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Is it just me, or... (Android app/game quality)

I just came from an iPhone to a Nexus One, and after browsing and downloading a lot of apps and games from the Android Market I've come to realize that the quality of iPhone games and apps is much better. Every Android game I've played has looked terrible and poorly made. It seems a lot more developers are putting more time and effort into iPhone apps. For example, The Sims 3 in the iPhone App Store is a really good game, with great graphics, yet the Android version looks terrible. Most iPhone apps I've seen have looked much nicer and more polished, too.

This is a pretty big dealbreaker, too. Will this situation ever change?
 
Agreed. I was hoping that now, being a year and a half after the first android device was released we would get some better applications. The ones for the iPhone just seem to be very polished. They look great and function great. Android will get there, its just going to take some time.

By the time Apple released the AppStore, how many iPhones did they have in circulation? A butt-ton (thats a lot!). Android is just getting into the lime light with the Droid and Nexus One. Apps will be coming shortly!
 
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I agree. Now that the device platform is getting more popular, there will be more interest in developing for Android.

The price of entry is very low for developers, so you will still end up with a lot of crap (just like the Playstation has.) The good thing about having kids using the SDK to make things on their own is that there's an affordance for anyone to develop something truly innovative instead of catering to the whims of the popular. Hopefully there will be fewer countdown timers to Paris Hilton's next new boyfriend and more games that are truly entertaining.
 
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I never found the "average" quality of iPhone apps to be very high myself. I found plenty of excellent iPhone apps, both free and paid, but my normal app store experience would be to download ten apps and keep one. I'd say half the stuff I *bought* I wound up deleting.

The Android store seems to have the same problem, but there's plenty of great stuff out there. Games do seem to be a shortcoming relative to the iPhone though. Fortunately OpenSudoku and yongzh's console emulators are enough fun for me at the moment.

Have found quite a few Android titles that pretty much stomp anything I saw on the iPhone.... ConnectBot, Droid48 and RealCalc come to mind.

But I still miss Solebon Solitaire and X-Plane from the iPhone.
 
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There's a couple reasons for this:

1. OpenGL2.0 graphics not supported on most android devices yet, so developers dont implement it into games (gives things like motionblur).

2. No multitouch on most phones

3. No market restrictions for developers uploading

4. Fewer developers.


There's a couple answers to this though too!

1 & 2: Android 2.0, and new android phones support opengl2.0 and multitouch, so it is only a matter of time before we see games using these. Polarbit already use multitouch on Toonwarz, and ratsquare use opengl2.0 in speedforge extreme (when it's released).

3 & 4: A lot of good stuff gets lost with all the junk uploaded by half-assed developers. There are some absolute gems though (search this forum, or the games forum) and more and more iphone developers are releasing for android too.

Android market is way newer than app store, but eventually you'll see games on par with iphone, perhaps by year end even there will be a much close correlation.
 
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Also, I think until apps can be loaded and run from the sd card and not just from in the phones tiny memory, we will not see the high end graphics. i too came from Iphone and I am very disappointed by the app quality. most look like they were done by a kid in his bedroom or basement. Compare raging thunder to iphones need for speed shift. I was appalled at raging thunder quality.while most are quite functional, they look horrible.
 
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Also, I think until apps can be loaded and run from the sd card and not just from in the phones tiny memory, we will not see the high end graphics. i too came from Iphone and I am very disappointed by the app quality. most look like they were done by a kid in his bedroom or basement. Compare raging thunder to iphones need for speed shift. I was appalled at raging thunder quality.while most are quite functional, they look horrible.

"Done by a kid in his bedroom or basement"

I'd like to see you do better... :rolleyes:

"I was appalled at raging thunder quality"

appalled is quite a strong word... The point is Android games are getting better and the developers base is getting larger. In a few years Android users will probably be "appalled" of the iphones quality ;)
 
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Say what you will about Apple but as I type on my laggy keyboard to post this at least it is standard across the board. There are what 3 or 4 versions of android os now.
Plus add in handset makers and all of their variances for hardware as well as software and add to the mix the carriers who decide if phones get these updates it can be daunting and frustrating. Especially coming from Apple world. Yes they lock down their system but all handsets including Ipods get the software updates regardless of the carrier,ATT in this case.

