Android Rendered

Android Rendered

I have been using an Android phone, specifically a black Vodafone HTC Magic -with the known RAM memory reduction up to 192MB- the last three months and I can say that Google Android’s OS is the near future of phones and is the right path to follow for the rest of companies, but as far as I am concern it is not ready, not yet, not enough.

Good and/or amazing things: Integration with Google is terrific, fast and wonderful! Calendars, contacts and e-mails are completely synchronized (even more amazing if you use a Mac and the software Spanning Sync). In addition, the OS has been nicely developed, is intuitive and all the Android Market and widgets is almost perfect. Finally I can not complaint about the Vodafone Spain’s data plan -paying 12€+IVA per month you have 250MB that I have never used up, with good speed.

But, with the 1.5 version (Cupcake) of Google Android’s OS it has some important issues to fix:

  1. Speed: With the hardware on this phone, everything should be faster, faster, faster but it is slow … even when you are writing a text, that is ridiculous. Have you ever tried an iPhone (no matter the version)? No comments.
  2. Battery consumption: What is the idea of a useful gadget for HTC+Android? If you are using your phone to read some e-mails, browse the web and play with a couple of apps, your battery will endure no more than 24-36 hours. Imagine what happens when you take some photos with the integrated camera and have 3-7 widgets working -or the GPS function!- that is ridiculous again.
  3. Firmware: Maybe it is not the firmware neither the -Google Android- OS nor the -HTC- hardware but elements like the 3.2MP camera should work fast and with a good quality however the camera is slow to take photos and even slower to record, with sad results. There are simple phones from 2006 giving better results as a camera or even “worst” phones from HTC -like the HTC Diamond- with high quality results. Because all of this I think the firmware of this elements -maybe the OS- is not worked enough.
HTC Magic smartphone with Vodafone

HTC Magic smartphone with Vodafone

For instance I have been trying the HTC Hero -from Orange Spain-, with a better hardware and the problems are almost the same. All that things make me think about the post’s title: Android is not ready. And I do not think it is a hardware problem ;)

Nonetheless I hope next versions of Android OS (revision 1.6 or version 2.0 (aka Donut)) will revive my love for this platform because it’s worth (GNU/Linux on the background). Meanwhile I will keep using an unripe version of this “magic” phone.

Update 21/10/2009: The auto-update of my Magic to v1.6 makes it a bit faster, improving specially: Camera, Market and “spotlight”. I like it!