Visual clutter on Android

[Alex Eisenhut]

My god what a mess phones have become. The icon for making phone calls is a green vertical phone. When dialing, it shows a slanted green phone. During the call, it becomes a straight phone again.
If you want to send a SMS, the icon is a blue series of dots.
But the Whatsapp icon is a slanted green phone. But it's not a phone, it's more of a IP app thingy.
But when you want to share things Android helpfully suggests destinations ... with these similar-looking icons. It's a mess. Did I text that or did it go to Whatsapp?

Yet I can't even change the icons of the apps on my own phone, not even change their color. Don't talk to me about these idiotic "themes" that change ALL icons, that's stupid.
When did phones become a cluttered mess of higgledy-piggedly icons that you can't change?

There's so many releases of Android that most of the "help" you find is out of date. They suggest to click on "edit", but that menu doesn't exist anymore. etc...

There has to be an easier way to deal with Android than just go along with the dumb menus and icons they offer you...

[JohnnyMalaria]

My god what a mess phones have become. The icon for making phone calls is a green vertical phone. When dialing, it shows a slanted green phone. During the call, it becomes a straight phone again.
If you want to send a SMS, the icon is a blue series of dots.
But the Whatsapp icon is a slanted green phone. But it's not a phone, it's more of a IP app thingy.
But when you want to share things Android helpfully suggests destinations ... with these similar-looking icons. It's a mess. Did I text that or did it go to Whatsapp?

Yet I can't even change the icons of the apps on my own phone, not even change their color. Don't talk to me about these idiotic "themes" that change ALL icons, that's stupid.
When did phones become a cluttered mess of higgledy-piggedly icons that you can't change?

There's so many releases of Android that most of the "help" you find is out of date. They suggest to click on "edit", but that menu doesn't exist anymore. etc...

There has to be an easier way to deal with Android than just go along with the dumb menus and icons they offer you...

These are all the reasons I loved my Windows Phone (RIP). I find both iPhones and Android a horrific, gawdy, uninspired, frustrating, non-intuitive experience. Why the f*** can't my voicemail icon also indicate if there's a voicemail? I have to look at the notifications which, most of the time, are populated with useless crap like "You haven't played Dominoes in a while - we miss you!" or other useless notifications that the OS developers have decided can't be turned off.

God, I loved that WP...

[james_s]

I loved the look of iOS up through iOS6, then when 7 came out they completely ruined it and suddenly it had the ugly, inconsistent look of Android. It has improved a bit since then but it has never recovered the slick polish it had before. Steve Jobs was an asshole, but his obsessive attention to detail is really what made Apple what it was. I feel like software UI design peaked about 2005-2010 and then really went down hill. There was nothing left to really improve so everyone just started changing stuff to make it look new.

Windows Phone did look quite nice, but I was so mad at Microsoft for what they did to Windows. The Win8 interface was fine on a phone but it was absolute garbage on a desktop PC. Then they degraded the mobile experience to return some degree of sanity to the desktop instead of just accepting that mobile and desktop are two entirely different platforms that should not be the same. 

[rsjsouza]

Not only that, but I also find extremely irritating the trend of infantilization of the  default icons. Since a few years, Samsung Galaxy updates have been changing the icons for the basic functions to look like toddler toys.

[Whales]

These are all the reasons I loved my Windows Phone (RIP). I find both iPhones and Android a horrific, gawdy, uninspired, frustrating, non-intuitive experience.

Sadly I think this is because WP died commercially.  If it were still "alive"/"competing" then it might be chasing the same fads.

I think it's down to marketing & psychology: interfaces have to keep looking 'new' and 'fresh' to make people think what they are getting is up to date and valuable.  You don't want your interface to be 'old', that simply makes the competitor look shinier.  Usability and such take a backseat.

EDIT: Mobile phone homescreens and UI are the new fashion magazines.  They're not about you, they're about the industry.

