Hello
This is not trying to insult anybody on this forum, but i would like to know,
Why it is that on Devices such as Iphone/Android, the apps look good, and are smooth, whereas on windowsmobile they often end up being ugly .
Obviously some are great on windows mobile, and run flawlessly,
however the majority of apps on the internet are unpleasing.
Take for example, towers of hanoi.
I know most will hate the game but oh well.
On the iphone, there are a few apps for towers of hanoi, this being an example
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Now here is the best one available for windows, NOTING IT IS A PAID APP COSTING £6.84
millions of apps are like this, where there is not a satisfactory wm6 equivilant. this is only 1 app i came across in day to day life .
Saying that, most inventive games on iphone dont even have a wm6 equivilant, satisfactory or not.
Please note, i do realize millions of useful apps not available on other platforms are available on wm6, TF3D etc.
However to me ,I am getting annoyed with the lack of nice games for wm6.
Will this change when the windows marketplace is opened properly?
Maybe because WM is designed mainly to be practical? If anyone wants to see gorgeous landscapes simply copy photos of 'em to your phone and view them, on, for example a VGA screen which is incomparable to ****ty HVGA overiszed iPhones screen.
Want more games? Get yourself an emulator, for example SmartGear. It is paid, but (nearly) everything in iphone's app store is paid. After you get the emulator to work you get hundreds of games with excellent playability. But if you want inventions like:
a) pressing onscreen buttons and blowing into the mic to make sound
b) unlocking the screen by removing the simulated fog by your finger
c) game which is clever because its objective is to... press a button! yeah! The longer the better!
sorry, better get yourself an iPhone. If you managed to get this far and you don't want to kill me... wait for MS to designe the UI in a extra shiny finger friendly manner. Most likely developers will follow it.
I actually think a lot of the apps look nice; they could've been nicer, however, i'd prefer function over "form." Also, one of the reasons they don't look very aesthetically pleasing is becasue a lot are .NET applications so they're just there to deliver what the programs offers.
Because it's more difficult...
Because most apps are written by hobbyist programmers and we're forced to use standard .NET controls.
Programming fancy graphics is incredibly difficult and time consuming.
not that i know anything about applications,,
but having to use .net controls sounds pretty ****.
Its just annoying that android and iphone have applications so far ahead of wm.
I think wm6 needs a complete redesign.
Even wm7 shots look dissapointing.
One problem/strength of WM is that it is available running on a diverse range of hardware which is completely opposite to the i-will-ride-on-my-own-bicycle-only-:babycry: philosophy of iPhone. WM apps are designed keeping all these phones in mind, so to let the app get monetized to the max. iPhone apps have the same hardware, as there is only one iPhone, no choice. They have 3D acceleration, Fast processor etc etc on it, so they design graphics heavy apps that will surely run on their one and only target platform. If you have the money, have an iPhone, and play with the apps, if you dont, just f**k off, thats what apple's philosophy is. If you disagree, tell me an apple phone that comes for the price of HTC GENE.
Apps that are targeted for certain WM phones do run with all the iCandy as possible on that phone. I dont have any exact example right now, but i am sure somebody here will provide if needed.
For example, if an app is designed to run on a HTC Touch Pro 2 exclusively, i m sure you'll see much better interface than the one which is designed to run on as many devices as possible, from the low end HTC Gene to ultra high end TouchPro 2.
I hope this will clear things out a bit for everyone.
Just a few corrections of opinion
First off, whoever thinks that attaching some pretty graphics to the screen in .Net/C# is challenging, you seriously need to take more than an introductory class at a community college. It's not hard, you just have to be willing to find the graphics to use. Animation in WM is certainly more daunting and would be far easier to do if MS would have added WPF to the CF 3.5...
...the abundance of abbreviations in that last line just goes to show that programming is getting too annoying
Anyway, to answer one particular point which everybody else glossed over, is that Android ALSO has a lot of pretty apps like the iPhone (even though people ignore it). What people don't talk about is that android actually has it's own interface mechanism a lot like WPF/XAML which is supposed to be very friendly (I haven't really checked yet, but it seems to be popular).
A lot of people blame it on different devices having such different specs. While that SEEMS like a good argument, everybody who says it is blindly babbling without realizing that in 4-5 years the iPhone and Android phones will ALL BE VGA!!!!! If they aren't VGA, then NOBODY WILL BUY THEM!!!!! Hint hint, that means that both of those platforms will suffer the same problem that WM is "credited" with now.
