Inside the heads of Android fanboys

The fanboys are riled up — the Android fanboys, that is. Earlier this week, InfoWorld ran my “mobile deathmatch” face-off between Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS. I got a bunch of strongly worded emails, some bordering on nasty, for my conclusion that Android is basically harder to use than iOS. Those comments, as well as ones from previous stories, reveal a lot about the psyche of “fandroids“: They like intricate tech that requires mastery of secrets and tricks, much like dedicated gamers do.

“Fandroids” treat a smartphone like a game player These readers didn’t take issue with most of my factual assertions, especially my criticisms of Android’s poor corporate fit — though several pointed out some errors that I immediately corrected, such as the Android OS not having a folder capability or being able to reposition the text cursor when editing (more on these later). What really got under their skin was my ongoing complaint about how so many options in Android are hidden from the user, unless you press this button or that button and work your way through several menus.

I wrote, and strongly believe, that iOS does a better job of exposing relevant capabilities when you need them, so you can work more quickly. That’s called intuitive interface design.

But the fandroids don’t want an easy-to-use OS, and they prefer Android because it requires mastery of arcane usage secrets such as “long presses,” a tap-and-hold method that works sort of like a computer’s contextual menu. For example, long-tapping on the home screen to get a menu lets you add folders, and then long-tapping the folder’s menu bar brings up the editor for the folder name. (Contextual menus are great as time-savers for power users, but when used as the only access means to capabilities, they hide functionality from users — and that’s bad.) These fandroid readers also kept saying that going through a sequence of three or four menu options was no big deal, and they thought my criticism of Android for working that way was simply wrongheaded. That’s how an operating system should work, they strongly argued.

Look, there’s a place for arcane interfaces — it does make master users feel superior, and it can be fun to figure out all the hidden tricks, just as it is to find the secret powers, commands, shortcuts, and so on in a computer game. And I can see how Google’s young, engineering-oriented, smarter-than-the-average-bear employees would feel the same and thus design an OS for them. I bet they play a lot of computer games, too.

But for the rest of us, a smartphone is a tool, one that is often used in quick breaks or on the go. Not having to figure out the secret sauce is a better paradigm in that context — or so I believe, and my review reflects that. If you don’t agree, then by all means get an Android device; my opinion doesn’t determine your purchase options.

Clarifying the mobile deathmatch Among the factual complaints I got, I did make some errors, but several readers also made claims that I can’t replicate. Perhaps they’re using HTC’s Sense UI on their device or UI extensions that Motorola put on its devices. As the review noted upfront, I looked at the stock Android OS 2.2 that Google provides, not versions tweaked by devicemakers. Or maybe there are some arcane three-finger options I haven’t discovered yet (if so, please enlighten me). In some cases, it was clear their anger caused them to not read what I actually wrote and instead leap to their own conclusions. Although I quickly corrected the review for the errors I could replicate, here are the issues that came up most frequently in the reader complaints, along with my responses.

• Email lists are white text on black backgrounds and are hard to read in sunlight. They are in fact in this color scheme, and I tried reading them in several bright light conditions using a Google Nexus One to no avail. It is true that when you open an email, the message text is black on white, but I was talking about checking the email list when on the go — after all, if I can’t tell what a message is from the list, I won’t be clicking on it. If there’s some secret way to change the color scheme for the Email app’s message lists, let me know. (You can see the screen shots of email lists and email messages in the mobile deathmatch slideshow that accompanied the review.)
• Android can’t create folders. I was wrong; it can. Long-tap the home screen to get a menu that has the New Folder option. You get a new folder called New Folder; when it is open (tap it), long-tap the menu bar to edit its name. I will say that iOS’s folder-creation scheme is not much more intuitive (you drag one app onto another), but at least there’s no secret to changing its name.
• Android doesn’t let you move the text cursor to a new location when editing or writing. I was wrong. What happened was that I was tapping just a tad too long. A short tap repositions the text cursor, while a regular (for me, anyhow) tap opens up the full-screen Edit Text menu. I kept getting that menu when I tried to edit text, using the same tap duration that worked for everything else. Overloading functionality is cute, but there needs to be more differentiation than the literally milliseconds involved here. Now, if opening the menu required a long tap, that would make more sense given its similar use elsewhere in Android. UI consistency is important, and this is one example of how inconsistency fools users.
• Email messages have no Forward button unless you press Menu. When I view my messages in the Email app, there are three touch buttons at the bottom of the screen: Reply, Reply All, and Delete. In list view, when messages are selected, the buttons are Mark Unread, Add Star, and Delete. The only way I get a Forward option is to press the Menu button. If there’s some secret way to not go down a menu tree, let me know. What I suspect the complaining readers are doing is using the Gmail app (not the Email app; Android makes you use Gmail in a separate app from other accounts). The Gmail app places at the bottom of each message — not at the bottom of the screen so they are always available — touch buttons for Reply, Reply All, and Forward. At the bottom of the screen, the Gmail app has touch buttons for Archive, Delete, Next, and Previous — utterly inconsistent from the Email app, which does not place any touch buttons at the bottoms of messages. (And I’m sorry, but anyone who uses Gmail for professional email is a Luddite or a newbie, and neither could operate an Android device.)

• The Search button doesn’t work for emails. It doesn’t. One reader said if I long-pressed the Search button, I would get a search bar to search within my email. Nope. What I do get (after a few seconds of pressing — a really long press) is a voice search tool that searches the Web. And boy, is it slow. Anyhow, it doesn’t search my emails. If there’s some secret way to search emails, let me know.
• When addressing emails, Android doesn’t suggest people I’ve replied to before who are not in my Contacts app. Here’s another one I can’t replicate. Yes, it looks up people in my Contacts app as I type (as I said), but not people I’ve replied to who are not in that app. Maybe there’s some threshold for number of replies?
• There’s no quick way to jump to a section in the Contacts app. I compared the iOS list of letters at the right edge of its Contacts app screen, which gives you one-tap access to names starting with a specific letter, to Android’s lack of a similar capability. Readers told me about a secret function: As you scroll your Android Contacts app’s names, a gray box appears at the right side of the screen. If you tap and drag it, it moves through the alphabet; let go when you reach the letter you want to move to. This is a fast-scrolling capability, but not really a way to jump directly to a specific letter as in iOS.

But even knowing where I was wrong or ignorant, my conclusions haven’t changed: I truly believe that iOS is the better mobile OS today, despite Android’s promise.

If that makes me an Apple fanboy (as many readers said), I can live with that slur. After all, I know that every time I criticize anything — Mac OS, Windows, Android, WebOS, English food — someone whose feelings are hurt will throw the “fill-in-the-blank fanboy” accusation at me, and I’ve been called every fanboy in the book after 25 years in this business. (So I perversely relish the chance to call someone else a fanboy in this occasion!)

Still, I do thank the readers who pointed out errors, real or imagined.

This article, “Inside the heads of Android fanboys,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Gruman et al.’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com.