Froyo 2.2 UX Review
I installed the Android Froyo 2.2 update yesterday on my nexus one and thought I would share some initial thoughts on what I like and more importantly what I don’t. I will only touch on the main UI for now. I know many of the stock apps received updates, but they don’t relate to the core OS which is what I want to review today.
Things I like
The system is much snappier. The first thing I noticed when scrolling the home screen was how it was finally smooth. I didn’t feel like the glass was resisting what I was trying to do and as a result found that i was using a lot less pressure than before on the screen.
This is important since our natural reaction to something “resisting” your movement is to apply more force. This might be an interesting metric to be able to analyse how much a user thinks the UI is fighting their actions.
The second thing I like are the UI changes adding dedicated phone and browser buttons that appear on every pane. The browser button is especially appreciated as I jump into the browser all the time.
Javascript performance is greatly increased. This is fantastic news as I am on the HTML5 mobile web app bandwagon and this represents a big step forward. This is one of the best changes from a platform perspective as it empowers developers to take their HTML5 apps to the next level.
Folders are another great addition to help keep everything organized. I dropped all my games into one folder, my food apps into another and my system admin apps in a third. This cut down on the number of icons on the home screens and freed up room for more widgets.
Widgets are one of the features that set android apart from iOS4 so anything that frees up home screen space is a good thing.
Things I Don’t Like
Froyo isn’t without its warts though. The general UX inconsistencies are still there and unsurprisingly made their way into the new folder feature.
The expected behaviour of all android phones is that hitting the home button on your phone brings you to the center pane of the phone with your app closed.
For some inexplicable reason Froyo threw this convention out the window when they were designing folders. When you hit the home button nothing happens. No tactile feedback, no going to the home screen. The phone just sits there until you decide to hit the back button. Why on earth they decided to disable the home button functionality in folders is beyond me and could have been found by a database guy who knows nothing about UX design.
This is my biggest gripe about android. The UX is still horribly inconsistent and until they get it together they will be a distant third compared to iOS4 and webOS. Lets hope that Matias Duarte (recently hired away from palm) can beat some sense into the UX team over there because it’s still pure amateur hour.
In Closing
Despite the problems with android’s UX I think the Froyo 2.2 update brings many great things to the table. This release was more about getting a rock solid system out in terms of speed and smoothness. In that capacity it achieves top marks.
I can only hope the next pass at android fixes the horrible UX inconsistencies that still exist in the system. Android’s next giant leap forward lies solely in the hands of Matias.