Does Anyone Else ABSOLUTELY HATE the New App Design Trends?

nickdalzell said:

Not unless Google finally devised some way to backup my game data

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Google have had such a mechanism available for some time integratd with Play Services - it's used by several games I play. It's not their fault if developers choose not to utilise it.

Apple has been able to restore all data and apps if you reset an iPad, but all Google can do is haphazardly restore a partial collection of certain apps, but not their data

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In my experience, Google's auto-backup only has problems with apps that insist on storing user data in their /system/ folder. Which is poor form in any case - user data should be kept in user space.

Google Play Games hasn't been around that long iirc. It came out like at the last version of Jelly Bean, didn't it? What took so long?

While my rankings and such seem supported by most games I play, cloud saves only seem supported by two.

Oddly enough Google auto backup does save wifi settings, display and sound settings fine, iirc those are also stored in /system, right? AFAIK their auto backup was only intended to restore the apps, not their data. Google Play Games was supposed to solve the latter, in games, but you're correct most devs don't enable it.

Still doesn't change the fact that Apple is well ahead of Android in that regard

nickdalzell said:

Google Play Games hasn't been around that long iirc. It came out like at the last version of Jelly Bean, didn't it? What took so long?

While my rankings and such seem supported by most games I play, cloud saves only seem supported by two.

Oddly enough Google auto backup does save wifi settings, display and sound settings fine, iirc those are also stored in /system, right? AFAIK their auto backup was only intended to restore the apps, not their data. Google Play Games was supposed to solve the latter, in games, but you're correct most devs don't enable it.

Still doesn't change the fact that Apple is well ahead of Android in that regard

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Because with iOS, Apple is the only game in town. So iOS apps and games either must use Apple's services for backup, or non at all.

Nick, you often install apps and games from sources like Amazon and 1Mobile don't you? 1Mobile(Beijing Kunlun) is very popular in its home country of course, where there is no Google services available. So some apps and games that are distributed via that, often will do their own things when it comes to backing up their data, and many popular apps and games do come from China. The world's largest Android market, a heck of a lot of software houses, and NO Google.

Actually even with Play Store (which I buy apps from) games from Gameloft also don't save data online. It's stored on the device so if you wipe the device, you wipe the saves.

Tons of payware games like Carrier Landing, Infinite Flight, Iron Man, Angry Birds don't save to the cloud. Lose the device, wipe the device, start from level 1. As stated Apple has the upper hand here

nickdalzell said:

Tons of payware games like Carrier Landing, Infinite Flight, Iron Man, Angry Birds don't save to the cloud. Lose the device, wipe the device, start from level 1. As stated Apple has the upper hand here

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As stated, don't blame Google for lazy/incompetent development.

Regardless of how long the facility has existed, the fact is that it does now. Devs could easily update their products to make use of it if they chose to.

So why aren't they? Surely not laziness when it could bring them financial gain?
Maybe Google should put like a gold star on the apps play page if they work with the tools Google offer?

funkylogik said:

So why aren't they? Surely not laziness when it could bring them financial gain?
Maybe Google should put like a gold star on the apps play page if they work with the tools Google offer?

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It's absolutely laziness and bad design.

People don't act rationally with games.

I'm not going to say sorry because they just don't.

No one writes the game maker demanding a refund for a half-assed attempt.

They blame Google, they blame their phone maker, they go buy an iPhone and buy the app all over again (or swap names between the two).

And then continue to buy crap.

People who wouldn't stand for this shit on a pc go every other direction because it's a phone.

I repeat - people don't act rationally with games.

funkylogik said:

So why aren't they? Surely not laziness when it could bring them financial gain?
Maybe Google should put like a gold star on the apps play page if they work with the tools Google offer?

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Although there is no gold star, developers are highly rewarded via page rank for implementing google's services.

nickdalzell said:

Perhaps my favorite part of Lollipop that I wish could be incorporated in KitKat.

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Ironically I do have this as an option in KitKat (the ROM I'm using offers 5 different styles for recent apps) and don't think I could face stock Lollipop without the option to select something else! I find it both aesthetically displeasing and inefficient compared to styles which allow me to see a grid or a compact list (the default ICS->KK recents list doesn't show many apps at a time without scrolling, which is also rather inefficient).

Tastes differ, I guess.

