the onda

Google's giveaway of the "G2" (officially called the Google Ion), preloaded with Android 1.5, was a generous and thoughtful way to engage developers in building apps for the Android platform. And in any world that didn't have the juggernaut that is the iPhone and the AppStore, it may have worked.

Sadly though the overall Android experience still lacks polish and leaves something to be desired, especially in the realm of small devices that come out of a pocket and need to be usable for short bursts. The software is coming along nicely, and the soft keyboard is a welcome addition, but either the OS's broadcasting touch events, the capacitive screen driver, or the hardware itself is weak because most times you get going with the new keyboard and hit the space bar it fails to register, as well as random slowdowns in event processing on any user action (I blame the JVM's garbage collector and not as people have written, the multiple apps in the background which is perhaps the best thing about Android as opposed to the iPhone). Furthermore, the "notifications" system where you have to hit a terrifically small area on the top toolbar to see what's happened as well as the "app tab" metaphor both seem like they were not designed at all—or at very least, not polished enough.

But alas, Android is the open option so I'll keep rooting for it and using every new release. In the meanwhile I hope that the Android-on-post-PC-devices push yields some interesting new alternatives in a world less defined by the iPhone (even Palm's Pre is getting compared primarily to the iPhone on its launch weekend).