Dusclaimer: I am not an Apple lover, I have the iPad only bacause I think it is the best solution for what I need. I don’t have an iPhone and I don’t want it. Actually I’m using a new Windows Phone 7.5 phone and I’m starting loving it.

I bought an HTC Sensation with latest Android in June, because I was curious to try this operating system. But after a few days I understood: I don’t like it. And I’m going to explain how.

Integration with Google Services: one of the reasons why I was courious to try an Android phone was due to the “perfect integration between your phone and your Google account and Google services“. Wrong. After 4 months I cannot find any “perfect integration”, only a basic one. All things that I could do with Google Services using my iPad, I can do also with my Android phone. This is obvious, nothing exciting. So, I haven’t found the perfect integration between Google service and the smartphone.

Apps: on an Android phone you cannot shut down an app. Or, you can, but you have to go on: settings –> apps –> all the apps –> find the app you want to close and kill it. Frustrating. There is not a quick action to close and Android App. Why? That’s incredible. Android is “a super-open operative system, any restriction, user have total control over it”. Yeah, but it doesn’t let you close a running application. Android experts says that: “Android takes care of shutting down the apps for you”. I don’t like this approach: I want to close apps by myself, and since I expressy close an app I want that this app remains opened. For me, this means “total control over my phone”. Marco, a friend of me, expained me that Android developers chose this kind of solution because in this way they can speed-up the system: Android keeps the app running. So, when you will re-open it, this operation is quikly completed (because in actually the app is running yet). I understand, but i simply don’t like. It seems that the core of Android is not well developed. This solution is not a solution: is a patch (a bad patch).

Apps world: I’m going to explain a “totally-non-scientific issue”: keep reading in order to understand why I wrote “non-scientific”. Android Market has a lot of apps. But the quality of them is poor. Try to use the iPhone version of an App and then try the Android version. The feeling is very different. Crashes are more frequently. It seems like: company spent times and money making the iPhone version of the app, and has realized the porting to Android only because this thing has to be done.

Android API (this issue is related to the precedent, I think this issue is one of the causes of the precedent probem): they are chaotic. Google changes names to API functions from an Android version to another. This makes developing frustrating and complex. I know, Android is a quitely “new” operating system, so he has to become mature. But this is frustrating too.

These are the main reasons why I don’t like Android and why I sold my HTC Sensation for 370€ today.

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