Hilarious, but also true...!
A few days ago, I made the return, too (from an S9+).
A few days ago, I made the return, too (from an S9+).
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I Switched To Android And I Have No Regrets
- Thread starter Dj64Mk7
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For every Iphone to Android convert there's probably good number of Android to Iphone converts as well. My 1st smartphone was hand me down 1st gen Iphone. SInce it was new smartphone I was enamored with it. Then I switched over to Android as they seemed to be innovating better phones. And Android did allow for more customizing. And the early days seemed to have more apps/games I preferred. And for 10 yrs I stuck with Android. And for the most part those phones over that time were cool when shiny and new. But over the period of a year I have them they start to completely lose their luster and the little issues start bugging. Like battery life going way down after 7-12 months of use. Like my most recent S9 the battery life was not lasting me a whole day anymore. My brother wanting to get back to Android had an Iphone X so offered to sell me cheap and a trade for my S9. The Iphone X for me so far has been an awesome experience and I don't miss Android at all. The battery life on the Iphone X for me has been the best I've ever seen. Nearly same level of use I did on my S9 and the Iphone X I'm still left with 50% battery by the end of the day vs my S9 had uncomfortable 30% before I wanted to throw it on the charger before the commute home.
Yeah it's amazing that iOS widgets have surpassed Android widgets. At this same time 3 or 4 years ago I was most likely ranting against iOS mainly because of widgets. It's a shame Google abandons stuff so much, from what I understand developing Android widgets is difficult and they break easily, which is why more and more devs are choosing just not to make them. Honestly what widgets are good these days other than weather widgets, and even then. Even Google sucks at them, the google voice widget got dumbed down, you can't scroll inside it anymore and half of it is taken up by the huge titlebar, number verification and do not disturb blocks, although of course there isn't even a widget for iOS but in either case I'm just going to open the app anyway.
iOS widgets seem much more elegant, refined and not eyesores. I wish I could get a single vertically scrolling page of widgets on Android, but due to the haphazard way they fit onto home pages and the lack of being able to stretch them out all the way to the edges of the screen, means I have to have 3 or 4 home pages just for widgets.
PS: How do you like the 6T? I almost grabbed one, it seems like a phenomenal phone, especially for the price. Almost instant OS updates as well. If it wasn't for the Pixel camera I would have picked up a 6T instead.
what??
until i can place them on my homescreen on iphone/ipad and customize the screen/widges, i havent found any useful usage for them. i rather open and use the app on iphone than playing with cumbersome ”widgets” which are more or less just limited info boxes.
I think there's a compromise here: Neither company is all that interested in widgets.
You mean those blocks of text inside a bordered background that you have to pull from the side? That's what you call widgets?
These are widgets
And this is why you let professional designers make a clean UI/UX that works best for the majority of people.
That looks like complete **** fam.
The time is shown in 3 different locations. The battery level with percentage is shown in two different locations. The day and date are shown in 3 different locations. Completely redundant. The one showing the date and day on an icon is a good idea, which is why the default calendar app icon on iOS shows that information. It’s quick to glance at it and see that information.
Are you using those quick toggles so frequently you need them ******** up your home screen real estate? They could easily just be a swipe away in control center or the pull down shade in android. And again, is that two different buttons to launch the same voice search? Oh, and is that a brightness toggle? What is this, 2010? I rarely ever have to manually adjust my brightness on my iPhone. The adaptive brightness is that good. I know androids is still crap because I was just using a 6T and it was wigging out all the time.
I also don’t need to see what the weather is every second. It’s reasonable to say most people check the weather once maybe twice a day, so they can launch the weather app or, like iOS does, swipe over to the widget screen and quickly see a forecast. iOS takes that disaster of widgets you have and cleans them up and makes them uniform and neatly located together a convenient swipe away.
Neither companies? Widgets are made my devs who made an app or just a widget. There are e.g. Zooper widgets which let you build your own widgets. Many apps has their own, customizable widgets which can be placed on your homescreen.
Apple has no interest to widgets and doesnt let people to customize anything.
On an android phone my whole homescreen had been built by Zooper - and i used Nova launcher - all the info where there, from the next event to events listed chronologically, calender(s), week numbers, etc - what ever i needed to see at once rather than pulling, scrolling, launching, using a switcher...
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I think the point was that you can do what you want.
Dont want a weather widget? Don't have one.
You have the choice.
Maybe you do want redundant items, maybe you want quick toggles that allow you to toggle quickly instead of diving into the settings menu, to change items that should be able to be changed within the app.
Having the option to do things is better than not having the option.
Enjoy having yours dictated to you.
Google doesn’t, either. You had to customize the heck out of your device to get widgets. Widgets on stock android are languishing
Apple obviously believes a fast app launch experience is better than a widget.
