Android...

the_leander

the_leander

Active Member
Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2005
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
447
I was hoping to put up a post talking about the joy of using Android on the Hannspree Hannspad I bought from Amazon.

I was hoping to talk about it's wonderful stability. It's ease of use. The way it allowed you to simply get on with things.

I can't, it's a pile of shit.

It crashes more often than any OS I've used since AmigaOS.

Apps randomly break.

Settings simply cease to exist.

Some apps start up on their own and cannot be stopped from doing so, if you kill them, they respawn.

I really, really wanted to love android. But I can't. It is more unstable than Charles Manson. The applications are crash happy to the point of uselessness.

I didn't like it on the phones I've tried I'll be honest, I found it to be a clunky affair that was ill suited to the phone environment. I figured it'd come into it's own on a tablet.

I'll be sending this thing back tomorrow as I'm that sick of it.

And no, I won't bother rooting it or trying to kludge 3.x onto it. From the guides I've read I'd need windows to do that and I haven't run that on any system I've owned for over 7 years now in any capacity.

What a complete waste of time.
 
I'm with ya!

This spring-ish I ordered an iPad2, a Xoom, and an HP Slate 500.

The iPad2 appeared to me to be the front runner. It seemed to have most everything it needed for business and the day to day. If it didn't it was fairly easy to get and update.

#2 was the Win 7 HP Slate. The plus of this is it's a good fit into the corporate environment. The iPad2 isn't as corporate friendly as Apple controls the updates and the OS. The Slate had the familiarity of Win7. And some of the negatives too. It's not quite built for a tablet. It's hard to mash that little red X to close a window for example. Not all bad and I expect Microsoft to get it more right for Windows 8. Windows 7 read my handwritting better than the iPad2, which is a bit sad as the old Apple Newton seemed to do a good job at one time.

The fartherest one out was the Xoom. It didn't have many things, like a VPN connection. One could find a dozen but this gets into the DIY aspect of Linux does that average consumer always want to DIY? I think signs say no. For example the front runner tablet, iPad2, has some aspects of DIY but not in the core functionality. There's a reason Linux has 1% marketshare of the desktops, again too much DIY. I think Linux could be successful here. Though I'm afraid the scatteredness of this OS makes the likelihood for big inroads a difficulty. The Cisco Cius seems to be more corporate ready though playing with it, it too has enough DIY to feel a bit shy compared to the other options.
 
wow, that's too bad....my experience with Android has been fun. and my brother uses an android phone...he loves it. I'm told I should be getting a tablet to test out......not sure which model, but when I get it I'll let you know if it's working.
of course, I use linux all the time and have found android to be very linux-like...so it's like being home for me
 
Am a linux user myself. I've just tried the factory restore option and that seems to have stopped the random freezes.

But tbh if your OS can be fatally undermined by apps in the manner that it was.... It's just not a good sign.

Having calmed down a touch, I'll take a stab at rooting the thing, but if it goes wonky again, I'll be sending it back.
 
Hmmm.... I'm quite new to it. I've had a Wildfire S for a couple of months and so far it's been fine.

I haven't encountered the problems described here but I suppose I haven't really done much with it yet.
 
Given that it was a factory reset that seems to have resolved the instability, it looks like it was definitely one or more of the apps that was causing the issue. I mean sure I lobbed a fair few on there, but nothing really spectacular...

The annoying part is that the hardware both in spec and in practice is really quite nice. For once, the claimed battery life is achievable in real world situations with actual usage (8hrs). But... Meh.

Like I said, once it's rooted, and marketplace is going, we'll see.

Kludging the OS in order to get basic functionality... Lulz it's like using an Amiga all over again...
 
which apps did you install?
I've installed a bunch and I don't think I've ever had a serious problem. not everything worked, mind you but it didn't blow the Android all up.
 
This is why it's nice when the hardware and the OS are made by the same company ;)
 
Robert said:
Hmmm.... I'm quite new to it. I've had a Wildfire S for a couple of months and so far it's been fine.