[Rick Law]

...
These are all the reasons I loved my Windows Phone (RIP). I find both iPhones and Android a horrific, gawdy, uninspired, frustrating, non-intuitive experience. Why the f*** can't my voicemail icon also indicate if there's a voicemail? I have to look at the notifications which, most of the time, are populated with useless crap like "You haven't played Dominoes in a while - we miss you!" or other useless notifications that the OS developers have decided can't be turned off.

God, I loved that WP...

I liked my Windows Phone also, but I prefer my Treo 650 over it by far.  Much faster and cleaner.  I use an ASUS Zenfone 2 at times, the Andriod UI just drove me nuts.  Tried the Moto's Andriod 7, and I liked it even less.

Windows Phone was developed at a time before "resistance is futile."  Now that we are nearly fully assimilated, the phone OS makers now have us by the short-hair.

Any net-connected device sold to us are viewed by the manufacturers as merely as an end-point for them to shove their stuff down our throat.  We have no control of the device we own.  They decide how their end-point devices should work, not us as the mere "owner" of the device.

Competition is a good thing - what the world needs is a new open source smart phone OS so Apple, Google, etc. have some constrains.

[james_s]

I'd like an open source smartphone OS as much as anyone but unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen. These phones are all dependent on cellular networks, and the last thing the network providers want is an open phone that allows people to do things with the provider doesn't want them to do or can't charge them to do. I also don't think there is space in the market for more than two mainstream platforms, as Microsoft discovered, it's pretty hard to entice developers to support a platform that is a distant third to the two main players. I don't use a lot of apps, but even so if the handful of popular ones I do use aren't there then it's a non starter.

[SilverSolder]

I'd like an open source smartphone OS as much as anyone but unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen. These phones are all dependent on cellular networks, and the last thing the network providers want is an open phone that allows people to do things with the provider doesn't want them to do or can't charge them to do. I also don't think there is space in the market for more than two mainstream platforms, as Microsoft discovered, it's pretty hard to entice developers to support a platform that is a distant third to the two main players. I don't use a lot of apps, but even so if the handful of popular ones I do use aren't there then it's a non starter.

Yeah, the only realistic choice left is to hold your nose and use what's available, despite it being barely mitigated surveillance capitalist garbage.

The other choice is to use it as little as possible...

[Raj]

In terms of physical design. Nothing was better than Motorola backflip. It could function as a phone and a laptop, had the OS and processor been better.

For OS, windows from pre iPhone era was enough. Each app running only when you ran them and closing when you closed them. (Lack of background apps unless you really wanted it)

Phone design went south, when kids and teens became target market.
Look at them now. There are optimised for nothing but playing media. Working on them is hard. (Try creating a spreadsheet on them or write a code for a program. Your can but you'll cry throughout the process)


I don't get the appeal of whatsapp at all. Things like Yahoo messenger existed. Why would you want to use a phone number for easy communication, which you can not change easily.
Internet should have killed phone numbers and have made psuedo-anonymous communication more common. It's easier for sure but not common at all.

And whatsapp logo looking like another phone app is intentional. In Android 11, there's a button saying 'call with whatsapp' right under call/video call with sim 1/2 in contact details page.

You know what's worse. If you have WiFi connected during phone call, it switches to "voip over wifi" but charges you the same rates as normal call. (You pay for the duration of the call as well as bandwith on wifi)

[eti]

My god what a mess phones have become. The icon for making phone calls is a green vertical phone. When dialing, it shows a slanted green phone. During the call, it becomes a straight phone again.
If you want to send a SMS, the icon is a blue series of dots.
But the Whatsapp icon is a slanted green phone. But it's not a phone, it's more of a IP app thingy.
But when you want to share things Android helpfully suggests destinations ... with these similar-looking icons. It's a mess. Did I text that or did it go to Whatsapp?

Yet I can't even change the icons of the apps on my own phone, not even change their color. Don't talk to me about these idiotic "themes" that change ALL icons, that's stupid.
When did phones become a cluttered mess of higgledy-piggedly icons that you can't change?

There's so many releases of Android that most of the "help" you find is out of date. They suggest to click on "edit", but that menu doesn't exist anymore. etc...

There has to be an easier way to deal with Android than just go along with the dumb menus and icons they offer you...

