Desk Lamp posted:

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.

quote:

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?

quote:

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.

quote:

Isn't that a little crazy though? "The average consumer isn't complaining because they don't know what it is they should be complaining about (that is if there's anything to complain about because there's no way to measure if there is or isn't) So Samsung would do better to focus on additions that bring a better user experience (thus fixing these issues we have no way of measuring if they exist or not)" What are these objective drawbacks to the user experience that make TW so mediocre? It seems the users aren't the only ones having trouble finding the language and context to express them.

BeastOfExmoor posted:

BeastOfExmoor posted:

Thermopyle posted:

Today is Monday.

Rastor posted:

LOL "iPhone jealousy".

CLAM DOWN posted:

Can there be a day for blackberry chat, because this thing is real: http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/08/29/blackberry-venice-slider-canada/

CLAM DOWN posted:

I have an actual Touchwiz questions. I got an S6 Edge to play around with at work and I want to get rid of these "S Finder" and "Quick Connect" buttons from the notification tray. Is that possible? My guess is not.

Segmentation Fault posted:

You can't really predict much from just one number. The only real important metrics are real-world testing.

bull3964 posted:

Most of them centered around behavior of default message apps (from text messages to email client) as well as contact sync and behavior. Those are all default Samsung apps with options in different places that I have not seen before. I can't remember any specifics because it's been over a year since we had the conversations.


Option paralysis and feature fatigue are real things and it objectively leads to lower user satisfaction. Real user acceptance studies have proven this. That's also one of the reasons why Samsung has dropped and consolidated a lot of features in later versions of Touchwiz. By including the option to have the toggle for SmartStay, that alone gives the user a subtle poke that SmartStay may not be something they want enabled all the time when in reality it's a simple binary decision of whether or not to use it. It's not a setting that requires changing often so there's not much point in having the toggle. It's a minor thing, but a ton of minor things pile up to a underlying friction with the UX.

Regardless of the debate on whether or not the user can put that setting in there, every screenshot suggest that the Smart Stay toggle is a DEFAULT setting in the quick settings. Having smart defaults out of the box is also a very important UX consideration and including something like SmartStay by default is a poor design choice since it's very much a setting that falls into "you shouldn't need to toggle, but if you MUST here it is" category.

Not that stock comes away smelling like roses either, there is fault there to the other extreme. Not having a DnD toggle in the quick settings was one of them (fortunately remedied in Marshmallow.)

As an ultimate example of how they took a "kitchen sink" approach to this stuff, you can put a "Quick Connect" and "S Finder" button on the shade when the shade already has "Quick Connect" and "S Finder" buttons built into it that you can't remove. It's just silly stuff like that. It gives users pause, making them wonder "are there any functional difference between these two options?" Nothing makes the phone unusable or even painful to use, but they are faults. They may not be faults everyone cares about, but they are objectively poor design choices that would be flushed out with proper acceptance testing. However, timelines and margins really don't allow for that sort of thing.

quote:

Of course it will outsell, but growth is slowing and people are seeking out cheaper alternatives. The trend is already there and it's going to increase as people start coming off their two year contracts and explore alternatives.

quote:

There are ways of measuring, Samsung just isn't doing them. Or, rather, don't seem to be doing them. That's not really a specific knock on Samsung as proper user acceptance testing is rarely done now, but it would allow them to really refine their experience if they were to do so.

quote:

Barring that, the best they can do is just not take shortcuts to build their customization and make them work within stock APIs whenever possible. Treat AOSP as a base layer and make as few low level changes as possible and layer the software stack on top of that. Where you do need functionality not afforded to you via stock, do that with a consistent set of APIs that are decoupled from the interactive portions of the software rather than wiring the software directly into the OS. The upshot of that is you could then selectively disable functionality you didn't want to use or bother with and not break the rest of the OS.

Doing an approach like that would make a lot of people view Samsung in a more favorable light and it would help them moving forward by making it easier to manage updates and giving a more lightweight experience.

Thermopyle posted:

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.

Desk Lamp posted:

I think it's safe to say TW does not sell phones, when it comes to weighing software options I'm willing to bet it comes down to iOS vs "Android" for the vast majority of consumers. The amount of sales driven by TW features is about as significant as the amount of Nexus sales driven by "stock Android" i.e. not very. When it comes to the Note line though, the argument could be made that the software does have some influence. On the other hand, if you consider TW to be an integral part of Samsung's branding the case could be made that it sells phones I suppose, but I wouldn't make it.

RVProfootballer posted:

I'd argue that vast majority of people that buy a Nexus do so because it has stock Android, though? That is like the one thing going for each Nexus device. I think you're right that no one buys a Samsung because of Touchwiz, but instead because they wanted a "Galaxy", or it had a removable battery and SD card slot, or because the camera is good. Do you think anyone, including internet phone nerds, would have bought a Nexus 5 if it ran Samsung software?

bull3964 posted:

It's amazing how getting rid of the blue and the circles makes things a ton less objectionable.

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.

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.

ilkhan posted:

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.

CLAM DOWN posted:

Can there be a day for blackberry chat, because this thing is real: http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/08/29/blackberry-venice-slider-canada/

Don Lapre posted:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#es_th=1&q=remove%20sfinder%20button

Hughmoris posted:

Looks like The Verge has their review of the Moto X Play up. For a phone that is supposedly unburdened by bloatware, their talk about stuttering and lag is a little concerning.

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

It's really weird to me that this thread is so openly hostile toward iPhone and its users when the Apple threads really don't seem to discuss Android at all (unless someone has a switching question).

It would really be cool to talk about Android without constantly having random Apple non sequiturs injected into the conversation that worsen your argument.

Syrinxx posted:

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.

starry skies above posted:

It's been reported that Android users earn less income than Apple users, so it's possible that Android users just have an inferiority complex and therefore a chip on their shoulder about Apple users, hence why Apple users don't seem concerned with Android users but the latter tend to be so loudly derisive.

starry skies above posted:

It's been reported that Android users earn less income than Apple users, so it's possible that Android users just have an inferiority complex and therefore a chip on their shoulder about Apple users, hence why Apple users don't seem concerned with Android users but the latter tend to be so loudly derisive.

FistEnergy posted:

I believe this was expected in Android tech circles, since the 615 is an extremely inefficient, aging SoC with a horrible GPU. Either Android Central or Police nailed it as soon as it was announced - saying that the Play had a massive battery because the 615 required one, not because Moto wanted to give it epic battery life.

The 620 will supposedly be a huge jump forward, but until then you want a cheap 410 phone like the G or an 808/801/800 phone. The 615 seems particularly crappy. If the Play is turned into the next Droid phone, then Verizon buyer beware...

TraderStav posted:

Anyway, how's that *rolls dice*.... Hardware keyboard looking?

SouthLAnd posted:

Anyone here have a Moto X with a leather back?

I only ask because I have a 2014 X, which I bought through Moto Maker, and it has the standard soft touch plastic backing. I'm probably going to be ordering the new model as soon as it's for sale and I'm considering getting a leather back. I'm curious as to how others feel about the leather. Do you think it was worth the cost? How well has it held up? And would you order another phone with a leather back?

P.S. My '14 X has been a great phone, probably the best phone I've owned. And since genetics has gifted me with huge basketball player hands, I now find the 5.2in screen just average and am not turned off by larger screened phones in the slightest.

Vykk.Draygo posted:

Mine is leather, and it gets a new scratch every time I look at it. I would much rather have the soft plastic.