Why do iPhone apps look so much better?

[Sodner]

I love android and all it stands for, but I have noticed that the apps tend to be uglier than their iPhone counterparts. Take FourSquare for example, the iPhone application is really gorgeous while the Android version is much more bland.

Are these simply design choices by developers, or is there something inherent in the OS that prevents visual improvements?

I think its partly due to the "openness" some are so happy about. Add that to no application review / approval process your left with apps that have no similar look or feel. As well as some that just don't work and / or do not look appealing.

I think apple has standards that everyone MUST follow giving their apps a similar look and feel. Wish Android could have that and still be "open."

 

[New2u]

I love android and all it stands for, but I have noticed that the apps tend to be uglier than their iPhone counterparts. Take FourSquare for example, the iPhone application is really gorgeous while the Android version is much more bland.

Are these simply design choices by developers, or is there something inherent in the OS that prevents visual improvements?

I think its partly due to the "openness" some are so happy about. Add that to no application review / approval process your left with apps that have no similar look or feel. As well as some that just don't work and / or do not look appealing.

I think apple has standards that everyone MUST follow giving their apps a similar look and feel. Wish Android could have that and still be "open."

I think that might be part of the issue, but i think alot of it is really the time it takes to put an app out. There are some iphone games that look horrible also, and there are some that look amazing. The difference is that iphone has a lot more of a selection to choose from right now, so your seeing a lot of games that may have taken a long time to produce. The droids are fairly new in the the main stream so its taken longer for some higher game developers to jump on ship. There are some really awesome games for the droid, which was pointed out in one of the news articles. The look and feel of games and apps all falls on the developers, so far i've seen nothing to really stop the developers from production identical games with identical looks.

 

[qoncept]

Dang...sorry

It was a mistake...I can see that

Gotcha. Yours wasn't completely wrong, but a lot of people are spreading things they heard as fact. Think about a airplane. You ride in the cabin (internal memory). You can bring your luggage in a carryon (still in internal memory) or a suitcase that you check (SD memory). If you're good at it, you can fit as much as you want by taking advantage of checked bags. If not, you're going to waste more space in the cabin. Some developers create HUGE apps that need to sit in your SD, some are thoughtful and use the SD.

I feel like restricting apps to internal memory was a terrible decision by Google. For a bunch of apps that show appointments, take notes and update settings on your phone, its fine. For games, 256mb is pathetic. Store your levels on the SD card, sure, but the engines are going to be big if any advanced games ever come out.

Here's my feeling on why Android apps are ugly:
Games - There just aren't that many developers right now. There are a few pretty games, but there aren't any kickass 3d graphics right now because the people that can afford to develop them haven't yet. Remains to be seen if they will. Then of course there's the storage issue.

Other apps - 1) Apple does have slightly better looking buttons and such. But that isn't the main problem. The problem with most ugly Android apps is just bad UI design. Not the way buttons and such look, but how they're layed out and used. Part of it is because of the limited time, but more importantly..
2) ..and you're not going to like it, but it's Apple's control over the app store. Ugly ass, crappy apps don't make it. On the Android market, anything makes it.

What the Android Market really needs is a better front end with more advanced searching. You should be able to ignore apps with less than 3 stars, or that aren't free, or by certain developers. And you should be able to browse on a PC. The Market front end is probably the worst app on Android.

 

[Scribble]

I think people also have to remember that when someone designs an iPhone app, they know the specs of the phone they're designing for. The iPhone...

Unfortunately the open nature of Android is both a blessing and a curse in this instance, because when someone designs an app for android it might be used on a Droid, or a Nexus One, or an Eris, or any other of the android phones... all with different specs and capabilities.

And I think that a lot of the people out there designing apps, want the most amount of people they can get using their app... so they'll have to design pretty much for the weakest link. :-/

 

[Technoman]

Dang...sorry

It was a mistake...I can see that

Gotcha. Yours wasn't completely wrong, but a lot of people are spreading things they heard as fact. Think about a airplane. You ride in the cabin (internal memory). You can bring your luggage in a carryon (still in internal memory) or a suitcase that you check (SD memory). If you're good at it, you can fit as much as you want by taking advantage of checked bags. If not, you're going to waste more space in the cabin. Some developers create HUGE apps that need to sit in your SD, some are thoughtful and use the SD.

I feel like restricting apps to internal memory was a terrible decision by Google. For a bunch of apps that show appointments, take notes and update settings on your phone, its fine. For games, 256mb is pathetic. Store your levels on the SD card, sure, but the engines are going to be big if any advanced games ever come out.

Here's my feeling on why Android apps are ugly:
Games - There just aren't that many developers right now. There are a few pretty games, but there aren't any kickass 3d graphics right now because the people that can afford to develop them haven't yet. Remains to be seen if they will. Then of course there's the storage issue.

Other apps - 1) Apple does have slightly better looking buttons and such. But that isn't the main problem. The problem with most ugly Android apps is just bad UI design. Not the way buttons and such look, but how they're layed out and used. Part of it is because of the limited time, but more importantly..
2) ..and you're not going to like it, but it's Apple's control over the app store. Ugly ass, crappy apps don't make it. On the Android market, anything makes it.

What the Android Market really needs is a better front end with more advanced searching. You should be able to ignore apps with less than 3 stars, or that aren't free, or by certain developers. And you should be able to browse on a PC. The Market front end is probably the worst app on Android.

