Google Developers Group
Motorola apps - what is going on?!?
Before you tell me I am totally outdated writing about "DROID 2" I will tell you that I do have Galaxy Tab with Swipe, iPhone 4 without Swipe (!), Nook Color with Honeycomb, Atrix phone for Natalia, so I have a good comparison of devices.
I recently switched from good o' faithful, but now outdated and slow Motorola DROID to Motorola DROID 2 because I just must have the keyboard -- I like the phone and I feel it is an improvement.
Then the Motorola applications started to show horns!
There is a massive amount of USELESS applications installed on my phone that are not good at what they do comparing to standard Android apps, and they are hard to KILL!
1. Battery usage: I am used that DISPLAY is taking most of the battery life and not the background applications that I did not install, which is just wrong! All my social accounts were set up and synchronized a couple days ago, so it is not the first time use, either.
Example of the apps that much much worse than original Google, but which you cannot uninstall:
2. Another point of pain is the HOME menu (PHONE and CONTACTS):
At first this may sound like a good idea; very "social" of Motorola, except.. these icons are almost the same thing!!! Did anyone spend any time on thinking about it, it is totally silly way of using the most important real-estate on the phone! Take a look at the screenshots if you don't believe me:
PHONE ICON:
CONTACTS ICON:
I know someone will argue that this is DIFFERENT way of showing contacts, and that there is value to it...
My answer to it is.. "It is just stupid!"
Putting a PHONE and the BROWSER like in the STANDARD Android is so much more useful, in fact if you want to make it better, make it easily replaceable like on iPhone, because I don't use phone dialer as often as gTalk and I never use Contacts app.
DROID 1 was a mega-hit because it was good and plain vanilla Google Android, I would advise Motorola to spend less time and money on software development and more on hardware, this way maybe it will be cheaper (e.g. Xoom vs. iPod 2 price).
Let me know what you think about manufacturers and carriers stuffing phones with their bloatware.
Does it help them at all to differentiate in a positive way?
Would it be better is they found the best apps that people love and pre-install them, but make them easy to remove?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Natalia Cantemir on -
I totally agree with you. Motorola Attrix has the same bad user experience. I love the device which is light and and gentle and has very good screen. But I do not like the software at all. The same - huge amount of apps I do not need which double themselves, for example the Camera app and Camcorder (which is dedicated only to video) but is the same app. And of course the Contacts next to the Phone are totally useless. I miss the browser! I miss my Droid!
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Permalink Reply by Thien Pham on -
Yep thats why they were going bankrupt before android. What was it motorola razr biggest flop ever so much marketing BS.
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Permalink Reply by Natalia Cantemir on
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I want to show some screens about how the preinstalled apps double themselves. These two apps both take you to the camera with the only difference that Camcorder only records video and the Camera on the right takes photos plus records video. Meanwhile none of them allow you to zoom in or out nor do they suggest how to do it. After googling it I found out that must use the volume button to do it.
I also have two preinstalled apps for news, I am not saying they are good or bad, I just do not need two of them. In most of the News Apps, you add channels which are all the same everywhere.
One of the Motorola's argument why they do not allow to uninstall the apps that come with the phone is that this might damage the operating system. I do not think that News apps is the case, meanwhile I cannot uninstall them.
I also have 2 apps for navigation. The AT&T app says "get your first 30 days free, try a day pass for $2,99".
2 apps for maps
Take a look at the pictures below, from this row I use only Text Messaging and Gmail. The other icons are very confusing and not intuitive. The second one - Messaging is represented by the second picture and contains: the Universal Inbox (the icon with the "e" from the first picture), the gmail twice and of course also listed in the Universal Inbox, Text Messaging, Facebook and Twitter (which are listed in another preinstalled app "Social Networking"). Maybe I am wrong but I think this is way too much.
Thanks to Michael Labowicz, I found out that with the new system update you can uninstall the AT&T apps, but not the Motorola ones of course :).
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Permalink Reply by Uki Dominque Lucas on -
If you have apps that are preinstalled and you cannot remove them please re-tweet this:
Customers are furious: Android pre-installed apps on AT&T, Verizon, Motorola, etc. bit.ly/hMqFM0 #ChicagoAndroid
© 2013 Created by Uki Dominque Lucas.