How Google could limit app size and quality as well useability on handsets by not having standards as well as not allowing apps to be run from the sdcard is beyond me.

My carrier is not supposed to get 2.1 until late June or July for gosh sakes. I was shocked to find out we cannot update when we want. What If my carrier, or any carrier decides to not bother with all the updates for all the different phones ?

Could very easily happen. I am not so sure these mobile carriers really want to be In the software end of this. Not for the long haul anyway and It will be at the expense of consumers who money up big bucks for these devices.

Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.
 
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Say what you will about Apple but as I type on my laggy keyboard to post this at least it is standard across the board. There are what 3 or 4 versions of android os now.
Plus add in handset makers and all of their variances for hardware as well as software and add to the mix the carriers who decide if phones get these updates it can be daunting and frustrating. Especially coming from Apple world. Yes they lock down their system but all handsets including Ipods get the software updates regardless of the carrier,ATT in this case.

How Google could limit app size and quality as well useability on handsets by not having standards as well as not allowing apps to be run from the sdcard is beyond me.

My carrier is not supposed to get 2.1 until late June or July for gosh sakes. I was shocked to find out we cannot update when we want. What If my carrier, or any carrier decides to not bother with all the updates for all the different phones ?

Could very easily happen. I am not so sure these mobile carriers really want to be In the software end of this. Not for the long haul anyway and It will be at the expense of consumers who money up big bucks for these devices.

Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.

You took the words right out of my mouth. This is exactly how I feel. If someone were to combine Android's openness, the Nexus One's hardware, Apple's business model and the iPhone's OS we'd see an amazing phone. And I think we might see most of that with the iPhone 4.
 
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You took the words right out of my mouth. This is exactly how I feel. If someone were to combine Android's openness, the Nexus One's hardware, Apple's business model and the iPhone's OS we'd see an amazing phone. And I think we might see most of that with the iPhone 4.

I think you'll see all that minus the openness in iPhone 4. But I still find that to be a non-starter for my own personal reasons.

As a developer, I'm terrified of the idea of spending months developing an application, only to be told that Apple will soon be coming out with something similar and thus I'm "duplicating existing functionality" of the iPhone. Or that AT&T doesn't like my app because someone could use too much bandwidth with it. I didn't bother implementing most every idea I thought up for an iPhone app because I figured it would probably run aground of Apple's approval process in one fashion or another.

I'm also now unwilling to use a device that doesn't support multitasking. It's nice to be able to go for a mountain bike ride, turn on Google Tracks to record the route, listen to music (possibly from the media player, or maybe Pandora) and then receive gtalk messages from friends about meeting for dinner later.
 
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the only apps i want to use so far are from google. I got a ps3 when i want to play a game.

+1

I have a PC and PS3 for gaming. The games I have installed on my android are only meant to kill a few minutes here or there. If I want a hand held gaming unit I will buy a PSP.

While the iphone may have better games, you have to use ITunes... Which I loath which is a deal breaker for me.
 
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+1

I have a PC and PS3 for gaming. The games I have installed on my android are only meant to kill a few minutes here or there. If I want a hand held gaming unit I will buy a PSP.

While the iphone may have better games, you have to use ITunes... Which I loath which is a deal breaker for me.

I want games I can kill a few minutes on the Android. With the iPhone, if I was bored, I'd play Canabalt or Fieldrunners. I can't find a single fun game on the Android Market.
 
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the only apps i want to use so far are from google. I got a ps3 when i want to play a game.
Do you bring your PS3 to work or school? When you go to a cafeteria or take a break? When you work on the road or out in the field? When you ride a bus or train? When you relax in a cafe or wait for a flight in an airport? When you wait for your order in a restaurant?
 
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Do you bring your PS3 to work or school? When you go to a cafeteria or take a break? When you work on the road or out in the field? When you ride a bus or train? When you relax in a cafe or wait for a flight in an airport? When you wait for your order in a restaurant?

