im not particularly interested in quibbling either, the reason i asked u to be more specific is so that we could better help u fix ur problem..'improve' is a bit general, to me at least. especially when i find the copy paste to be fairly easy to use. but like i said, never used iOS before, so i wouldnt know wat android has missing
Fair enough. Well the biggest thing is that copy functions aren't available in all that many apps, although I suppose this isn't something that could be fixed by an app or ROM. Some notable omissions of apps that won't let you copy text - CNN, EverPaper, Wapedia, IMDb and many many more.
The second thing is that it's difficult to position the cursor. You have to stab at a position and hope you get it right but the problem is, your finger itself gets in the way making it hard to precisely position the cursor. Usually, you stab in the general direction and then have to grab the little cursor "handle" (itself not so easy to grab) then fine-tune the position. Even the fine-tuning is finicky, because if you move between lines, the cursor, seems to jump to random positions in other lines, instead of the closest vertical spot to the original position. Not to mention, the cursor handle sometimes doesn't even appear and I can't discern any logic as to when it does appear. Also, a quick stab will sometimes select a word rather than move the cursor, and again I can't figure out any pattern as to why it will do one or the other but it tends to be consistent and is very frustrating when you're trying to move the cursor and all it will let you do is select words. In iOS, you simply long-press a general area and you get a magnifying glass popup which makes it much easier to select the exact spot you want - this is all done in one continuous and efficient motion.
Android does have a magnifying glass, but only for selecting words, which doesn't need as much help as positioning a cursor for editing.
The last thing is, it's difficult to select a word if there is a cursor in the editing field. If you long-press to select a word, it will select the word closest to the cursor, instead of the word you actually long-pressed on. If the word you want is far from the cursor, it's tedious to move the brackets. You can move the cursor first but then selecting a word becomes a two-part process. As you might guess, in iOS you just double-press any word anywhere on the page and it will select it, or the paragraph.
Beyond that, it's annoying that some programs seem to have their own custom copy and paste functionality - Polaris Office being one of them, as well as K9 Mail. I appreciate that they're trying to improve open the default functionality, but this is such a core feature it should really be done right by the OS so devs wouldn't feel the need for custom code.
Reading back through my post, it has become clear to me that my overall biggest gripe is the difficulty of quick and precise cursor positioning. I'm used to a single smooth, quick motion to move the cursor whereas I'm getting frustrated with what is a 2-step process at the minimum but can sometimes be a 3-6 step process as individual steps can go wrong.