Android Needs You!

25Jul10

I’ve had my Nexus One for about a week now and I love it. (Aside: For awhile I was on the fence between a Nexus One and an iPhone 4, but Apple’s poor handling of the iPhone’s antenna attenuation issue pushed me over to the Nexus One). At 6 months old the Nexus One would be considered a dinosaur in the fast moving smartphone market, however, the hardware is still very slick and more than capable. Android 2.2 is fast, customizable, and offers a level of integration with Google’s products that is unmatched. I look forward to each new app that Google releases because their innovation is just so inspiring (starting to sound like a fanboy…).

Despite all of the good things I can say about the Android platform, it is far from being perfect. My biggest gripes have to do with the Android Market and the quality of its apps. Searching the Android market is a pain. If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you have to filter through a huge list of apps that may or may not be related to what you want. The official Android Market directory does provide filtering by category and searching by name but a deeper search engine (*cough*, Google) would go a long way. AndroLib goes a step further by adding search criteria for pricing, ratings, and number of downloads but I still can’t seem to find apps with the functionality I want or need (maybe they don’t exist yet…).

Once you’ve found an app on the market and installed it, you may be disappointed with the quality of the app itself. This is often the case for me. Don’t get me wrong, I give full credit and have the utmost respect for any and all software developers but to be honest, most of the apps out there fail from a user experience perspective. Especially the apps developed by the smaller independent developers. Independent developers are creating some of the most useful applications but they have that distinct amateur (read: ugly) feel to them. This is a problem that has plagued Linux for so long and in my opinion is the reason why it isn’t more popular. I can only hope that this doesn’t hold Android back from being an even larger success.

So Android needs you (software developers) to take the onus on yourself to develop applications that are more user-centered and held to a higher standard. Continue creating apps of great utility, just give them a little spit polish before you publish them. I don’t want to pay for an app that looks like it was designed by well, an amateur. And if your app is free, thank you, but it should not be an excuse for skimping on production values.

I have some apps in the pipeline that I want to develop and hopefully I won’t be eating my words. Now, if only Google would open up the Android Market for Canadian developers to start selling paid apps….

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Tags: Android, Google