tech&trends mobility What’s missing in Android Lollipop? Android Last month, we talked about the improvements in Android Lollipop: Lollipop. This time we continue the story on what’s still missing Part-II in the latest edition of Android OS - Hiren Mehta, Manager, Buckapps

New devices are also said to come with encryption automatically turned on. However, given the astronomical pricing of as well as Lollipop not being particularly good for large tablets such as the (a topic which is covered later in this article), this too is likely to have a lim- ited impact. As a silver lining to the cloud, SELinux is now enforced for all applications. That should be important in a country like India where shops commercially sell their side- loading services for installing apps on your device without you knowing where was the content obtained from.

2. Bigger may not be better aving discussed the improvements now let’s take a The new release of Android comes at a time when Hlook at what we still miss in the Android OS: has extended its reach beyond phones and tablets in both directions, on the smaller side with smartwatches 1. Lacklustre security improvements (and other wearables including ) and on the Much like the `Kids’ mode introduced in Windows Phone larger side with Android TVs and (for cars). 8, Android Lollipop allows you to share your device safely But Google doesn’t appear to have realized the practical using the `guest’ mode, restricting access to the rest of problems in using the same UI on large tablets. On the your device. That doesn’t appear very innovative. You can other hand, a lot of efforts are seen to be going into now create multiple user accounts to allow others to use pushing smartwatches as `the next big thing’. Windows your device. However, this was possible with tablets earlier Phone’s `modern’ UI can be scaled up very well for touch- as well, now it includes phones. The only great innovation optimized applications on full-size desktop PCs but as far as in this front comes from the fact that you can now use large tablets and their usability is concerned, Google seems something called as `Android Smart Lock’ to secure your to have gone a step backwards. Please note that here we device by pairing it with another known device, be it are comparing stock Android versions and not skinned your wearable (smartwatch, Google Glass, etc.) or even versions built by OEMs (e.g. HTC Sense UI). For instance, your car. But, in the end, even the success of this in India take a look at this screenshot of a running relies largely on how do such wearables and Android- Android 5.0 (in Hindi) with the notifications being pulled enabled cars take off in India. The improvements certainly down from the top . will not impact the typical user as much as the 5 other In most of the recent releases prior to Lollipop (in improvements discussed in the previous edition. tablets), the notifications were placed near the left edge of