The different resolution quality (VGA vs QVGA) is little more than a matter of releasing the original graphics in multiple sets. The issue of different resolution dimensions (WVGA vs VGA vs other-weird-boxy-GAs) could actually be handled (in most cases) with a simple bit of programming logic in the OnPaint handler.
Now, my answer to the question.....
Fact is, look at the programming communities of Android and iPhone, they both have a massive amount of open source/dev kit type samples, especially focusing heavily on graphics (especially with the iPhone, which focuses almost exclusively on graphics). WM samples tend to focus heavily on systems programming.
One other issue that exists is that interface programming is historically complicated with low-level programming languages. Apple gets by it using a highly customized and extended form of Objective-C. Android solves it with their xaml-like language which makes building the GUI a lot like writing a web page (loose comparison for the less technically inclined, don't flame me over the inaccuracies). Windows Mobile has the .Net framework, which can be made pretty without too much effort, but it suffers from not being fully integrated with the OS, therefore a lot of apps can be sluggish when written in .Net. The other option is to write in C++, which leads us back to the much more complicated UI programming.
There's your REAL reasons. Most programmers either don't have access to (or awareness of) good samples for a lot of the better graphics tricks, and the rest of them don't want to build something that runs too slow that it's going to get tons of complaints. I think there's one other contributing issue, there's not enough people who are willing to get together and partition out the work. It would only take 5-10 decently skilled graphics programmers to work with the high number of skilled systems programmers on this forum and we could see a nearly limitless number of high quality apps that would blow away anything on any of the competing phones.
As a side note, another thought strikes me....I think a LOT of people are waiting on the Tegra chips to start circulating before they start writing a lot. I know that's had me reluctant to put too much work into a few projects.
Because Apple has a bigger line of programmers.
Two aspects I can think of:
Apple has Steve Jobs, who happens to be educated BIG TIME in User Interface. iPhone is specifically designed (H/W and S/W locking together), so achieving it is easier.
WM (we're talking about WM, right?) is still based on PC / Desktop version, and the GUI (up to XP) doesn't change much. I believe 6.5 brings innovation (as I tested some cooked ROM) in smoothing the GUI. However, as an ex UIQ3 user, I believe, even if WM is intended for many devices (more standardized), MS can learn (and seems to be learning) from UIQ. All theme of UIQ changes a lot (scroll bar, text color, background). While for WM, the standard WM 6.1 theme won't even change the white background when we go to 'Setting' for example ..
Just my 2 cents coming from different world
After reading all this i still do not understand why WM apps, not games, are so ugly looking. People can skin various keyboards, Music Players, creat iPhone looking today screens, skin dial pads, calculators etc. Why not simple make the original app good looking? I'm not talking about animations either. Look how much better looking the dialers people are making compared to the standard dialer that some of our phones have like my Touch pro.
I saw someone on this site made a mobile version of Google Translator tool. Its perfect function wise but it could definitely look better. Someone on Ppcgeeks made a movie searching app called Cinemo. It's not ugly but its not as good looking as the Pre's Fandango app. I'm not talking about the Fandango apps function, just the form.
Look how well Weather Panel themes look & how good iContacts look. Why cant WM users have form & functionality?
charm1718 said:
After reading all this i still do not understand why WM apps, not games, are so ugly looking. People can skin various keyboards, Music Players, creat iPhone looking today screens, skin dial pads, calculators etc. Why not simple make the original app good looking? I'm not talking about animations either. Look how much better looking the dialers people are making compared to the standard dialer that some of our phones have like my Touch pro.
I saw someone on this site made a mobile version of Google Translator tool. Its perfect function wise but it could definitely look better. Someone on Ppcgeeks made a movie searching app called Cinemo. It's not ugly but its not as good looking as the Pre's Fandango app. I'm not talking about the Fandango apps function, just the form.
Look how well Weather Panel themes look & how good iContacts look. Why cant WM users have form & functionality?
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Standardisation. There are no default "fancy" controls for either MFC or .NET for Windows Mobile like there are for iPhone (and I assume Android).
To make aesthetically pleasing applications for WM requires the programmer to design their own, making each and every application completely different in appearance. These small changes confuse & irrate most users as they can't find what they're looking for, therefore we just use the default controls instead of wasting time on making it pretty.
Secondly, putting graphics onto the screen is all well and good, but you want your app to run on as many resolutions as possible. That means resizing images (ugh) or having a separate image for each resolution making your application larger (ugh).
Blade0rz said:
Standardisation. There are no default "fancy" controls for either MFC or .NET for Windows Mobile like there are for iPhone (and I assume Android).
To make aesthetically pleasing applications for WM requires the programmer to design their own, making each and every application completely different in appearance. These small changes confuse & irrate most users as they can't find what they're looking for, therefore we just use the default controls instead of wasting time on making it pretty.
Secondly, putting graphics onto the screen is all well and good, but you want your app to run on as many resolutions as possible. That means resizing images (ugh) or having a separate image for each resolution making your application larger (ugh).
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Are all programs skinnable?
I understand that making a program for various resolutions would be tedious but what I dont understand is why do people only make things look good after its seen elsewhwere? Nobody decided to make better looking media player skins until the iPhone came out. This also the same with contacts, dialers & keyboards. If this could have been done before, why wait until someone else does it then copy it?
When I look in Development & Hacking I see apps for specific resolutions. People post asking for different resolutions and someone else might make the changes if they have a device with that resolution. Is there something the developer has to do on his end to make an app skinnable or can they all be skinned?
charm1718 said:
Are all programs skinnable?
I understand that making a program for various resolutions would be tedious but what I dont understand is why do people only make things look good after its seen elsewhwere? Nobody decided to make better looking media player skins until the iPhone came out. This also the same with contacts, dialers & keyboards. If this could have been done before, why wait until someone else does it then copy it?
When I look in Development & Hacking I see apps for specific resolutions. People post asking for different resolutions and someone else might make the changes if they have a device with that resolution. Is there something the developer has to do on his end to make an app skinnable or can they all be skinned?
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Skins have to be implemented by the developer. Although, all images that are used within a program have to be stored somewhere (either within the program itself or on your device) so those images can be found & replaced as many people on this board do. This does take some knowledge though.
And the reason people only came out with nice-looking interfaces after the iPhone is because it was innovative. It's a lot easier to copy an interface than it is to pick a design out of your brain & implement it from scratch
There's several reasons why WM has a lot of ugliness in its apps.
One is due to the UI itself. Non-fullscreen apps have both a top and bottom bar cluttering the screen and apps are rarely built to "match" the existing bars. The iPhone has less screen real estate taken up by the UI, so developers can control the look a bit more. Also, as I understand it, WM offers uglier barebones formatting. The iPhone gives devs access to prettier standard controls, menus, and fonts, whereas WM devs start with ugly and aliased controls and the like.
One reason is due to age -- WM has been around a (relatively) long time and many of the apps you're seeing were designed for devices with weaker visual capabilities and were also designed when the mobile app market was smaller and less competitive, so there was less incentive to make things pretty.
Another reason is due to the fact that a lot of WM apps are made by very amateur developers who simply don't have the training and know-how to pretty things up. WM, as a platform, seems most popular amongst IT workers, geeks, and tweakers. This is why there's tons of powerful, functional apps out there -- but a lot of us geeks don't know much about design. I, unfortunately, know about design but not programming.
I really didn't know who and what to quote, too many thoughts, so I'm just kinda re-reading the page and commenting back as I go. Sorry it's super long
charm1718 said:
Someone on Ppcgeeks made a movie searching app called Cinemo. It's not ugly but its not as good looking as the Pre's Fandango app. I'm not talking about the Fandango apps function, just the form.
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You compare the Cinemo app made by a single unpaid developer against a corporately paid group of developers with pre-defined branding, graphics, and an advertising department (read: designers) under Fandango. That's a bit unfair
Ignoring function, most people on here could steal the graphics and duplicate the app's look.
