Apple vs Android (oh, that old chestnut!)

Off topic, so booted over to Aldershot. ;-)

Vince:

In what way did it not work for you?

Let’s see… The only app on my three Android phones that supports in-line quoting is GMail. iOS just does it. Okay, my phones are all running version 2.something but this wouldn’t be a problem if Android’s update service wasn’t a crock of <beeeeep> – my latest phone was built after ICS was released, but it still runs (IIRC) 2.3.7.
Generally speaking, the standard email client loses the plot if there are more than about fifty emails present. Symptoms are:

• marks every single email as unread
• throws them all away and tells me there aren’t any
• replaces them all with blank messages dated 1970/01/01
• any and every possible combination of the above

It often fails to send a message and just won’t until I force close the email task and go back and tap on “Send messages” again.
A UI thing, but the lock screen’s report of messages is just random numbers. I can press the power button and be told that I have 12 messages. Let it time out and darken, press the power button again and I have 483 messages.

It’s POP3 people, how flamin’ hard is it?

The (stock) browser is randomly crashy. And I mean it’ll just die right in the middle of me doing something (and this is with Flash objects set to be tap-to-activate so you can’t blame them). The handling of text input sucks <beeeeep> making it a challenge to write more than a couple of lines. Here, The Register, anywhere. I am writing this on the iPad and it works. I just wouldn’t write a reply this long on an Android phone, I could not scroll to the end of it no matter what way up the screen was.

What does Android do better than iOS? Swype for text entry is nice (but on the other hand I have a Bluetooth keyboard for iOS (which isn’t supported at all on Android pre-ICS)) and the onscreen keyboard showing upper and lower case reflecting the current input state is also nice. On the other hand, it seems as if iOS tries to learn pro-actively as you type and will “forget” bad spellings. Android remembers every single one and, okay, you can sort of edit the dictionary (you can’t on iOS) but it is a pain to have to delete loads of words mistyped one by one – but you need to if Android is going to choose to replace correct words with your typos. This is where I think iOS gets it right – if you enter a word and never use it again, it’ll be forgotten. That said, iOS does attempt to correct words in a context sensitive way, so not only will it correct the current word! it may change some things elsewhere in the sentence, and as if by design! you can see two erroneous exclamation marks in this sentence. They were entered as commas, but iOS for some reason went back and altered them (bug?). Too much intelligence is a blessing and a curse. ;-)

The iOS Safari browser does crash. Rarely, but it does happen. The difference? Restart it and all my tabs are still there.

My Motorola DEFY was nice in that when I was on the tragically slow EDGE network, I could set off a few web page fetches and then go read email while that was downloading. I cannot do that with either of my Sony[Ericsson] phones as the slightest other activity will throw away web content. My mom sends me an SMS and I go read it, back to the browser and it’s a refetch. Thanks. They must be hand in glove with the networks.

As pile-of-poo as Android updates are, Google see nothing wrong with burning through a tenth of my monthly data allocation with updates to Google Play. Screw you Google, I don’t need four forced updates in a month just because you have not hidden the true list of permissions deeply enough, instead of that abridged rubbish you try to pawn off on us now. At least iOS tells me there’s an update and lets me take the initiative (which I have not, I’m still on v7).

To help balance the score and not be a fanboi – what the hell is the deal with deleting and reinstalling an app to clear out the zombie files. If a 30MB app can release 250MB space, there is something amiss with the OS. Maybe iTunes ought to have some sort of file explorer mode so the more expert of us can clear up old files ourselves? Why is my (combined) mailbox taking up 900MB? Don’t you idiots understand what “expiry” means? Why does transferring a file to another app (if supported) take forever. Please tell my you aren’t byte-copying the files… Location services is utterly broken on a WiFi only device. WiFi detection sucks. I am connected to my Livebox, but if I chose to disconnect, there is a 98% chance that the iPad would not detect the network again. Even my phones can do better. Cheap Chinese part?
Etc.

I ought to add, while I’m at it – what the hell is the deal with 20, 30, 40MB apps? If my software ran to a megabyte or two, I would call it large. A telnet program that is just a terminal being 12MB? That’s just offensive to the intelligence.

WiFi detection sucks.

Handy in work though – if someone complains about not seeing a specific SSID¹ I wander along and see if the iPhone can see it.
If it can then any cheap bit of tech should have no problem.
Yes, I know, I’m “holding it wrong” (thank you Mr. Jobs)

¹ I haven’t counted, there are many.

Off topic, so booted over to Aldershot. ;-)

Also misnamed somewhat – a hardware manufacturer versus an operating system? Shouldn’t it be iOS versus Android? :p

Anyway…

The only app on my three Android phones that supports in-line quoting is GMail.

You can inline quote using the stock Android email client – it’s not set up for it, but there is a way:

• Hit reply
• Go to bottom panel, where the message you are replying to is quoted
• Select and copy what you need
• Go to the top panel
• Paste
• Untick the box so that the previous email is no longer quoted in the lower panel

Now it’s just a question of prefixing any quoted text with ’> ’ and typing what you want to say where you want to say it.

It might become a chore if you use it for lots of email – but for the very few times I reply using the Android client, it’s not a problem.

Okay, my phones are all running version 2.something but this wouldn’t be a problem if Android’s update service wasn’t a crock of

Well, as you undoubtedly know that’s because of Google’s arrangements with the phone manufacturers and/or providers – it’s not really a fault with Android per se.

But I was asking about the problems you had with the email client, not with Android itself, so…

Generally speaking, the standard email client loses the plot if there are more than about fifty emails present.

Hmm?

[checks phone]

715 emails. No loss of plot.

[checks tablet]

715 emails. No loss of plot.

Why so many?

I said I don’t generally use email on the phone that much; just for checking them when I’m not at my desk, and the very occasional reply. However, there’s a little more to it than that: I do mostly use the phone or tablet to decide when email is deleted from the server, when I remember/can be bothered. I use POP3, but the computer leaves the email on the server (and the phone and tablet only fetch headers until/unless I instruct them to grab a body) – so every once in a while, I delete the old stuff using the phone/tablet.

(And very occasionally, if I happen to log in via webmail – for example, if I spot a false positive in my spam report, and I need to retrieve it – I’ll do it that way).

I don’t delete the lot – only those old enough that I can be sure I won’t need to check the contents of one at some point when I’m not at the computer. (Clients querying something when I don’t have it with me, etc.)

[symptoms]

I don’t experience any of those problems.

My gut instinct is that what you describe are symptomatic of hardware just wasn’t up to the job – not enough RAM, perhaps (or even a hardware fault).

In other words, it sounds to me like you may be comparing iOS on an expensive device with Android on a cheap device, if not a faulty one. (I’m not sure what the iPad mini costs, but it comes from Apple, so expensive is a safe bet).

[Other issues, with the web browser, etc.]

Again, sounds to me like the hardware at fault, not the software.

(Having said all that, you’re talking about 2.something. I’m not sure what my older devices were running, so it may be that the software itself is just better now – but I suspect the oldest may have been on 2.something, and I don’t remember having any issues with back then.)

Okay, my phones are all running version 2.something

That could very well be the cause of your troubles.
My wife has a iPhone 5 (she bought it just a month before the iPhone 6 came out), while I have a brand new Google Nexus 5, with Android 4.4.4 installed. It’s just Android, no layers from manufacturers or providers. And it’s a sheer joy, superior to iOS on every aspect that we were able to compare. Even my wife (Apple fan) decided that her next phone will be Android.