Database Users

Does Honeycomb have more apps than iPad?

It's been speculated that Android has more apps that actually work on Honeycomb tablets than does iOS on the iPad. This links talks about the growth of the Android Marketplace:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/study_android_surpass_ios_app_count_soon
Does anyone know if this is true considering most iPhone apps will not run properly on the iPad, i.e.does not fill the screen?

There are bazillions of I pad specific apps so I don't know what to tell you.

I think one of the main things that constantly gets lost is the whole quantity vs quality discussion. Sure iOS has a ton of apps, but how many of them are actually unique and not serving the same purpose as another app out there?
When it comes down to it Android, and tablets in particular, aren't far off from having the same core apps that iOS has available to it. If anything they are more functional apps since Android makes a lot more available to devs.

I miss more iOS apps on my Xoom then Android app on my iOS devices. I also think the iOS apps has a bit higher quality.
They look and "feel" better. But none of them has widgets.
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streetmapp said:
I think one of the main things that constantly gets lost is the whole quantity vs quality discussion. Sure iOS has a ton of apps, but how many of them are actually unique and not serving the same purpose as another app out there?
When it comes down to it Android, and tablets in particular, aren't far off from having the same core apps that iOS has available to it. If anything they are more functional apps since Android makes a lot more available to devs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, but to play devil's advocate, you could also say that the pseudo-arbitrary selection process inherent to Apple's App Store limits useless apps a little bit. (Yes, I know there are thousands of 'fart apps' on their store as well.)
In the end, I think that not having the duplicate functionality clause helps the Android Market have a few more 'gems' than would be possible on the iOS App Store. Things like Tasker, Swype, and true replacement browsers (not using stock webkit engine--e.g. Firefox and Opera Mobile on Android) etc would not be allowed on the iOS App Store. However, due to not having the arbitration, we suffer from a (slightly to somewhat) less cohesive overall user experience and (sometimes) lower polish inside of applications.
Personally, I prefer the power and 'openness' that Android's philosophy yields. Many others, however prefer the somewhat-higher level of safety and coherence that Apple's approach yields.

Just because they 'work' on Honeycomb doesn't mean they're any good for a tablet... There are only a few apps I run that aren't tablet specific yet actually take advantage of the space because it's hard to screw that up... Trillian and TweetDeck come to mind immediately.

Elysian893 said:
Just because they 'work' on Honeycomb doesn't mean they're any good for a tablet... There are only a few apps I run that aren't tablet specific yet actually take advantage of the space because it's hard to screw that up... Trillian and TweetDeck come to mind immediately.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Beat me to it. And I think you're absolutely spot on. I've found that 95% of my favorite Android phone apps run on my Xoom, but only 5% (or less) of those actually work the way that I would expect them to.
Remember, just because they do work, doesn't mean you care to use them.

I use 10 - 20 apps meant for Android that are not formatted for Honeycomb but provide the basic function. Good example would be Verizon Fios DVR app, only runs in portrait but does the job!
I think it's simply not true to say an app has to be formatted for HC to be useful.

Coming from an iPad to the Xoom, there's a small but significant group of apps that aren't present that I miss.
Truth is for me, most of the apps on my iPad were games (can live without) or things that I might on occasion run but weren't day to day needed.
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Everything else I can live without if I have to, but there ARE definitely not more android tablet apps than iPad apps. Taking out the "it'll run on a tablet" aspect, just look in the market, 64 tablet apps. that's it.There's far more than that in the iTunes store that are iPad only or dual binary.

The discussion was including "It'll run apps" and by the way the 64 apps are only "Featured Apps".
I don't know if we can really tell how many apps are tablet specific/redesigned.

i think the next Honeycomb update should include an emulator for apps made to run on lower versions of android. Even if the graphic quality is ****e we should have the option.

jgrizz said:
i think the next Honeycomb update should include an emulator for apps made to run on lower versions of android. Even if the graphic quality is ****e we should have the option.
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Click to collapse
We don't need this. This would be a terrible user experience.
The SDK already allows developers the option to make their app scale well to multiple different resolutions and devices. Nearly all developers have yet to implement this resolution scaling, therefore the apps don't scale well to the Xoom.

jwilker said:
Coming from an iPad to the Xoom, there's a small but significant group of apps that aren't present that I miss.
Truth is for me, most of the apps on my iPad were games (can live without) or things that I might on occasion run but weren't day to day needed.
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Everything else I can live without if I have to, but there ARE definitely not more android tablet apps than iPad apps. Taking out the "it'll run on a tablet" aspect, just look in the market, 64 tablet apps. that's it.There's far more than that in the iTunes store that are iPad only or dual binary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those featured apps are deceptive. There are lots of Honeycomb apps out there that just don't get highlighted.