This post illustrates the point. Well, except for the Android bashing.
Also, I do miss the Android clock with weather showing.
Atleast I can choose if I want the "mess" or not.
that us the point of customizing and using widgets - you can do it as much as you want, or dont need to do anything if you dont want. so if you dont want to customize it at all, you dont need to do anything.
there is no need for google to do widgets, devs do them.
Sorry, IMO those widgets border on useless. Great I can see widgets that show... gasp … icons! I can tell the time, the weather, great. More useful Android widgets IMO are ones like email/text where you can scroll through your messages, an ip camera widget with a live feed, etc. I'm not saying there aren't useful widgets, but they are few and far between and most of them look like crap. At least with iOS they are all nice and ordered and in one place, and in many cases just as functional.
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And those are widgets that actually don't look half bad! Most of the widgets I've used on Android are just atrocious looking, huge huge titlebars, lacking basic functionality like scrolling, font sizes too large or too small, the widget itself only fits a certain way on the home screen wasting a lot of home screen space, etc. Don't even get me started on the design language, or lack of it, they all have different titlebars, schemes, UI, fonts, colors, etc etc. When they are all laid out you end up losing half a dozen home screens.
PS: Just to be clear I'm not necessarily arguing that iOS widgets are better, I'm advocating that Google get off its duff and instead of spending so much freakin time in making their OS whiter and slightly more rounded every single year, maybe they should pay some attention to the design language and function of widgets.
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You can turn off a weather widget in iOS, I don't get that point, Apple isn't forcing you to have ANY widgets. I do HIGHLY agree about having quick toggles, we used to be able to do this in iOS with widgets like Magic Launcher but not anymore.
We all have different opinions and preferences. I cans see the benefit of having all the widgets in one place.
But for me I would rather have the information in places it is the most useful.
When I go to my homescreen...I want to see the date and current weather.
Then LOVE having the Google search widget right where it is the most useful to me. Right on the homescreen in thumb's reach.
For me it is functionality and ease of use over aesthetics.....
Atleast I can choose if I want the "mess" or not.
So can an iOS user.
How? Can you choose to put the widgets on your homescreen? Move your icons around to make room for them?
Yeah don't get me wrong, and my apologies if I came off as such, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to use their smartphone. My rant is mainly directed at what I would like to see and I fully understand that many will be happy with how widgets are on Android. I'm really trying not to have a us vs them attitude these days. But I still think Google needs to at least have more dev guidelines and some kind of unified style to widgets.
I guess on iOS the widgets screen IS the home screen in many ways, probably most ways. When I'm on that screen I can easily see virtually every single shred of information I need on my smartphone.
I can see the benefit of that. But at the same time i don't want all that in one place. I can unlock my phone to my home screen to see the info i need the most. I don't have to go to a separate screen to see it. If I want more info then I can open app or even have a whole screen of widgets like you describe.
The overriding theme here is I get the choice of how the information is presented to me. I can have some displayed on my homescreen where I go the most often. Or I can have a whole screen dedicated to widgets as you described.
On IOS you don't have a choice....all your widgets are on one page....take it or leave it.
That's true, but iOS has the advantage of an unified design language. On Android it just looks awful, well at least the widgets I want to use. Not only look, but functionally they can be detrimental such as when a widget will only allow a fit onto a home screen a certain way, forcing me to use sometimes an entire home screen because I can't resize it the way I want to. You say you don't have to go to a separate screen, but unless you have ALL of your widgets on a single home screen that may not be true.
You also have less choice in how the information is presented to you than you think. I'm not sure I've run across a widget that lets you customize what information you get, it's usually that you get multiple widgets to choose from rather than being able to modify that widget. So at best your choice boils down to which home screen you want to plop the widget down on, hardly a choice but I won't deny it's some kind of choice. But once again due to the haphazard design and way widgets fit that can often be a bad thing. Don't forget on iOS I can reorder the widgets so my most used ones are on top.
I do find it amusing that almost every implementation of widgets on the home screen can be completely trashed from a usability standpoint.
My biggest issue with Android widgets as well. I want a unified design language available, at least as a default. The handful of widgets whose functionality I want are a cluster**** in design with no ability to change it. It ends up looking like a disjointed mish mash on my home screens. It's why the couple of widgets I use are relegated to secondary home screens instead of up front on a main home screen.
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It's more a lubricant than the actual tool, but yeah, it does what I need to do and gets out of the way.
I respectfully disagree.
Widgets in iOS are basically all the same, they are more or less just slots/bars filled with info or toggles. They are more of app extensions rather than widgets.
While Android might have a ton of crap widgets, there are still a ton of unique and customizable widgets that make up for it. I wouldn't want to hinder those great widgets due to some unified design that will only make the crap widgets look slightly better.