Blade0rz said:
To make aesthetically pleasing applications for WM requires the programmer to design their own, making each and every application completely different in appearance. These small changes confuse & irrate most users as they can't find what they're looking for, therefore we just use the default controls instead of wasting time on making it pretty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is untrue. This is a now ancient viewpoint that's still held from the days of windows 3.x when everybody was tired and confused by the wildly bad interfaces that existed for business apps which took weeks and months to learn basic function. Sure, people want to have SOME consistency with their apps like how to close it or how to find menus, but an easy interface doesn't need to use only basic controls. If this were true, then each of the new mobile os's that come out would have failed since none of their interfaces match the other phones before them. The best designs offer more graphics than text, a more interactive and direct way of achieving tasks, and having as many options without cluttering the screen or adding more taps.
charm1718 said:
...what I dont understand is why do people only make things look good after its seen elsewhwere? Nobody decided to make better looking media player skins until the iPhone came out. This also the same with contacts, dialers & keyboards. If this could have been done before, why wait until someone else does it then copy it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also untrue. Sure, the amount of skinning went way up after the iPhone, there's been skinning on the media player for years. There's also been 3rd party apps that are far more attractive and functional for contacts and keyboards. The reason most people didn't see this is that these were usually paid apps or poorly advertised amidst hundreds of garbage apps on various repositories of shareware trash that people posted for WinMo.
typo said:
One is due to the UI itself. Non-fullscreen apps have both a top and bottom bar cluttering the screen and apps are rarely built to "match" the existing bars. The iPhone has less screen real estate taken up by the UI, so developers can control the look a bit more. Also, as I understand it, WM offers uglier barebones formatting. The iPhone gives devs access to prettier standard controls, menus, and fonts, whereas WM devs start with ugly and aliased controls and the like
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WinMo developers can hide the top and bottom bars fairly easily (especially in .Net), so screen real estate is still available. I think many times we don't because we don't want to take away the legitimate use of those bars. As to the rest of what you said, spot on...the controls are ugly as opposed to the prettier ones built into other OS's. But remember what it was like to move from windows 98 (or 2000) to XP, the same thing will happen as winmo updates it's own UI libraries.
typo said:
Another reason is due to the fact that a lot of WM apps are made by very amateur developers who simply don't have the training and know-how to pretty things up. WM, as a platform, seems most popular amongst IT workers, geeks, and tweakers. This is why there's tons of powerful, functional apps out there -- but a lot of us geeks don't know much about design. I, unfortunately, know about design but not programming.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very true, since the educated among us were never given serious classes on UI Design or Graphics Programming. The amateurs are stumbling through even a lot of the functional stuff. The hackers are usually good at changing something, but they can't create something new.
You also say something that brings up a subject I've complained about before (and is part of an argument I've made MANY times that we need a full-scale section just for development/programming instead of the single D&H sub-section we have now). There's a lot of people on here that are good at the functional programming. There's also a few (far less) who are good at the graphics programming. There's also a ton of people who are very good at graphic design and photoshop. A LOT of the apps that are released on here have terrible UI's because the people with functional knowledge don't take/have the time to make it pretty while at the same time those with graphic programming skill are wasting weeks trying to make their program functional while it's got a great UI already done. The two types need to work together and we could easily dominate anything ever done for any mobile OS out there.
btw, I want to add my own personal complaint. One of the most performant and potentially best looking API's belongs to OpenGL ES, which is a 3d rendering functionality all of our phones have built into the recent MSM chipsets. The problem is, only some phones have working drivers, and even less have efficient drivers. I would love to use OpenGL ES to write half of the stuff I want to, but I can't do that with any expectation of it being able to run decently on any phone older than the Diamond...and that's just among HTC phones...There's no certainty of any other handset having proper function or speed. This, to me, is one of the biggest setbacks and prevents a lot of devs from aiming high.
Thank you for clearing some things up. It would be great if the programmers and graphic designers could work together on more projects.
charm1718 said:
Thank you for clearing some things up. It would be great if the programmers and graphic designers could work together on more projects.
Click to expand...
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I'd like to get all three working together on projects. There's a few people who really know how to build the UI code, and there's a few wildly talented people who can put together graphics.
The thing I'd really like to do is get an organized team of people set up to work on projects, similar to how it would be done in any professional shop. A few guys who know systems/db/back-end coding, a few UI experts, and a few graphic designers. Baring that, at least get a list of people who would offer to join in on projects as they were put together.
speed_pour said:
I'd like to get all three working together on projects. There's a few people who really know how to build the UI code, and there's a few wildly talented people who can put together graphics.
The thing I'd really like to do is get an organized team of people set up to work on projects, similar to how it would be done in any professional shop. A few guys who know systems/db/back-end coding, a few UI experts, and a few graphic designers. Baring that, at least get a list of people who would offer to join in on projects as they were put together.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you reached out to anyone & tried putting something like this together?
charm1718 said:
Have you reached out to anyone & tried putting something like this together?
