It's been a long time since I've posted, due to many factors I don't want to express. Anyway, after waiting impatiently and for far too long for the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) update, and now having used it for about six weeks, I am less than impressed. What little increase in functionality it brings is more than offset by the host of bugs, many of which were previously solved with 2.2 FroYo. Clearly, the "flagship" has incredibly quickly become a second-class citizen, and Google is putting too much effort into the UI and too little into killing bugs and increasing actual usability. If I could easily flash back to FroYo, I most certainly would. Since I also have a Tablet with FroYo, I can tell you conclusively that the phone UI scales up quite nicely and works quite will on a 10.1" tablet screen, and the hype over Honeycomb's UI is undeserved. The UI is done, folks, let's get to work on the real issues.
Which are:
1) Really? Still no calibration for touchscreen or g-sensors? I've never been able to use Sky Map or "augmented reality" apps because of this issue, and I am very, very far from being alone. The most basic gadgets of the past that had touchscreens had calibration utilities built into the OS, and it's incredibly stupid to have sensors of any type that can't be calibrated.
2) No HID profile? No mouse profile? Granted, phones don't need mice, but they very often do benefit greatly from bluetooth keyboards. And tablets are much more versatile if they support bluetooth mice as well as keyboards. This is actually a case of Google removing something that is already built into stock Linux, and would require almost zero effort to put back in.
3) The Gallery issue of it hanging and crashing is apparently much deeper, because some other apps are apparently affected by the same underlying bug. This was introduced a little while before Gingerbread came along, though. And again, other devices/apps let you specify what directories to search for different types of media. Having the default to be searching everything is incredibly inefficient and ignorant.
4) The official Android Market and GMS apps (Google Mobile Services, meaning the Gmail app, Maps, Navigation, Calendar, Contacts, YouTube and Flash) should be available on every device. Period. The fragmentation that is resulting from forcing other app collections to crop up is a very bad thing, not to mention creating tons of ill will when people buy a device expecting certain basic functionality and find out the hard way that Google has left them out in the cold. It's not as though there aren't workarounds, but in the long run all they do is add to the ill will by forcing inconvenient solutions to problems that are totally unnecessary and indefensible.
And finally, if Google really wants to make Android a success in the long term, they need to completely ban integrated UI "enhancements" by the various manufacturers and carriers, make stock Android the out-of-the box default regardless of the device or where you buy it, and make the various UI skins optional. They also need to remove all apps from the base install so that all apps can be fully upgraded without relying on patches or forcing a reflash of the entire OS (not that it's difficult or dangerous, but it does unnecessarily introduce the possibility of problems) and can be moved to SD as well as not allowing certain noncritical apps to take up space when users really, really don't want them.
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