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kitten smoothie posted:I don't care so much about Touchwiz, just the bad software engineering from Samsung's OEM Android builds. The hacks they do for their own convenience that cause memory leaks, for example. Or (incorrectly) embedding Android support library code into the image, so that it breaks any application code that bundles it because the classloader finds the built-in one first. Or the litany of other Samsung-only bugs and issues you run into if you work on an Android app with any sufficient reach. To be honest this is my 95% of my beef (if you could call it a "beef") with TW. From an engineering and design standpoint its just not great. I mean, it functions fine and has good features, but as an engineer and a (mediocre) UI designer its just offensive to my sense of aesthetics that it exists. Of course, I still recommend people to look at an S6 when they ask me what phone to get, because it's not bad enough to make normal people hate it, and why the gently caress would I care what they buy as long as it works ok? I also don't go around complaining about it to other people because why would they care?
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Aug 31, 2015 20:27
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touch wiz
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Aug 31, 2015 20:31
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