I guess. I love the 3D app switcher. I managed to use fancy switcher as a close alternative but it has bugs (can't get rid of apps. You swipe them and the next time you look they're there anyway.) But it works enough. I do like the updated material design lately. It looks less like a pastel beta ripoff of iOS and now seems to be very polished. I'm currently trying some updates to Google apps and the launcher, even Xposed modules to tweak the status bar icons. It is growing on me slowly

The latest Search and Google+ are very nice

Mike_p2 said:

Just this morning, I tried Inbox from Google and it looked fantastic.

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It's a matter of opinion.

I thought Inbox looked it was designed by a kid messing about with a bunch of crayons.

Mike_p2 said:

Indeed. Let's just agree to disagree

But in seriousness, it there something specific you didn't like other than the color palette? To me. they made a good effort to adhere to the Material Design guidelines.

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I think my experience is soured because I just hated it in general. Email is simple, it doesn't need to be anything more and inbox tries to fix a problem which didn't exist in the first place.

I think because I found the app messy in general, the colour by numbers colour scheme just made things worse.

While I do like Material Design I still prefer the look and gloss of many of the apps inbuilt in my S4. I prefer Samsung's email, messaging client and the level of features and options in them and their music app. For example, I can disable or enable conversation view in email while Gmail only has conversation view. I can use voice commands to change tracks, volume, or pause on Samsung's music player while Google Play Music only works with touch. I can not only change the bubble color and style, but also use any background I want in Samsung's messaging client. Google Messenger only has the option for bubble color, but the background is always bright white and the app appears much too two-dimensional for my tastes. I also like the detail and graphics of the remote control app inbuilt into the S4. Tried a Material Design app but it didn't cut it for me.

However I do like the new look of Google+ as well as the Play Store. I also like the notification icons in lollipop I got via an Xposed module.

I hate it

I currently use an LG Ultimate 2. I replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy Core Prime, but I threw it on the ground in a fit of rage because sh...err stuff...wasn't working right, and I hated how the UI was made to cater to a technologically inept demographic, so I reverted back to my LG.

THIS is what my LG looks like:

Notice the rich, distinctive icons...

...the beveled edges on the "Dial", "Call logs", and "Contacts" tab buttons...

...and the textured dial pad...
[I made a few minor changes, ie. holo blue wifi & signal icons, holo blue time display w/ seconds, & holo blue battery bar on the bottom of the status bar; everything on the stock status bar was white...EVERYTHING!]

Forget animations, I just want to touch those dial pad buttons! And the Quick Settings buttons at the top of the notification panel (not shown) look just like the tab buttons at the top of the dialer, except the icons (wi-fi, data, Bluetooth, et al) turn Holo-blue when I enable them, and they're EMBOSSED, too! It's so slick and stylish, I wish I could kick every Android device manufacturer in the gonads for dropping this aesthetic style, and taking up the ugly, flat, boring, uninspired, unevolved look of the flat, material design.

And what good is a theming app for Xposed Framework, if no one makes a theme I like? At least with Windows, I can build a brand new PC and still put MY copy of Windows 7 on it, I'm not stuck with whatever the manufacturer put on it, but not Android! Don't get me wrong, I prefer Android over iOS and Windows mobile, but I hate the fact that I can't get an Android I like on a new phone. The whole time I had the Galaxy Core Prime, I wanted the LG ROM on the Samsung hardware SOOOOOOO bad, and I'll never get a Samsung phone again, since they all use the same crappy color scheme and pathetic UI.

*rant completed*

DevilHunterDante said:

And what good is a theming app for Xposed Framework, if no one makes a theme I like?

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Ever thought of making your own?

DevilHunterDante said:

And what good is a theming app for Xposed Framework, if no one makes a theme I like? At least with Windows, I can build a brand new PC and still put MY copy of Windows 7 on it, I'm not stuck with whatever the manufacturer put on it, but not Android! Don't get me wrong, I prefer Android over iOS and Windows mobile, but I hate the fact that I can't get an Android I like on a new phone. The whole time I had the Galaxy Core Prime, I wanted the LG ROM on the Samsung hardware SOOOOOOO bad, and I'll never get a Samsung phone again, since they all use the same crappy color scheme and pathetic UI.

*rant completed*

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Well, as long as the "brand new" PC hardware is still supported for Windows 7, because otherwise it's going to be Windows 10, which can be very material design, 2D and flat.

Hadron said:

Ever thought of making your own?

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I've looked into developing Android apps, it seems so convoluted. I used to use Visual Studio when I was in high school, it was so easy to learn the ins & outs of the IDE, Visual C and Visual Basic make perfect sense to me, but Java looks so cryptic, a much steeper learning curve that I don't have the time to invest in, especially since Java for Android doesn't even use the same standard libraries as Oracle JDE. And I've tried just modifying the graphics and XML in the SystemUI and Framework-res, repacking the .apks doesn't work the way it used to in Gingerbread, everything I've tried just boot-loops my phone.

mikedt said:

Well, as long as the "brand new" PC hardware is still supported for Windows 7, because otherwise it's going to be Windows 10, which can be very material design, 2D and flat.

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I've never bought a manufactured PC, I always build my own from scratch, and I've installed hardware that didn't have drivers for anything before Windows 8, and it works flawlessly; I've even installed Windows 7 drivers in XP, and it still works today. But that's beside the point, all I was trying to say is, in a world of rapidly advancing technology, I have options, EXCEPT when it comes to mobile platforms.

DevilHunterDante said:

I've never bought a manufactured PC, I always build my own from scratch, and I've installed hardware that didn't have drivers for anything before Windows 8, and it works flawlessly; I've even installed Windows 7 drivers in XP, and it still works today. But that's beside the point, all I was trying to say is, in a world of rapidly advancing technology, I have options, EXCEPT when it comes to mobile platforms.

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For information the last PC I built for myself was an Athlon XP machine in circa 2003, and I've had "mobile" type devices ever since, with laptops, netbooks, tablets and smart-phones. I bought a dual-boot Intel Atom tablet very recently, Onda oBook with Win 10 64bit and Android 5.1, both OSs are material design of course. But I think would be a real challenge to try and get Win 7 installed, activated, and working properly with it.

DevilHunterDante said:

I've looked into developing Android apps, it seems so convoluted.

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I was thinking of themes rather than apps, though I've never bothered with xposed myself so not looked at how themes for it are implemented.

(I'm primarily a C++ programmer, bit of python, & have never written Android apps either. But I think there's a large element of what you are used to in this stuff - I personally find C++ or Java clearer than Visual Basic, which I've not had to use for some years, but after more than a decade of Fortran the switch to C++ at the end of the nineties took a little adjustment at the time.).

mikedt said:

For information the last PC I built for myself was an Athlon XP machine in circa 2003, and I've had "mobile" type devices ever since, with laptops, netbooks, tablets and smart-phones. I bought a dual-boot Intel Atom tablet very recently, Onda oBook with Win 10 64bit and Android 5.1, both OSs are material design of course. But I think would be a real challenge to try and get Win 7 installed, activated, and working properly with it.

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Good for you...I hate laptops, they just don't pack the processing power I can get in a tower, parts are largely irreplaceable, and the cooling is atrocious, not to mention all the bloatware you get in a branded computer. I remember working on a laptop for someone once, I had to restore the factory OS, and a "Best Buy" application was included, but if I uninstalled it, Windows failed to boot, just said I had to reinstall Windows to fix it, no startup repair or anything...what a nightmare.

sardonicus87 said:

I am getting so sick of the new Material "design" trends of Android apps. If I wanted a lack of organisation, bunch of circles and whiteness and everything placed on one page and stripped down with few options and almost no real organisation, too much whitespace between elements, etc, I would have gotten a iPhone. But I hate that hideous that looks like it was designed for blind, technologically deficient old people and moronic children.

Or am I the only one that hates this trend and thing it looks childishly stupid and is annoyingly unorganised?

By the way, when I say circles, that doesn't include rounded corners of boxes. Done correctly, that can look good. What I mean is actual circles, everything circles. Yuck.

Do you know what it reminds me of? A child's toy of putting rectangle and circles into holes, but all of it painted with a loud, mid-90's, "Saved by the Bell" type colour scheme.

It's all too loud, too busy/cluttered, too random.

Here's a good example, the old (v4.9) version of Caller ID from Whitepages versus the update they released today (v5.crap):
http://imgur.com/a/vnSNl

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They call it optimization to save power, DPi digital pixel ratio to make Android devices to somewhat work more efficiently.

Holy necrobump, Batman!

DevilHunterDante said:

Good for you...I hate laptops, they just don't pack the processing power I can get in a tower, parts are largely irreplaceable, and the cooling is atrocious, not to mention all the bloatware you get in a branded computer. I remember working on a laptop for someone once, I had to restore the factory OS, and a "Best Buy" application was included, but if I uninstalled it, Windows failed to boot, just said I had to reinstall Windows to fix it, no startup repair or anything...what a nightmare.

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Of course all that PC tower processing power is stuck under a desk at home, which is rather useless when I'm away, and I'm away a lot if the time.

BTW what was this thread about again?