You can browse on a PC at Androlib.com. The QR code is there to initiate a download so that you don't have to search for it a second time on your phone. I do a lot of reviewing of the APP's on my PC, and then decide what I may want to try.

 

[DigiK]

Nothing to do with hardware limitations; it's all whether the developer places an emphasis on visual aesthetics or not. Apple happens to force the issue via their market/software development policies. Apple provide a wide-range of native buttons and icons. The system even automatically 'glosses up' launcher icons. See here: iPhone Dev Center: iPhone Human Interface Guidelines: Creating Custom Icons and Images
Google provides guidelines and templates but not libraries; nor do they strictly enforce aesthetic rules. I'll take the wild west over the republic any day.

 

[Scribble]

Nothing to do with hardware limitations; it's all whether the developer places an emphasis on visual aesthetics or not. Apple happens to force the issue via their market/software development policies. Apple provide a wide-range of native buttons and icons. The system even automatically 'glosses up' launcher icons. See here: iPhone Dev Center: iPhone Human Interface Guidelines: Creating Custom Icons and Images
Google provides guidelines and templates but not libraries; nor do they strictly enforce aesthetic rules. I'll take the wild west over the republic any day.

So you feel something designed to take advantage of what the droid can display, would look equally good on the eris screen?

 

[DigiK]

Well, the problem lies with display dot pitch. Obviously the more pixels you have per unit square area, the more detail you will be able to display. There's no reason a Droid Eris can't have equally as nice visuals as an iPhone given their similar resolutions; it just comes down to whether the UI designer takes the time to create an optimized set for that resolution, which can include proportionally enlarging the elements or adjusting lineweights/color contrast, etc.. If no optimization is done, you're going to see a slight loss of fidelity if the UI is merely down-sampled to fit.

Currently, I'm working with Gary to develop a new look for xScope; we're targeting high density resolution devices (240dpi) Droid & Nexus, but will also be testing and optimizing for display on standard resolution (160 dpi) devices.

 

[qoncept]

You can browse on a PC at Androlib.com. The QR code is there to initiate a download so that you don't have to search for it a second time on your phone. I do a lot of reviewing of the APP's on my PC, and then decide what I may want to try.

The only reason I use Androlib at all is because there is absolutely no other option. It's the bad experience of trying to browse the market on the phone translated perfectly to your PC. And there are so many ads its hard to even read. Google should have a good option. Why they have a site that shows you about 20 apps but not all of them is waaaay beyond me.

 

[kristoff125]

but we can overclock our droid to 1.1ghz, iphone can't, therefore we can, once they are developed, run better apps more smoothly.

 

[M Diddy]

but we can overclock our droid to 1.1ghz, iphone can't, therefore we can, once they are developed, run better apps more smoothly.

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the question at hand. The Devs do not take overclocked phones into consideration when designing apps you ****....

Edit: Let's Play Nice....

 

[Sleeve]

Two words: Space Physics.

One level is built into the APK, 40 levels in a free download pack from the market install to the SD card.

Major corporate devs who have been building to a monolithic storage model need to look at what Camel Games are doing.

Electrum Drum Machine. Reasonable APK, over 200mb in downloadable sample packs.

I'm at 32mb remaining on my Droid right now, and pretty soon I'll be uninstalling games as new games and apps come out that I want to try. I've already started emailing devs that have larger APKs than what would normally make sense. I've already taken a few passes at deleting novelty apps and selecting one best of class app in cases where I have a few that are similar, like Where and Aloqa.

What bugs me is when technically competent people like the Sholes team are stuck with an almost 6mb SMUpdater APK. I'm sure they don't want a 6mb APK, and that the file would be smaller if it could be. Now take devs that are just coming over to Android, and you can expect their frustration when they try to build an installer and it takes a quarter of the device's memory.

Not having SD based installation when the platform and the market are booming and demanding at least parity quality apps is about to become a major obstacle to Droid success. I'm sure I'm not the only one about to reach the end of their 256mb. I'm sure I'll also buy a class 6 card if the benchmarks show valuable difference.

My WinMo5 brick had SD install, and even though it did stutter a lot, I could buy any app I wanted. I've got money for Android developers, but no room at the inn.

 

[kristoff125]

but we can overclock our droid to 1.1ghz, iphone can't, therefore we can, once they are developed, run better apps more smoothly.

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the question at hand. The Devs do not take overclocked phones into consideration when designing apps you ****....

Edit: Let's Play Nice....

I'm sorry "Diddy" but I didn't realize that "Once they are developed" apps will not run more smoothly on an overclocked phone vs on a 550 mhz...Oh wait, they will, by default ,regardless of the app. A faster processor will run an app more quickly, they might not take overclocked phones into consideration, but the N1 is clocked at 1Ghz, and overclocking a droid to 1.1 means it can run the same ****ing apps asshole, so get off my dick.

 

[cinque]

I am not as technical as most of you but in my personal opinion it has to do with two overriding issues market share and time. Apple currently is dominating the smartphone market (behind black berry but you have to remember corporations love black berry and use those devices in a different way) while android is steadly growing. This has a major impact on desire to develop for this operating system. Sure there are some great developers doing work now but it is to the user's benefit to have many great developers creating on android. The second is time once android grows in this market space so will the developers then look and feel will be one of the major factors that will seperate their products. So I believe as time goes on android will have unique design builds that we will love considering the development market space will be more competitive. Just a personal non technical opinion.

 

[R1Lover]

Yeah unfortunately, its because limitations of the OS

With all due respect diddy, that's not true!