I haven't encountered the problems described here but I suppose I haven't really done much with it yet.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have the wildfire too. Other than being a bit slow due to the lack of any significant graphics acceleration, it's perfectly stable.
 
cecilia said:
which apps did you install?
I've installed a bunch and I don't think I've ever had a serious problem. not everything worked, mind you but it didn't blow the Android all up.
Click to expand...

From memory:

Last.fm, wordpress, F1 Live, zenga tv, advanced task killer, apndroid, updated version of the file manager... Nothing mind blowing by any measure.
 
I'm not surprised that you're not happy, Google has warned manufacturers to NOT release a tablet using 2.X versions of Android. It's not even running the latest version of 2.x. Many believe that the reason Google hasn't released the source to Honeycomb is because it's not ready for use on cell phones and they don't trust the manufacturers to resist the temptation. Android source probably won't be released until Ice Cream Sandwich - which is supposed to work on either form factor. So basically you got a device from one of those manufacturers that ignore guidelines and best practices.
 
the_leander said:
From memory:

Last.fm, wordpress, F1 Live, zenga tv, advanced task killer, apndroid, updated version of the file manager... Nothing mind blowing by any measure.
Click to expand...

Task killers are apparently strongly discouraged as being harmful to the android process lifecycle management. Apparently, it takes care of resource management and repeatedly killing tasks causes it to relaunch them as soon as it notices they are are gone. Having the app in memory apparently doesn't actually consume any resources beyond the memory itself (ie no CPU time or battery is used until that app is requested to perform an operation) and allows it to respond immediately to intent events and the like when needed. However, continuously having to restart the application because it has been killed every time the OS looks up what's in the intents registry causes it to waste CPU and thus power. If there is memory pressure, the OS will decide what needs to be dropped and does so conservatively so there's allegedly no need to kill anything.

Still, I do find it annoying that HTC insist on having social networking shizzle stuff on my phone I *never* use.
 
So you're saying that it's possible that some of the issues relate to the task killer?
 
the_leander said:
So you're saying that it's possible that some of the issues relate to the task killer?
Click to expand...
When you listed your installed apps, the only one that threw a red flag for me was your task killer. It can be a useful tool, but it's not the sort of thing you should be using often. Read this:
Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them

Let's look at the Activity life cycle diagram for a second:
activity_lifecycle.png

Here you can see that an Android app lingers around even when other apps are being used. Hitting the Home or Back button doesn't actually kill the app, it just forces it to go into either the Paused or Stopped state. Note that this means apps don't need to re-create themselves if they are resumed at a later time. However, if you KILL an app, then it will need to create itself. As the article points out, apps are essentially cached in memory so that they can be resumed quickly. If the OS decides more memory is needed, it will pick a paused/stopped app to unload (ie. kill).

The only time I would kill an app is if it's misbehaving. Typically, I do that with my own app that I develop if it falls into an infinite loop or something like that (although I use the debugger inside Eclipse for that). There are some badly written apps out there. You're really not supposed to do anything while in the paused state, but in reality, you could have a background task hitting the network continuously - that was an early bug I had with my app, you have to pause your child threads when your main thread is paused.

Android does give you the freedom to do whatever, but that also means you'll need to be more careful. And I strongly recommend you read the permissions you grant every time you install an app off the market or elsewhere.
 
Some of the cheap tablets really are useless, e.g. the browser just crashes when you start it.
It should get better with time, Android phones were not thought to be as good as the iPhone when they first appeared but now Apple are doing their best to keep Samsung devices off the market.
 
the_leander said:
So you're saying that it's possible that some of the issues relate to the task killer?
Click to expand...

Possible, but only if it's configured to routinely kill certain tasks or you've manually been massacring anything you didn't like to see loaded...

In the end, I uninstalled the 3rd party task killer from my phone. The inbuilt manage applications tool is more than capable of killing a task that has gone rogue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top