20 PCQuest JANUARY 2015 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] the screen, and the `Quick settings’ menu was placed near 4. Not-so-quick `quick settings’ the right edge of the screen, all accessible from swiping We have indeed come a long way from the full-keypad down from the top near the respective edges. That made BlackBerrys, HTCs and Nokia feature phones of yesteryears it pretty comfortable to use a large tablet, to the extent which had dedicated hardware keys for one-touch access that single-handed operation was practically possible. to BBM, Facebook, FM radio, etc. without caring for what Now since these two pull-downs have been combined into is on the screen. How many tangible actions would you like the centre, one really needs to stretch the thumb to reach to perform if you want to switch on? In Lollipop, the menu from either of the left/right sides, and the only it becomes slightly complicated. You obviously do need to way one-handed operation can be deemed to be practi- (at the bare minimum, let’s say step 0) wake up the screen cal is if the tablet is not in your hands but lying flat down in case it is not already. But from here things branch out. If on some surface and you are controlling it from the top the screen is locked, (1) one single swipe from the center (like a table-top touch-screen). However, smaller screens of the top edge will bring down the `quick settings’ menu, and shouldn’t have this problem (and even and then (2) a normal tap on the BlueTooth icon will do among large tablets, one can always use the tablet in a the job. However, doing step 1 itself is difficult because portrait orientation instead of a landscape orientation to of the repositioned menu mentioned earlier if you have a make the menu more `accessible’). The point is, Google landscape-oriented screen. Further, step 2 will only apply appears to have `undid’ it’s design change which made after your second attempt (and onwards) at activating Honeycomb ideal for tablets (wherein UI elements were BlueTooth. (In the first attempt, the screen will unlock itself focused on being close to the borders, within easy reach and present you the BlueTooth settings screen). What is when dealing with a large screen). With Ice Cream Sand- worse, if your screen is unlocked already, you will need wich, Jelly Bean and KitKat, things were still practically to make 2 swipes instead of just 1 in step 1, in addition to usable. However, now this is a big chink in the armor for actually unlocking the screen. large screens, in the name of convergence and `providing a So much for the convenience of a touchscreen versus a similar experience across all devices’. And do note that the keypad. Similar is the case with Wi-Fi, flight mode, etc. And menu is still at the same central location if you access it at least by default, there is no way you can toggle location from the . It will be worth seeing how the next sharing on/off from the lock screen. You will need to man- iteration of popular large-screen tablets like Samsung Gal- datorily make 4 actions(unlock, swipe, swipe, tap) from axy Tab handle this, since the Nexus 9 which has already there onwards for any toggling. This in spite of the fact that released, runs stock Android. for a mobile user, location is supposed to change much frequently in a day than the state of BlueTooth/WiFi. 3. Good for some, bad for others The only positive side to this is that you now have The new feature of notifications to be dismissed from the `Flashlight’, `Hotspot’ and `Screen cast’ controls present in lockscreen might be good for some but not all. There has `Quick settings’. always been a trade-off between ease-of-use and security, and here that trade-off shows. While many may prefer 5. Graphics advancements at the risk of fragmentation to be able to dismiss a notification from a locked screen, For those who can afford to, one of the main reasons one others may want to prevent any accidental dismissals of would prefer to play games on a console instead of on notifications when they are standing in a crowded bus/ a PC is because of the lack of fragmentation. You don’t train and have just tucked in their phones into their need to keep on upgrading your graphics card/RAM, etc. pockets after quickly ending a call (meaning that the in a console regularly, there is going to be exactly one screen might still be`awake’ for a few seconds and hence model called as `PlayStation 3’, exactly one model called vulnerable to a notification being dismissed because of as the `XBox One’, and unless you are referring to playback any accidental push/jerk). There are also privacy concerns, standards such as NTSC/PAL or a DVD’s region-locked such as the possibility of your colleague sitting next to codes, a console that is available outside India will work your desk being able to actually read notifications on your practically the same way in India, so will it’s gamepad/ tablet (and worse, be able to dismiss them) while you go joystick, and so will the actual game title that you plan to to the water cooler leaving the tablet behind. In the end, play, barring instances when the concerned console/game these preferences can certainly be customized (including title wouldn’t have been released itself in India. the amount of information that can be shown on the With Android 5.0, Google is aiming to become the lockscreen). However, given Android’s mass user-base, it is console-equivalent of mobile gaming and amazing graph- natural that users would want something that suits them ics, without addressing the fundamental underlying out-of-the-box. Google has taken the risk of doing the issues. For instance, it is no doubt that today’s Android balancing act here by throwing it open to tinkering. devices have screens packing in many more pixels per pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] JANUARY 2015 PCQuest 21 tech&trends mobility inch compared to iPads and iPhones. So purely in terms Android to the forefront of mobile graphics putting it on of numbers, yes, that amounts to becoming superior to par with desktop and console class performance’. However, the Retina display. Frankly speaking, at that scale, the in India, we instead have Google pushing as a difference between two adjacent pixels is imperceptible `common minimum level of experience on low-cost devic- to the untrained human eye. However, it is ironic that es’ and as a result, developers wanting to take advantage because of Android’s fragmentation, Google’s own Nexus of new improvements in Lollipop have to bring down their devices are falling behind, just because of the race in `targets’ in order to accomodate such a broad spectrum, numbers without addressing the underlying problem. regardless of whether they are building a console-quality Take the absolutely new Nexus 6 for instance, which, game or a multimedia player wanting to take advantage as of the time of going to press, doesnt even have a of the new support for UHD 4K video playback in Lollipop confirmed availability date in India. At nearly 6 inches of (since all Android One devices are also supposed to be screen space, it offers a resolution of 2560x1440. Now, eligible for an update to Lollipop). since it is after all, a `Nexus’ (and also because of the astronomical pricing compared to earlier Nexus models), Conclusion one would assume that this is the best what Android can There is much more to Android 5.0 than the changes do (in a /phablet). Wrong. The same resolu- described here, especially under-the-hood changes made tion is available in a marginally smaller screen in the form to networking, the new , 64-bit support, of the , and ironically, the LG G3 USB audio, a host of camera features, etc. However, as (which is not so new) beats both of them by offering far as first impressions are concerned, the above ones the same resolution with just about 5.5 inches of screen seem to be what can make-or-break the user experience space, in spite of being cheaper than the other two! The of Android 5.0 in India. The broad range of changes made point is, marginal improvements are being made in terms in this version leave no doubt that this is indeed the of pure numbers, the screens (and GPUs) are becoming biggest update to Android so far, and it’s too difficult to more power-hungry to drive that many pixels, and as a point a single `killer’ change which can turn the result, resource-intensive games which have console- either way on it’s own for Lollipop to succeed or fail. Yes, quality graphics (e.g. Real Racing 3) look `less amazing’ the Lollipop is sweet, but some people will still want to on a Nexus 10 than they do on an iPad 3, even though add artificial sweeteners! the iPad 3 has less in terms of pure number of pixels. One of the logical reasons? iOS developers know precisely Note: Each of the pros and cons mentioned here are what the underlying hardware will be for their apps and applicable to Android 5.0.1 as well, which is a tiny bugfix don’t need to `compromise’, doesn’t matter if in terms of update that was released in early December. In fact, pure numbers it packs less of a punch than it’s counter- devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are reported to part Android hardware. be heading straight for the 5.0.1 update, instead of being Android Lollipop brings with it OpenGL ES 3.1 and updated to 5.0 first. Android extension pack. Google claims that this will `bring

22 PCQuest JANUARY 2015 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected]