When my friends try to get me to switch to Ubuntu I always have a hard time describing why I dont wanto. It's hard to pinpoint when looking at all the individual components of the Ubuntu desktop but this sentence really sums it up well.
On the flip side, I recently tested a full restart of 10.04 from Ubuntu desktop to Ubuntu desktop. took exactly 14 seconds. Incredible.
I'm definitely not a fan of HTC's Sense UI. I'd read glowing reviews about it (Engadget, Android Central) so when I went to try out the Incredible myself I was quite shocked at how much I was put off by Sense. Some of their changes are good - I like the phone button at the bottom of the home screen, but they've gone and messed with the UI of practically every program on the device - and I'm not a fan of their "improvements". From the dialer to the car panel to the clock - the Nexus One's UI is, IMHO, much better looking and functioning.
The frustrating thing is that I'm actually seriously considering getting the device, as Google decided to pull the Verizon Nexus One. But I just know that I won't be as happy with it as I would have been with the Nexus One.
It's possible to disable Sense on older HTC phones (like the Eris), but not on the Incredible. Apparently HTC even stripped out the files needed to support the stock UI from the ROM.
Another factor that's important to me is that the Nexus One is virtually guaranteed to get Android updates as soon as they're released, while with the Incredible you'll be waiting on Verizon and HTC.
Yeah, that was huge for me in the list of deciding factors. In my last paragraph I discuss all of them, and that was definitely important. It took Verizon forever to get 2.1 on the Droid, and they left all their other devices out in the cold.
That's the sad thing about wireless companies... they just don't care. They're focused on gaining customers and do that with new devices, not updates to old ones.
Google is independent from all of that, and they actually seem to care about their users :)
This reminds me of the issue with a laptop like one of the Sony VAIO series. The hardware is super nice, and the software would be decent, but you would be screwed if you ever wanted to upgrade or reinstall. Finding the correct drivers was a challenge.
Not many companies really understand that even though the sale of the device is over, your responsibility to the customer isn't. That customer will expect you to support what they want to do until they feel like they have gotten their money's worth out of it.
With a lot of people, upgrading or reinstalling windows from scratch was a standard practice and they expected to be able to do it. I think the same is true of android customers.
I have a nit to pick with the situation (not the article).
He likes the phone, but he doesn't like the Android "distro" on it. Why can't this be swapped?
That would be basically advantage #1 of open source, I can understand if HTC doesn't want to let everyone else use their Sense UI onto other phones if it is a proprietary advantage, but shouldn't you be allowed to run the vanilla Android on any Android phone? Or am I missing something here?
A good point that I'd be interested in hearing some advice about. It goes without saying that the OS on a phone is tailored to be small and compatible with the hardware present, but what about the UI? Anybody have experience hacking their mobile UIs?
It's funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. The Sense UI feels much more polished and mature than the default Android UI which feels utilitarian and raw.
Clearly HTC has once again completely screwed up the UX that the OS designers have worked hard to create. I'm glad they didn't decide to do it with the G1 that's been in my pocket for the last 18 months. I just wish the physical keyboard version of the Nexus One would come out so I could replace this very slow G1.
Good review. I personally prefer the HTC keyboard. Whereas I couldn't stand typing on the Android 2.1 stock keyboard, the HTC_IME keyboard pictured is great.
I switched to the Nexus One (the Incredible's brother) and it's been great. Like multitasking (which iPhone users now agree is a good thing), openness and flexibility aren't just throw-around buzzwords, they actually add a lot to the user-experience. Sharing pics from the camera, having your contacts automatically kept in-sync, having widgets on the homescreen, using Locale to automatically manage your settings etc etc.
Interestingly, there now seem to be almost as many android users at the office as there are iphone users, which is notable as almost everyone has has an iphone.
I just switched from my iphone yesterday and luckily best buy has a 30 day return policy because I'm returning incredible tomorrow. I just find myself smacking my head every 15 minutes using this thing. I think sense has a good deal to do with it, but I just can't help feeling this is like stepping back to the pre-iPhone era of smart phone design.
I'd like to give the standard android os 2.1 a try because I completely agree with the review, sense is disaster. Unfortunately, I don't think I can hold out...