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I've suggested it once before. For reasons that are too varied to get into right now, I expect that it would run into some complications on this forum.
With my current constraints (lack of gainful employment), I'm reluctant to get too deeply involved in organizing such a project unless it had the potential of turning profits. I do see a lot of potential in forming a group that produced both freeware/open source apps along with some commercial apps...I would be happy to be involved in that venture. If any serious developers are interested in a project like this, I would certainly find the time to organize and also be a developer.
Okay, let's gather some data. I want to know what the majority at XDA find that they rely on the most on a smart-phone?
Take the poll and look at the results.
To those of you who aren't sure what they find the most important feature for them, here is a short criteria list:
Personal Information Management
Calendar
Contacts
Notes
Tasks
To-do
Finances
Passwords
Reminders
Communication
Call Quality & Clearness
QWERTY Keyboard
Phone Log
Email and Messaging Compatibility
Travel and Assistant
Dictionary
Calculator
Unit Converter
Bar-code Scanner
GPS
Alarm Clock
Encyclopedia via Web
Multimedia
Music
Video
Picture
Entertainment via Web
Games
File management
Speaker Quality and Loudness
Camera & Audio Recorder
Sound Recordings
Captured Pictures
Recorded Videos
Productivity
Word documents
Spreadsheets
Presentations
Other Documents
Audio Editor
Video Editor
Image Editor
Computer Programming
I am also working on a personal project and I need help from anyone who is willing to participate. I would like to organize a list for smart phone criteria. I want to correctly categorize each feature and sub-feature to the correct and most APPROPRIATE parent category. I will take the suggestions of each new post. And I do hope that at least a few of you participate in the poll and also give me other features to add to the list and give me category advice.
If I had to pick just one then I suppose I'd say communication; but I think this poll kind of misses the point, to be honest: the reason I want a smartphone is precisely the fact that it is NOT limited to just one set of functions. If it only did one of those six things then I wouldn't buy it regardless of which of the six it is. The fact that it does all six is what's important.
Shasarak said:
If I had to pick just one then I suppose I'd say communication; but I think this poll kind of misses the point, to be honest: the reason I want a smartphone is precisely the fact that it is NOT limited to just one set of functions. If it only did one of those six things then I wouldn't buy it regardless of which of the six it is. The fact that it does all six is what's important.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The point of this thread is to see what users like the most, so people (the ones who make your phone) can decide what is trendy right now. If they know what is trendy, they can spend a bit more time on improving something that is currently in demand, and less time on the less desirable features. They can also look at the smallest probabilities and see why people do not like that feature. Maybe then, they would understand why people don't use the feature. Then they can make decisions on not what is most beneficial to improve, but on what NEEDS improvement. Keep in mind that time is always moving forward so distributing equal attention and work on all features is probably uneconomical. Of course, this is only a personal experiment. Sorry, people.
I didn't ask what makes a smart phone essential (as in necessary). I asked, what is the feature that is most essential (ahem... useful and most addicting) to you.
Ya know, I am fairly certain that I use PIM more than Communication. If a smart-phone specializes in every feature such as awesome communication capabilities, awesome recording capabilities, and awesome multimedia capability, but fails to implement useful PIM management buttons/software/capabilities, then I would look for another phone. But if it only had an awesome PIM implementation than I wouldn't buy it because a smart-phone is an all-in-one device. So your point is invalid to me, and would make sense on a topic talking about how useless every other feature--except communication--is.
Please, reconsider the fact that I said smart-phone. I said nothing about travel phones, basic phones, business phones, or multimedia/music phones, or camera phones. I mean okay, maybe there is a phone that you like and think that is a perfect 10 for each category. But considering that all features are really good, I WILL still ask you what do you like the most about it? It's so simple, that I am don't know why you have to deviate from the purpose of this poll.
Otherwise, you are saying that your preference on a phone is perfectly and equally distributed. That would mean you love PIM 16%, Communication 16%, Travel and Assistant 16%, Multimedia 16%, Camera & Recorder 16%, and Productivity 16%. This is impossible in the real world.
So my topic absolutely makes sense. I think YOU are missing the point.
Please vote people. Thanks.
I'm guessing this is harder than it seems to a digitial signal processing, software engineering type like me, and that's why it hasn't been done.
Some will say, "why don't you take it on and contribute?" I very well may, when I can carve out the time to learn what I need to know. Unfortunately, that's not on the horizon atm.
So, what's the request? We all know that the sound subsystem is very primitive. Quiet source media, particularly AC3-encoded sound from video media, can be annoyingly quiet even over headphones at full volume.
The device would benefit immensely with just two simple enhancements: A pre-amp, and a balance control. In the digital domain, these two filters are trivial to implement. So, if there is a chained filter architecture to the sound system, similar to that in Windows, this should be dead-simple to implement. There's plenty of public domain GPL code out there already to leverage.
Even without a filter architecture, still implementing something like this shouldn't be too hard. I'm thinking of a settings interface where sliders control pre-amp boost and balance.
Now, even better would be to add level normalization (an AGC). Even better than that would be an equalizer. All of this, again, can be leveraged from public-domain code.
The ultimate would be a port of SRS/WOW functionality. This is probably a pipe-dream. But I thought I'd mention it. This is not open-source, public domain code, so I have no idea how it might be done, other than finding a way to wrap the WM driver and making to work in Linux (do-able, but not easy).
dwallersv said:
Even without a filter architecture, still implementing something like this shouldn't be too hard. I'm thinking of a settings interface where sliders control pre-amp boost and balance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like this?
Doesn't appear to have a balance control from the screen shots, although ALSA does do that.
In general much of what you ask for can be done with plugins for ALSA. It's a matter of exposing it with a simple-to-use interface.
I couldn't get MixGet to work with 2.2. But maybe I was doing something wrong... I'll try some things..
mkasick said:
Like this?
Doesn't appear to have a balance control from the screen shots, although ALSA does do that.
In general much of what you ask for can be done with plugins for ALSA. It's a matter of exposing it with a simple-to-use interface.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks so much for this pointer. I'd searched Market a month ago when I first got my Epic looking for something like this and couldn't find it.
This handles 90% of the problem. Balance and an EQ would take care of the rest.
I found the ALSA prject Wiki... I'll take a look at this and see if maybe I can hack up an interface to make some of these more advanced features work. Don't hold your breath, gang -- I'm severely limited in time right now, but the holiday season is upon us, and I'll have some time to screw around...
I spoke too soon.
Unfortunately, MixGet isn't a general audio system solution, but apparently needs to be explicitly implemented to support specific apps. It boosts audio nicely for the music player, but had no effect at all for yxplayer (a streaming video player) -- and that's where I really need it!
However, boosting audio independent of the target app itself (i.e. no modification to the app is necessary -- it's unaware of what's been done to crank up the volume) is possible, so it's certainly possible to do this on a system-wide basis.
I saw some references to voodoo-audio working on some things like this. Anyone know what's going on there? I tried to find some stuff with a quick internet search, and could only find an SVN source management page.
tl;dr I'm new, I'm not a very knowledgeable developer, I have an idea that I want your opinion about.
Heyo Peoples,
I'm new and I like to think a lot about cool new stuff with mobile devices (web, software, hardware, etc). I've been thinking a lot recently about how people like to use mobile devices, and how we might use them in the near future--thinking past what's being done now, and into what comes next.
I've been wondering for a while why there isn't an existing piece of functionality on mobile devices that allows a user complete control of the device and every piece of information on it. Imagine a GUI except instead of graphics, it's like interacting with a person. (aside: first person to say Siri should be shunned like an Amish girl who went to a movie theater).
Is it outrageous to say that you should be able to pick up your phone and have it find anything, from anytime in the past that you have done with or on it? I know that would take mountains of data, but is it silly? In it's most basic form, this would just be a search feature. In it's most eloquent form it could be an operating system. Imagine being able to ask your phone what you did last Wednesday, or maybe where you were. What if it could recall emails or documents based on date, time, location where you were when you wrote it, keyword, or contact, based on verbal interaction? What if it tracked data usage by application, or allowed you to measure and optimize system performance with a verbal command (ex. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" or "How much data am I using per minute").
Is it too early to start wishing for an interface like that computer on Paycheck (horrible movie with Ben Afleck) or Cortana in Halo? Is this type of interface impractical or implausible?
If you were to make something like this, would it have to be a new operating system built from the ground up, or could you develop an app to do this, or could you hack Android to do it? I welcome all of your feedback.
Lots of questions, and I have very few answers.
Jujubes said:
tl;dr I'm new, I'm not a very knowledgeable developer, I have an idea that I want your opinion about.
Heyo Peoples,
I'm new and I like to think a lot about cool new stuff with mobile devices (web, software, hardware, etc). I've been thinking a lot recently about how people like to use mobile devices, and how we might use them in the near future--thinking past what's being done now, and into what comes next.
I've been wondering for a while why there isn't an existing piece of functionality on mobile devices that allows a user complete control of the device and every piece of information on it. Imagine a GUI except instead of graphics, it's like interacting with a person. (aside: first person to say Siri should be shunned like an Amish girl who went to a movie theater).
Is it outrageous to say that you should be able to pick up your phone and have it find anything, from anytime in the past that you have done with or on it? I know that would take mountains of data, but is it silly? In it's most basic form, this would just be a search feature. In it's most eloquent form it could be an operating system. Imagine being able to ask your phone what you did last Wednesday, or maybe where you were. What if it could recall emails or documents based on date, time, location where you were when you wrote it, keyword, or contact, based on verbal interaction? What if it tracked data usage by application, or allowed you to measure and optimize system performance with a verbal command (ex. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" or "How much data am I using per minute").
Is it too early to start wishing for an interface like that computer on Paycheck (horrible movie with Ben Afleck) or Cortana in Halo? Is this type of interface impractical or implausible?
If you were to make something like this, would it have to be a new operating system built from the ground up, or could you develop an app to do this, or could you hack Android to do it? I welcome all of your feedback.
Lots of questions, and I have very few answers.
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This is probably not as far off as it seems. The developers of "Utter" have come along way in the right direction. You should maybe approach them with your ideas. Not all of them of course . Save some for yourself.
One problem I see is semantics. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" sounds good - but do you really mean ALL apps ? The line that would be walked is one where the developer must train the program to not necessarily do what they ask, but do what they WANT. It gets trickier when you realise that some people who aren't your average users might want to test things and shut down an app (in this case) that an average user would never want shut, where they might mess up their phone beyond their ability to repair if they did.
I think speech is a great tool to interact, though I'm not going to be a person to use it. I don't think speech will ever become a default unless there are other technological advances that change how we interact with the world. It's annoying enough to hear someone gabbing loudly to another human on the phone, do we really want people gabbing AT their phones as a default interface ? I think privacy is a driving factor that will keep sound from being a major interface - perhaps it could work for in home applications, but out in public people may not want to announce to the world who they are calling, what they are looking for, or what site they're logging on to, et cetera. Until there's technology to make voice and sound less "public", I don't see this being the future of phones - it's more of a nice thing to have as an "extra" for when a person is comfortable using it.
But, hey, maybe we'll get used to wearing Google Glass and talking to ourselves all the time - or we'll get in-ear buds or implants where we can choose to hear the outside world or not. Just exploring the possibilities here.
I do think it's a big "outrageous" to have infinite backup. Just take a look at how much data companies like Amazon and Facebook acquire on a per-day basis. Think about how much data you use on a daily basis. I don't have the money or desire to be buying new HDDs every other week. Maybe in the future there will be a technological revolution that allows for mass amounts of data to be stored in even smaller spaces. But current technology in that regard is still very expensive and persnickety - read about high capacity SD cards and how fragile they can be and about data needing to be "refreshed" or they can become corrupt. There are lots of issues that make backing up everything you do impracticable.
And, again - privacy concerns. Do I really want my computer to know what I did last Wednesday and who I was with ? What if someone stole my computer or phone and had access to that information ? If we had the technology to do that, who's to say that current encryption would be "enough" - or that someone wouldn't go ahead and try to hack it anyway if they felt finding out basically everything about you was worth brute-forcing your phone or whatever they'd do in the future ? And have no password or a crappy one - even easier for them to know EVERYTHING about you, now.
Highly visual and talk-activated computers are absolutely great for games, movies, and TV. Why ? They function as narrative devices. They allow the actor to say or explain things they otherwise wouldn't have said out loud for personal, practical, or security reasons. They can become characters in their own right. People like those big screen computer displays where the characters are poking things all over and up and down - it looks cool. But not so cool is having your arms get tired from reaching up and around all the time. Not so cool is having to tell the computer out loud what kind of special images you want to search for when you have house-mates living in the next room over.