These are all the reasons I loved my Windows Phone (RIP). I find both iPhones and Android a horrific, gawdy, uninspired, frustrating, non-intuitive experience. Why the f*** can't my voicemail icon also indicate if there's a voicemail? I have to look at the notifications which, most of the time, are populated with useless crap like "You haven't played Dominoes in a while - we miss you!" or other useless notifications that the OS developers have decided can't be turned off.

God, I loved that WP...

Yes, Android is an absolute mess, both technically and aesthetically, always was and always will be. They started off on the wrong foot because they chose Java-based programming as an easy entry point for people who knew Java, and forgot to lock Android down properly, and now it's a "Wild West". Ugh. We get the annual "reassurances" and speed-talking Californian hipsters evangelising how "this year it's SO much better", and have had for the last decade. Sorry Google, but because of who you are, and because you lack ANY sense, ANY attention span towards focusing on your "products" (which almost ALWAYS end up being abandoned) morality or long-term vision, I distrust your crappy platforms, AND ANY of your "opinions"

Promises, promises... and all the OEMs which spin-off Android are full of the same horse #### corporate nonsense too.

Android OEMs like to brag about "specs", because when you have NOTHING ELSE worth marketing, that's all you have left to brag about. What a joke 

I had a 630, a 640, a 640 XL (which I still own and will ALWAYS keep!) and a few others, the model names I forget. I agree, the experience was lovely... except for some horrendous Camera app issues which persisted across ALL models, and ALL firmware versions of ALL variants of Windows Phone I tried, over the years, where the Camera would STILL be "Saving... Saving...", sometimes an hour OR A DAY later, and there was no way to continue snapping photos until it had "finished". That INFURIATED me, but despite that, the Lumia Camera app was, and still is, amazing and the colours VERY true to life.

Know what REALLY makes me facepalm? How these vendors "create" (further butcher) variants of Android with their GHASTLY skins, frameworks etc, and then give it some pretentious name, as if to imply "It's not Android, it's BubbleGumOS" - yeah? NO, it's STILL shitty old Android.

[eti]

I'd like an open source smartphone OS as much as anyone but unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen. These phones are all dependent on cellular networks, and the last thing the network providers want is an open phone that allows people to do things with the provider doesn't want them to do or can't charge them to do. I also don't think there is space in the market for more than two mainstream platforms, as Microsoft discovered, it's pretty hard to entice developers to support a platform that is a distant third to the two main players. I don't use a lot of apps, but even so if the handful of popular ones I do use aren't there then it's a non starter.

Out in the real world, the normal person in the street doesn't, and shouldn't care ONE BIT about all this "open" nonsense, people pick up a phone, want to USE it and TRUST it, they know nothing about its machinations, let alone whether or not those machinations are "open source" or not. That's an obsession for niche percentages of device users, and does not even REMOTELY approach a fraction of a percentage of phone users.

It needs TO WORK WELL, and not get in the way of task at hand. Simple. GOOD technology is invisible to the user, it does its' doings without excessive cognitive load.

[SiliconWizard]

I'd like an open source smartphone OS as much as anyone but unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen. These phones are all dependent on cellular networks, and the last thing the network providers want is an open phone that allows people to do things with the provider doesn't want them to do or can't charge them to do. I also don't think there is space in the market for more than two mainstream platforms, as Microsoft discovered, it's pretty hard to entice developers to support a platform that is a distant third to the two main players. I don't use a lot of apps, but even so if the handful of popular ones I do use aren't there then it's a non starter.

First thing first... Isn't Android open source? Sure many phone vendors add their own layer to it, but the base OS is still open source.

Whereas networks would be likely to "fight back" if fully open source phone OSs really took off - and possibly independent from Google - at this point, there is nothing they can do about it.

As a matter of fact, there are a number of Android "distributions" that are open source and do not contain any nasty third-party stuff, available for a number of mobile phones.
Lineage OS comes to mind: https://lineageos.org/
There's also the Pixel experience one: https://wiki.pixelexperience.org/ , but it's more centered around Google apps, so you may consider that it's not fully independent. But Lineage OS is (as long as you don't dismiss Android itself), and can be used without any Google service.

