All the Google things are lumped into one folder, which includes the amazing labels “Play Music” alongside “Play Movie…”, “Play Maga…”, “Play Books” and “Play Store”. The hesistant newbie has to make the cognitive leap that “Play” is not a verb here—despite the tacky golden rapper headphones—rather than conclude that Google has weird taste in words, or that this is a phone for children.
The action verb they were looking for instead was “Buy Music” and “Buy Movies”. It seems they replaced the media player with a shop you can keep your own tunes in. My advice: get rid of the advertisements posing as widgets and use DoubleTwist instead.
Actually presenting functionality is a job left for the App Drawer, paralyzing you with choice by Pokémon. There’s two Mails, three Googles, three Messengers, a whole Play-set as well as assorted circles, pins and triangles. You’ll find yourself dragging every app you’ll use regularly somewhere more convenient. Open App Drawer. Pan. Draaag. Repeat.
Great roundup on the UI confusion and poor design that continues to plague Android. I find it very reminiscent of the mediocrity of Windows, back in the late 90s/early 2000s when I still had Windows boxen in my life.
I recently spent some time with an HTC One and was shocked at how muddled the interface is. No animations, confusing stock Android apps, and that horrible vertical menu button inside every app that developers seem to use as a junk drawer for functionality they couldn’t otherwise cram into the UI. The best designed apps were those from big services like Tumblr and Foursquare whose UI seemed to be a direct clone of the iOS version.
After every major Android release, the refrain of “now it’s as polished as iOS” is heard. This has never been more true than in the last year. I can honestly say that after spending a non-trivial amount of time with a flagship Android phone, nothing could be farther from the truth.