Just some thoughts. If you have other or counter ideas, go right on ahead.
Hello, first off I'd like to say I'm sorry if this is in the wrong section, but anyways, I'm trying to get things situated the way I like on my phone and I'm currently trying to figure out how best to achieve what I want while simultaneously having some fun learning and coding. In short my goal here is to combine my favorite aspects of AOSP roms and specifically the LiquidSmooth rom as that is currently one of my favorite AOSP roms I've tried on my s3. Also just fyi I'm currently running CleanRom right now because there are a couple features within touchwiz I'm having difficulty losing and as such I would like to start designing several modifications for a Rom.
The primary thing I really love within touchwiz is the lock screen. I like how I can swipe from anywhere on the screen to unlock my phone as well as the app shortcut mechanism, and while within cleanrom this has changed I also really liked how the sms and missed call notification was separate from the app shortcut bar in order to make it stand out. I'm also a really big fan of the swipe left and right for phone and messages within any samsung app that displays a contact or contact's thread (I wouldn't mind just having this within the people app but either way it'd be nice). There are also a couple motion actions I really like, particularly: direct call (call contact currently open in sms thread or contact card), smart alert (alerts you when you pick device up after a missed notification), and smart stay (attempts to detect if eyes are currently looking at the screen (this one I really just want more in depth look even if I can't incorporate it since it’s rather fascinating). And I also like the power saving profile that is within both the system settings and notification bar that is tied to an on/off switch instead of a change of actual profiles (just a preference here not really a necessity).
On the AOSP/liquidsmooth side of things the first thing is just the clean crisp and quick feel that AOSP roms seem to have (and no I’m not ruling out placebo effect but it does seem to feel less clogged). One of the main areas that I really love within Liquidsmooth is its notification bar. It is a very clean yet still attractive notification bar that is full of features (many AOSP but others that are more attributed to liquid). For example, something missing in CleanRom and potentially other touchwiz roms is the expanded notifications that include buttons such as reply, call etc. Though, one area in which I do prefer touchwiz is how they separate ongoing and notifications. Another thing that liquid has that I haven’t really seen elsewhere is the LTE toggle which I’d like to put in any and all roms I’m running just due to the battery drain caused by LTE radios (also wouldn’t mind adding longpress hidden menu to the toggle). Also I really like the quick reply function in liquid that shows a popup to quickly reply to text messages without leaving your current screen. Another area I feel Liquidsmooth really shines is its integration of settings into a sub menu within system settings because it just feels more natural and organized.
I’m listing all of these things because I’m trying to figure out how you guys would recommend approaching the rather large, for me at least, task here. Of note, while, I understand coding principles, debugging, style, the importance of commenting etc. I’m fairly new to setting up plans of attack on larger projects (my most recent project, designing an audio analyzer on fpga board using vhdl took several weeks to get anywhere major due to a difficulty of mine in finding where to start). That isn’t to say I don’t think I can do it, but I like to be as honest as possible so you know where I am personally. But yeah I would really appreciate any help or direction in achieving these goals. I know these things could probably be achieved by various hack job methods, but I’ve always preferred clean, from the ground up, complete and stable solutions but that by definitely doesn’t mean I’m against building off of previous work and improving the open source community. With all of that said what do you guys think? Should I start this project with a CleanRom base or a LiquidSmooth/AOSP base and modify them from there or start from a more blank slate and compile an entire Rom. Also, I really would like to start getting more and more into the android development scene as well as further my knowledge and skill base. I’m currently a computer engineering student with the intentions of heading into mobile computing either in operating system design or processor design though obviously the specific specialty could change a little though it will likely stay within mobile devices. I would consider myself generally proficient in C (and by corollary C++), VHDL and VB (cue VB flame comments ), but I would consider myself very good at learning new things and I have a very base understanding of other languages. Like I said my main goal with this post is guidance in how to start and in general go about accomplishing the above tasks. This is honestly one of my few forays into larger scale projects and my first android project, so any help, criticism, reference suggestions or advice is more than welcome.
Sorry for being so long winded but I’ve never been very good about keeping discussions about my favorite things short or to the point… especially when the topic is android… But I digress; Thank you those who read this and again sorry for the length…