Now of course, both being based on Android would be dismissed by the OP if they want something else, but I was replying to the "open source" factor.

A more "independent" option would be Ubuntu Touch: https://ubuntu-touch.io, it's available for a number of phones (although of course the list is still limited...)

So, it's not like it doesn't exist or is impossible. But granted, that's relatively experimental at this point, and if those OSs ever really took off, there is little doubt networks would fight to make those hard, or even impossible to use on their networks. Possibly, for instance, by requiring specific "security" modules that would be based on patents and could not be implemented by purely open-source software. Right now, this isn't the case.

[eti]

I'd like an open source smartphone OS as much as anyone but unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen. These phones are all dependent on cellular networks, and the last thing the network providers want is an open phone that allows people to do things with the provider doesn't want them to do or can't charge them to do. I also don't think there is space in the market for more than two mainstream platforms, as Microsoft discovered, it's pretty hard to entice developers to support a platform that is a distant third to the two main players. I don't use a lot of apps, but even so if the handful of popular ones I do use aren't there then it's a non starter.

First thing first... Isn't Android open source? Sure many phone vendors add their own layer to it, but the base OS is still open source.

Whereas networks would be likely to "fight back" if fully open source phone OSs really took off - and possibly independent from Google - at this point, there is nothing they can do about it.

As a matter of fact, there are a number of Android "distributions" that are open source and do not contain any nasty third-party stuff, available for a number of mobile phones.
Lineage OS comes to mind: https://lineageos.org/
There's also the Pixel experience one: https://wiki.pixelexperience.org/ , but it's more centered around Google apps, so you may consider that it's not fully independent. But Lineage OS is (as long as you don't dismiss Android itself), and can be used without any Google service.

Now of course, both being based on Android would be dismissed by the OP if they want something else, but I was replying to the "open source" factor.

A more "independent" option would be Ubuntu Touch: https://ubuntu-touch.io, it's available for a number of phones (although of course the list is still limited...)

So, it's not like it doesn't exist or is impossible. But granted, that's relatively experimental at this point, and if those OSs ever really took off, there is little doubt networks would fight to make those hard, or even impossible to use on their networks. Possibly, for instance, by requiring specific "security" modules that would be based on patents and could not be implemented by purely open-source software. Right now, this isn't the case.

Some trivial Googling will tell you precisely what you want to know about Google's love of promoting the "openness" of Android, and how it's a complete lie. Don't quote ME, Google it, it's a load of BS like most things Google.

[NiHaoMike]

So, it's not like it doesn't exist or is impossible. But granted, that's relatively experimental at this point, and if those OSs ever really took off, there is little doubt networks would fight to make those hard, or even impossible to use on their networks. Possibly, for instance, by requiring specific "security" modules that would be based on patents and could not be implemented by purely open-source software. Right now, this isn't the case.

Is there even any 4G or 5G baseband that doesn't rely on a binary blob to operate?

[SiliconWizard]

Some trivial Googling will tell you precisely what you want to know about Google's love of promoting the "openness" of Android, and how it's a complete lie. Don't quote ME, Google it, it's a load of BS like most things Google.

I'm pretty sure there are thousands of people writing thousands of articles on how Google is evil, and in some ways, we could say it is.

But Android is officially covered by the GPL 2.0 and Apache 2.0 license. This is open-source in my book. Not sure I care about what Google promotes or not. All I care about are the licenses. And I can take Android source code, customize the build, build it and run it on the platform of my choice. And, as I said, Android can absolutely be used without any of the Google services. So yeah. What exactly is not open-source in Android?

[SiliconWizard]

So, it's not like it doesn't exist or is impossible. But granted, that's relatively experimental at this point, and if those OSs ever really took off, there is little doubt networks would fight to make those hard, or even impossible to use on their networks. Possibly, for instance, by requiring specific "security" modules that would be based on patents and could not be implemented by purely open-source software. Right now, this isn't the case.

Is there even any 4G or 5G baseband that doesn't rely on a binary blob to operate?

What kind of binary blob and in which part of an OS would it be located?