Hacker News Reader

It’s not a silly thing if I truly care about it. Lag drives me crazy. I hardly ever need more than a few minutes before I want to throw an Android device at the wall.

This reason is personal. Others don’t care about it. That’s certainly true. But I do. Why am I not allowed to bring this up? Why is that silly?

I just used a Samsung Galaxy S II... didn't notice any lag. But then again, my phone is an iPhone 3G.

That’s good to hear! I test any Android device I can get my fingers on but I have not yet had an opportunity to test the Galaxy S II. (The stores I was in never had a charged one.)

> Even in my imagination, Android installed base is still growing at nearly 2X of that of the iPhone. Apparently, most people don't care for whatever you're saying they should care about

I remember seeing a chart awhile ago which showed that while Android's market share is getting larger than the iPhone's, it isn't actually taking away any share from the iPhone but instead from RIM, Windows phones, and feature phones. (just did some googling and found the link):

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-30/tech/30087696...

What I think this means is that the people aren't moving away from their iPhones, but instead people who don't have a smart phone to begin with are more likely to pick an Android phone instead of an iPhone.

Maybe it's due to things like finger lag, or how great the camera / video is, or maybe for completely non-technological reasons , i.e. cost, or even as simple as which phones are available on their carriers, which I honestly think it could be it as I have heard that where I live (Australia) the iPhone has one of the largest market shares in the world (4.5 million iPhones with a population of 22 million), and I think is one of the only places which place no restrictions on which carriers can stock the iPhone.

In all fairness, it is early days yet and I think once the smart phone market has reached saturation we might start to see a different story play out between the competing OSes.

Non-geeks don't call it lag. They call it "I wish I had an iPhone but the salesman at Verizon talked me into this thing because the commission is so much higher." Just because you don't know the industry term doesn't mean the problem doesn't bother you.

Install base is an interesting thing.

Android is the new Feature Phone, in some ways. Just because someone buys a cheap Android clone doesn't mean they embrace the features in the way that nearly every iPhone user does.

Google need to work exceptionally hard, else I figure even Microsoft will catch up.

Android is very inconsistent.

Did you notice how you just no true Scotsman'd smartphone market share?

thats all the apple fanboys have, instead of this thread talking about all the amazing new features and improvements, its a bunch of hivemind people trying to convince themselves that Android isn't awesome. I'm sorry but I must of been oblivious the lag as well as the other Android users. Most people want cheap phones and/or cheap plans, a very high quality os, that make calls, send text, surf web, and maybe do some apps. A lack of an animation or a non existent lag or even a higher resolution icon , makes no difference to most people.

> "A lack of an animation or a non existent lag or even a higher resolution icon , makes no difference to most people."

Isn't Apple proof enough that simply hitting the bullet points is not enough? Or Sony (with the PlayStation, which got thoroughly trounced by a machine bearing inferior specs across the board)?

People love polish, they love attention to detail, they love absolute frictionless products. Apple has priced themselves out of the low end (the 3GS' performance is a joke compared to the Android phones at that price point), so Android is largely dominating that segment.

But make no mistake about it - Apple owns the high-end smartphone market because their product has all of those things you just blithely dismissed.

Most people want a cheap car that gets good mileage. The lack of heated seats, automatic wipers, and a V8 under the hood makes no difference to most people. But yet, we know that the dynamics of the automotive market can't be hand-waved away so easily - why do it to the smartphone/consumer electronics market?

Using the word "fanboy" to describe someone who disagrees with you isn't a serious argument. Embrace the cognitive dissonance: I like my new iPhone 4s, and I'm excited about the new Android release!

If you don't think the lag is a problem, fine, great. I personally think it's unacceptable. It's one of the reasons my daily use phone is iOS and not Android.

Why are we talking about this instead of the other new features? Because for a long, long time, Ice Cream Sandwich was touted as the solution to these performance problems.

I personally find Android unpleasant to use because of it. Worse, I think it makes my software look shitty, which makes me look shitty, which makes me tell people to demo my apps on iOS rather than Android.

sorry for the fanboy, but their are plenty of shortcomings in iOS, and because of the apple reverance on these forums, there was nothing but praise in the discussion of iOS5 but with ICS theres nothing but complaints even though there were some really awesome announcements. Just written because people can't have intelligible conversation about the disagreement in os's. If you don't like android, thats fine but in the article about android's new features and releases and the thread is filled with complaints from people that probably never used Android for longer than a demo period, not really relevant. Like take this lag issue. That was one writers opinion on what could be considered a demo unit. Now the comment underneath links to articles saying how fast it is and responsive. Its a non issue, but its something that most people want to shout about here in these threads. Another issue is fragmentation, the apple community loves to shout about that but from the sales most people don't care. As a former iphone owner, i know of Apple's shortcomings because I used it for a period of 2 years. I doubt any of these people's complaints none of them used a modern Android for that same time.

the sad thing is there's more intelligent conversation about Androids new features in the techcrunch article than here. Its sad once theres a hivemind mentality in a community.

Android is growing fast because its on every crappy free/buy one get one smartphones that are basically used as a glorified feature phone, NOT because its good.

Many iPhones are used as feature phones too. Their owners want to show off, but use it just for calling and maybe texting.

How can you prove this statement?