A revelation came to me last night after having watched the WWDC keynote and also spending a couple hours playing around with the Nokia. And it reinforced why I'm happy I chose to stick with Android when I upgraded my phone a couple months ago.
To my way of thinking, the object of a smartphone is to allow you to do things as quickly and easily as possible. From that perspective, the phone itself should as much as possible get out of the way of the task at hand. Part of this is the hardware - the phone needs to be fast and responsive, and some of it the software - does it make the task easy?
Current smartphone OSes all take fundamentally the same approach: tasks are completed through apps which are opened via a touch-screen interface*. While this approach was revolutionary and much superior to what came before it when Apple introduced it with the original iPhone, there is still room to improve. The big issue with the current paradigm is this... in order to perform a task, whether it be making a call, checking the weather, or posting a status update, first you need to open the relevant app - action needs to taken before you can even start.
This was brought home to me as I tried to set up the Windows Phone home screen for my wife. I was frustrated on two fronts:
- I wanted to provide quick access to controls such as WiFi and Airplane Mode on the Nokia. While I could put shortcuts to the toggles on the home-screen, I couldn't find any way to directly put toggles there.
- I wanted to take advantage of Windows' Live Tiles to provide some at-a-glance information such as the content of texts. The problem I found is that Live Tiles typically only show a single piece of info at a time, meaning a lot of real-estate is taken up if you want to present lots of different stuff.
This brings me to what I believe is the major differentiator among the major mobile OSes... Android's Widgets. Widgets allow users to complete tasks with a minimum of interaction with your device by either providing comprehensive information at-a-glance, or allowing you to do a task without having to open an app first. For some reason, Android is still the only OS that provides its users these options.
This is why I was underwhelmed by iOS7 and I believe they missed a trick. Many commentators are calling it a radical redesign (one even called it "a completely rethought mobile OS") but to me, its mainly just a (admittedly comprehensive) refresh of the look and feel. While minor improvements were made with some real-time information on the lock-screen and easier access to some controls with Control Center, the core interaction model of iOS remains the same - a grid of static icons that require a user to tap before a user can achieve anything. For the most part, there is still that additional tap required before a task can be performed.
The future of mobile device interaction may be voice, gesture, eye movement or even thought; but for now the present is dominated by touch-screens. In my opinion Widgets provide the best way to perform tasks on your touch screen device. This is the killer feature that makes me a very happy Android owner.
*Apple and Google are both taking steps towards voice control, but for now the touch interface is it.
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