Android annoyances
2025-04-03 20:16:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
I have been setting up my new Android device the past few days. I've been an iOS user for many many years now, probably nearing 2 decades at this stage. Android has come a long way in the intervening years, and I like a lot of the new design. I of course really like the much bigger screen the device has, however there are some annoyances. Here is a short list:
- During initial setup it really felt like I was having to signin to Google for everything repeatedly
- Show open apps and home screen buttons feel back to front to me and look confusing
- Switching betweem apps can be slow at times
- OS Keyboard shortcuts sort of suck - you end up having to tap screen a lot
- Mixing between keyboard and touchscreen kind of sucks
- Difference between homescreen and app screens isn't obvious at first
- Speed of typing in some apps is slow
- No good replacement for iOS Notes app
- No good replacement for Working Copy app
- Vimium doesn't exist for Chrome so no way to function using just keyboard
Finding replacement apps is frustratingly difficult for things that should be standard like file editing and version control. The overall feeling is that you are constanly having to jump through hoops, even if the hoops are sometimes very well designed. I feel like with Apple the setup was simpler, more straight forward, less being blocked, and less frustrating to find apps and a workflow for what I needed to do.
I am howwever sowly getting the hang of things, and I think that my dev environment setup could potentially be much better than what I had on iOS. And actually some of the 3rd party vendor apps that I already used on iOS have Android versions that are pretty cool. It will be interesting to see how things are in a week or two, whether I am able to blog and write code more efficiently than on iOS. #