As little as a month ago, if anyone asked me what phone to get, I would have told them to get an Android phone. Today, I’m not so sure. While I’m still a big Android fan, there are a few things missing or broken in Android that should have been there a long time ago.
1. Support for proxy settings for wireless networks. This wasn’t an issue until recently I started working for a company with a proxy authenticated wireless network. While there are ways to enable proxy settings on some rooted devices, they only work for simple proxy firewalls and doesn’t support authentication. While I work at a large software company with a mailing list of hundreds of self described Android enthusiasts, no one seems to have found a way to get on to the corporate wireless network consistently across devices. This has to be the most complained about missing feature on the Android since release. My friends with iPhones and Win7 Phones do not share my pain as they both have proxy settings built in. If Android is going to take any market share away from Blackberry users, this has to be a high priority feature since many corporate wireless networks, and even many university wireless networks use proxy authentication. It’s such a basic feature for a wireless device that most people I’ve met, and myself included are surprised that it doesn’t exist when we have to use it.
2. Fragmentation of devices. This isn’t an issue with the majority of developers with CRUD apps that don’t have fancy graphics or hardware requirements, but many developers of games and widgets complain about the lack of standardization. While most Android devices are powerful enough for most developers needs, they still have to support the lowest end devices because they’re the ones whose users are going to leave one star ratings when they discover that the app doesn’t work. iPhone is the most consistent device to develop for and despite Android numbers overtaking iPhone numbers in the US, it’s still by far the most profitable. The recently launched Win7 Mobile has put some very high requirements for handset manufacturers intending to run Win7 Mobile. This will ensure that developers will be able to spend more time creating powerful high quality apps and less time worrying about device compatibility. There’s no doubt in my mind that this decision was made after seeing the problems with Android, and after seeing the device for myself and what others have thought of it, this is Microsoft’s shot at coming back into the smart phone market after the massive failure with the Kin phone.
3. Fragmentation of markets. This is not yet a huge problem, but every few weeks, I hear an announcement of some new Android market that is going to be launched promising to be better than what Google offers. In the US, phone carriers have began launching their own markets and some even won’t ship devices with the Android market built in. Amazon recently announced their developer preview of their Android market that will be much more like Apples Appstore with an approval process and quality standards for apps. Handster recently contacted many Android developers about their Market which from the looks of it might eventually support some new business models for apps. This is not strictly a bad thing, Google has said that “Android is an open platform” and people can do what ever they want with it, and no doubt there will be a lot of innovation from third parties trying different business models, and app distribution models to see what sticks, but this will hurt the users who will be overrun with choice about where to get apps. Apples innovation with the AppStore simplified how people bought software for their phone, they put everything in one place to reduce the amount of time looking for software, and put a quality standard in place to ensure that users where at least getting quality apps with a consistent design. Android seems to be doing the opposite.
4. The sorry excuse for a web interface for the android market. During Google IO 2010 in May this year, it was announced that there will be a Android Webstore like the iTunes store for the iPhone where users could browse and purchase apps and have those apps installed automatically on your phone. 7 months later, there is no word of this webstore. The closes thing we have is AppBrain, a third party app aggregator and app with a subset of the features of what the android web store should have been, including click to install on your phone.
5. Spam apps and the lack of quality requirements for Android apps. The android market is flooded with spam, junk and porn apps. Just take a look at the “Just in” section and you’ll see what I mean. The barrier to entry for publishing an app is almost non-existent. It’s completely inline with Google’s culture of giving users the power to decide what’s best, but it also detrimental to user experience.
I expect many of these features will be added or fixed over time, but it’s frustrating to see how slow things are moving. While a few months isn’t a long time, and Android certainly has improved a lot over the last few months, it’s still slower than the pace I would expect Google with the best Software Engineers in the world to go. Google’s fast moving startup days are disappearing and with so many products on the market, they’re just beginning to turn into a slow moving but very profitable tech company joining the ranks of Microsoft and IBM. I miss the days when the “don’t be evil” Google was young and quirky where everything they did was golden. And while they’re still the best company in the world, they’re losing their midas touch and as a Google fan, I’m starting to lose hope.
