Android Apps Grow Up
It is official; Android apps are the real deal. Instead of being the ugly step sister in the world of mobile apps, Android is now on equal footing with the iPhone in terms of quality.
This is coming from someone that was a dedicated Blackberry user for many years. I had approached the move to Android with trepidation and a healthy dose of skepticism. Therefore I had used my Blackberry Curve and Motorola DroidX side by side for several months. This turned out to be a wise decision. Even with the lack of apps, the limitations of Blackberry as an apps platform and the significantly smaller screen size, it offered a faster and superior experience. That was then however; six months later things have completely changed.
Before I get into what changed, I need define quality. Quality is an amorphous concept and can vary from person to person (and is itself a lengthy post or two). I see quality in mobile applications coming down to level of utility, robustness of functionality, ease of use and underlying stability.
- Utility – simply a measure of value that one gets out of the application
- Functionality – rich set of features that enable one to accomplish a number of tasks
- Ease of use – interplays with functionality to ensure the experience for the user is seamless
- Stability – performs with speed and does not experience crashes
With this understanding of quality in mind, I can happily report that many of the best mobile apps meet all of these factors on the Android platform, even amidst the ocean of varying hardware and vendor specific tweaks.
So what changed? First is a better OS, with Android 2.2 “Froyo” being lightyears more stable and functional than the previous version. I found the DroidX close to unusable with Android 2.1 for the simplest tasks such as finding contacts, sending text messages, and managing email. Then I loaded Froyo and that was the week I finally was comfortable enough to ditch the Blackberry. The second reason is that Android could no longer be ignored. With close to 50% of the smartphone market and saturation in the iOS market, Android finally started getting developer love.
Despite many of the shortcomings reported about Android, it appears that was not much of a detriment for developers in building excellent applications. I have been heavily using the latest Tumblr app and have been blow away with how awesome it is, as good as if not better than Tumblr on the web. Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook are now enjoyable to use. The Kindle app turns out to be a really good experience given the screen size of the DroidX. Note taking with Springpad is stupid easy. I could go on with many other apps, but the point is that my experience using apps on Android has now reached the experience iPhone users have. The quality of the apps are now equivalent and I no longer have to look at my iPhone brethren in envy. The Age of Android has finally arrived.
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