No. Those are usually times I interact with other human beings.
I understand wanting to have something to pass the time, but im thinking more along the lines of a crossword puzzle. Not diablo III

Its certainly one of the pro's of the iphone and one of the cons of android for some but its not that important to me personally. I like to do social type of things with the phone.
 
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Users must remember that Android is still in its infancy. The first year's worth of Iphone Apps were not exactly that numerous or stellar. However, there is some truth to the statement that the lowest bar of Android apps may be a bit lower. This is due to two reasons:

1. The fact that the initial barrier to entry to create an android app might be a bit easier (due to all of the released source and the free SDK)
2. The fact that it is more difficult to support such a varying range of hardware and software

Time will help all of this as developers pool their knowledge and experiences with some of the issues that are continually being encountered and tackled as new hardware and updates hit the market.

Another issue is the almighty dollar... Monetizing, AKA: getting paid what we deserve for our work, is also still difficult and a great unknown due to the risk of not knowing the size of the market and the long term future. It will take developers a while to flock to Android and spend all of their development time writing android code until they know that income is possible.

What we have quickly learned in our development process is that writing a GREAT app for Android is proving to be more difficult than most realize if one is trying to support ALL of the android devices across the board and the developers are dedicated to making it a high quality, well behaved, bug-free app. As more of the devices are upgraded to 2.0+ there will be a huge increase in the quality of the apps as well.

Case in point: We spent an entire morning today chasing down some issues with playing soundtracks and sound effects in 1.5. There are VERY small limits on the size of the sound pool in 1.5 and thus the way the soundtracks were coded and instantiated in the game had to be altered. The extra coding and sound editing would not have been an issue had the situation been better documented or not existed! :) Luckily, issues like this will not exist in the future as the general android population progresses on to the bigger and better versions, documentation, exchange of information, etc.!

Essentially what will probably happen is that the phones that do not have dedicated graphics chips will not get the newest versions of android and thus be left behind. This is actually a good thing, because apple will at some point have to stop supporting their legacy devices to keep up - which will be a large chunk of their existing population, whereas android phones will be more of a gradual phasing out similar to the way computers (or their owners rather) are self selecting for obsolescence or new OS upgrades.

CONCLUSION: There are android app developers out there that are working very hard and are very close to releasing some HIGH quality impressive games. Just be patient. Our first app release will be early next week! It will have polished graphics, custom sounds, have all of the i's dotted and t's crossed, and will be well supported! It is all very exciting.
 
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Aw shucks, my phone doesn't have great games! Better go complain! While I'm at it, I'll also complain that my PSP doesn't play blu-ray movies and my TiVo doesn't cook my dinner.

Oh, wait, I've got NESoid, SNESoid, Gameboid and Gensoid. I've got TOO MANY great games. I guess I can scratch that one off my list of "stuff to complain about."
 
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Aw shucks, my phone doesn't have great games! Better go complain! While I'm at it, I'll also complain that my PSP doesn't play blu-ray movies and my TiVo doesn't cook my dinner.

Oh, wait, I've got NESoid, SNESoid, Gameboid and Gensoid. I've got TOO MANY great games. I guess I can scratch that one off my list of "stuff to complain about."

That's fantastic for you, but it's a bit of a problem for Nexus One owners with only one hardware button and no multitouch.
 
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If I was a developer I don't know that I'd put a lot of energy into something if I knew my app had a low chance of being chosen...

Here's what I mean. We can download tons and tons of apps on the iphone/touch. There's at minimum 8gb of space, so it's nothing for someone to buy app after app after app, month after month after month. There's lots of money being thrown out in Apple's direction.

I've paid $1+ for apps I rarely ever use. They don't get deleted because I have enough space.

Now, as for Android... since you can't save to the SD card, I'm limited to downloading a very small number of apps. My money will go to just a few of the best apps. All of the others, THAT I WOULD HAVE PAID FOR and downloaded will not be purchased due to the incredibly limited space on the phone.
 
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