On the road to Bandol

I guess that the title says it all. After a few weeks, the conclusion is simple: The HTC Magic is not an iPhone, and it lacks a few things. That may sound like a good thing for Apple, but I am not sure that things are that simple. First, let’s come back to the issues that I have with the Magic:

• Touchscreen reactivity. The Magic’s screen sometimes doesn’t react, and always reacts less instantly than the iPod Touch’s screen.
• Default applications. The default applications are all Google applications, and they are all Web-based. As a private person, I like this approach. As an employee, I am much more careful, because there are some things I do at work that I don’t want to publish on Google Agenda. On the other hand, the combination of this phone and a few Thunderbird plug-ins allowed me to finally get rid of Outlook completely, which is a really nice thing.
• Android Market. First, the interface is not nice; in particular, there are no screen captures. Then, there are much less applications, which means that there is less choice. On the iPod Touch, I was able to select some applications that really suited me. On Android Market, today, I don’t have such a choice, and I sometimes have to go for the “default” application.

There are other things, but they are more related to habits. If I hadn’t used an iPod Touch for a few months before, I wouldn’t notice. The behavior is different, which doesn’t mean it’s worse. And remember, there are also good things:

• Keys. I still love the few keys the Magic has on its front face. And the more I use them, the more I like them. Why? Mostly because of the regular user experience. If my Twitter client opens a browser page, I am in the Browser (I can see its menu); but if I hit the “Back” key, I am back on my Twitter client. It just works, which is great.
• Collaborating applications. Applications can publish services, or register to process some “intents”. Basically, this means that developers can use other people’s code or data in a very easy way. I am sure that this will eventually bring wonderful apps.

Let’s elaborate a bit more on all this.

Let’s start by the touchscreen reactivity. This may sound bad, but I doubt that Android is the cause of the problem. My opinion is that Apple is better than HTC at making this kind of things right. Obviously, they can’t: if the iPhone is bad, nobody buys the iPhone. End of the game. With Android, touchscreen reactivity and other details are the basis for differentiation between vendors. If HTC doesn’t get it right, maybe that SonyEricsson or Motorola will. In the end, I am sure that there will be Android phones just as good as the iPhone.

Then, the applications. The volume is not there. There are less phones, less potential customers, less applications. However, we can hope that this is not meant to stay as it is. The number of phones and potential customers will grow, and so will the number of applications. The interesting thing for ow is that there seems to be a really small number of paying applications for Android. I don’t know why, but this definitely requires some investigation, especially if there is a reason (good or bad) for Apple customers to spend more money.

But then, there are the good things, and I think that this is where Google is doing things really right. Applications can collaborate, and Android makes it really easy to switch back and forth from one application to another. There are already applications that plug into each other, and this is likely to continue. After Web mashups, let’s get mobile application mashups, and this should lead us to interesting things.

One last thing: interoperability and fragmentation. Fragmentation has made MIDP a nightmare for developers. What will it do to Android developers? I saw a first sign of this with an application called Brain Genius Deluxe, from editor Glu Mobile (not usually considered as a bunch of brainless amateurs). This app first asks your to type your name, but it forgets to show the virtual keyboard on devices that don’t have a real one (like the Magic). So, you can’t type your name, and the game stops there. Frustrating, and a potential bad sign for Android: fragmentation is looming.