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Are apps really that buggy?

Open market is a double sided blade. On the one hand, you and developers, are free to do whatever pleases you. On the other side, the well known developers are a little more iffy about putting their product alongside Joe Schmoe who just released an app that steals your credit card info, beats your dog, and craps in your food.

Thankfully this is all going away though as seen by RUA being released by Adult Swim. I believe this is a huge step in the right direction for Android :D

Also, you're welcome! How's the app I mentioned working out?
 
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Linux and thus android has been a very under appreciated OS for a long time and thanks to android phones Linux is finally getting into the spot light. iOS on the other had has been mainstream for years thus has had years prior to androids release to fine tune their apps and devs.

Android is still a baby in OS terms and open and thus major devs might not be ready to jump in with 2 feet quite yet (but their testing the waters). The only place android can go is up though because of the strong community building behind the Android.
 
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I've not even had my phone for a full 24 hrs but half the time I use an app it seems to have an issue. I was using the Facebook one and several times it could not connect and gave me an error. Another one crashed. etc

Hopefully just bad luck on the first day! Can't say I remember the iOs ones being this buggy. :\

I remember the iOS ones being that bad. On my iPad 1 (For work) the apps I use are always locking up the device.
 
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Meh... I tried downloading a few apps on the Market online, and 30 min later, they've not arrived, so I figured I'd load up the Market app itself on the phone. It keeps crashing saying the activity market within the app market is not responding. :\

I've been on Android for a year now and have never seen that. Is your phone new? Maybe there's an issue with the phone, SIM or data connection.

Agree with others though that the official Facebook app is dreadful. I use Flow instead, which is very stable and far more feature rich. Facebook app is by no means indicative of the quality available on Android!
 
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It's a brand new phone, a day old. I will admit that oddly enough I had a couple problems with it yesterday (two of the bottom buttons not working for example) but a reset solved it. Ever since that though everything has been 100% fine.

I do hope it is not a phone issue. I'll ask for a new SIM from Orange to see if that does anything. Internet connection...it's on WiFi at home, which is working fine, so I don't know why it would be a problem. :\

I just tried downloading this last app via the phone and it said it would download shortly...a few min later, finally have it!
 
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When I had my previous phone I couldn't get on the market at all at first and had to go back to the store. They did a factory reset which resolved the issue immediately, and I never had any trouble after that... not the same, I know, but it might be a consideration for you. Hope you get it resolved soon. Don't let it put you off - the Android market has many fantastic apps! :)
 
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Android apps do often suck compared to iphone versions. Some of the fanboys on this site will argue with you about that, but it really just takes a couple minutes and an active internet connection to prove me right. Facebook is not the only piece of crap out there. There are literally dozens of extremely popular iphone apps that are just crap on Android. As a rule I fully expect any app I remember from iphone to be far worse on android and Im rarely wrong about it, sadly. Don't believe me? Check out the Netflix and Hulu apps.

Part of this is because Devs aren't trying very hard to please Android clients. They generally make more money from The App Store, plus until recently there were more iOS phones out there than Android... and the android phones sucked balls. Another(and probably the most important reason) they are buggy is that there are hundreds of types of android phones and an app needs to work on all of them. Whereas there is only one iPhone(ok more if you count the old ones). It's like the difference between PC and Mac. Macs just work better, no question about it. But they also don't do as much, or offer you variety in your hardware. But for the things that they do, they are the best at nearly all of them. iPhones are exactly the same. Android will never compete with iPhones for apps, it sucks and I hate it but I have learned to accept it.
 
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Android apps do often suck compared to iphone versions. .....

Actually I agree with this, but I think most often the ports suck. So something like facebook or pandora or BBC that is on both platforms may seem much less refined on Android because those companies just havent put the dedication into developing for Android yet. But with the numbers Android is seeing now, you can bet they are hiring more Android devs and trying to get up to speed fast. It's not that anyone wasn't trying hard, but rather those companies did not allocate to Android.

Overall though, over the past two years as an Android dev, I have seen a steady increase in quality and do think that Android quality is generally on par or soon will be. Just maybe not as much so for the apps that are ports.

And the choice is much better. If you find one app doesnt work for you, there are 5 more to try. While on iPhone you have one good app and that's what you get. So it's different, but both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Think of it a little like console games ported to PC, they just aren't quite right because not enough serious development was done on the port, they thought they could just toss some code over at a different platform and tweak it, and all would be peachy, but it doesn't work like that.

That's not to say there aren't any areas that Android is lacking. From a developer perspective the API is a bit of a minefield. Specifically with regards to handling media and content. And Google seems to be doing a mad feature dash instead of refining and supporting devs. This can cause some headaches for sure.

Anyways, while I agree a lot of Android ports are crap, I'm just saying the picture is a bit more complicated than i vs a.
 
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My point I guess was more that based on Android experiences so far, Android apps seem to be much less refined (overall more buggy) than the iPhone. I've never had any iOs apps crash on me or be buggy at all during all my uses of their phone.

well come on now how many devices do iphone apps have to work flawlessly on vs an android app (not to mention the variation of people running 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0 tabs)? this is why every other app update seems to be for adding support or fixing a bug for a particular device or android OS. this is what we call a weakness vs iphone (at least for a good long while). there are several others. weigh them against the strengths and decide if you can live with it.
 
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