jwilker said:
Coming from an iPad to the Xoom, there's a small but significant group of apps that aren't present that I miss.
Truth is for me, most of the apps on my iPad were games (can live without) or things that I might on occasion run but weren't day to day needed.
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Everything else I can live without if I have to, but there ARE definitely not more android tablet apps than iPad apps. Taking out the "it'll run on a tablet" aspect, just look in the market, 64 tablet apps. that's it.There's far more than that in the iTunes store that are iPad only or dual binary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By my counting, I have more than 64 apps installed that run...like 76 actually...not including pre installed stuff/OS integrated...
Just because they aren't "Featured Tablet" doesn't mean they won't run

iPad's apps, for the most part, are more polished than Xoom's tablet based apps. But they've had a year head start. More apps for the iPad? More apps specifcally for iOS tablet than for Android tablets? At this point, probably.
One good thing about the xoom, though, is even apps that weren't made specifically for a tablet still look good, for the most part, on the xoom. Where most iOS apps made for iPhone look stupid at 2x size on the iPad.

jwilker said:
Coming from an iPad to the Xoom, there's a small but significant group of apps that aren't present that I miss.
Truth is for me, most of the apps on my iPad were games (can live without) or things that I might on occasion run but weren't day to day needed.
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Everything else I can live without if I have to, but there ARE definitely not more android tablet apps than iPad apps. Taking out the "it'll run on a tablet" aspect, just look in the market, 64 tablet apps. that's it.There's far more than that in the iTunes store that are iPad only or dual binary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those 64 apps are apps that Google has hand-picked. There's more than that.
I think the market should add a tablet app filtering option to find the ones that aren't blessed by Google.

jwilker said:
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The xtralogic rdp client is terrific. A bit expensive, but terrific.

jwilker said:
Coming from an iPad to the Xoom, there's a small but significant group of apps that aren't present that I miss.
Truth is for me, most of the apps on my iPad were games (can live without) or things that I might on occasion run but weren't day to day needed.
Important ones are news reader (newer is ok, pulse is ok too) twitter client, remote desktop app.
Everything else I can live without if I have to, but there ARE definitely not more android tablet apps than iPad apps. Taking out the "it'll run on a tablet" aspect, just look in the market, 64 tablet apps. that's it.There's far more than that in the iTunes store that are iPad only or dual binary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out team viewer, it's perfect on the xoom and it is completely free. Go to teamviewer.com and get the PC or Mac program and the android program, then game on.

Stop teh FlipFlop
rjoudrey said:
Does anyone know if this is true considering most iPhone apps will not run properly on the iPad, i.e.does not fill the screen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of you keep flip flopping on what you are measuring here. The op specifically lists the quote above as an example of only counting tablet specific apps. measuring by that standard, there are way more iPad only apps than Honeycomb tablet apps. For those of you who say just because it doesn't say it's not made for a tablet doesn't mean it doesn't work, I agree. By that measurement, all iOS apps work on the iPad, and they work exactly as expected because they are simply pixel doubled (Although as the op pointed out they don't completely fill the screen 100% when they are scaled).
Another point that has been raised is a qualitative measure of the apps in either store. Apple's App Store is a pretty clear winner here as well. This stems from two issues. First, the curated store versus free-for-all store. Second, device fragmentation. The later is more of a problem for the development side and thus requires dev's spend less time on "fit & finish" and more time tweaking their apps for the thousands of hardware variations. This is an issue that most dev's view as a problem for the android market (See link below). This problem also keeps some prominent dev's away from android all together (such as EPIC games). Looking at several apps that are available on both platforms, iOS apps not only look better, but in many cases some functionality has been gimped on the android app. There was a writeup about this recently to which I can't find but I was able to locate one of the screen capture comparisons of FaceBook from that article.
(due to forum rules I can't make these active links yet )
FaceBook Screen Shot:
wpuploads.appadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/facebook.png
Dev Survey:
\/\/w\/\/.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/04/poll-android-fragmentation-issues.php
Don't get me wrong, I like several features about android, but when it comes to the Android Market versus App Store, iOS takes the cake.. or in this case the dough $$$. I have more android devices than I do iOS devices, However I have only purchased one app from the android market. I have an iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs, iPad 2 (WiFi), Motorola Atrix (still sad about locked bootloader), HTC Inspire, Sony Xperia X10, HTC Aria (CM6), Samsung Captivate, and a Nexus.
Summary, In small portable devices like Smartphones and Tablets, Hardware and software working in concert is of greater importance than the PC of yester-year. That being said, for Android's license model to work like Microsoft's windows license model has for PC's, Google needs to have established hardware specification / form factor windows that can be reliably tested against. Secondly, they need to separate the core OS and the UI framework so they can allow vendors to customize their UI inline with the framework, which would allow Google to release an update to the core OS without the need to wait for the vendors to customize the core OS with their UI. Users could then update to the most current OS, and vendors can customize and tweak their UI to add new features of the new OS and release an updated UI when it's ready. Right now, the more consistent approach to iOS & Apple hardware is yielding better apps that are more profitable for dev's.
P.S. sorry about the run-on sentences

jondwillis said:
I think the market should add a tablet app filtering option to find the ones that aren't blessed by Google.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree completely. True there's (probably) more than those 64, not sure how to find them. But finding iPad only in iTunes is easy enough, especially from the device itself.
I think no matter how it's sliced, there's less for the xoom or tablets in general than there is for iPad.
I really hope that trend changes, I suspect it won't until honeycomb is released to the public tho

Honeycomb has 60,000+ Apps!

I was just browsing the tech section of news360 on my xoom and I found a REALLY interesting article from the the Examiner. It basically says that the app count is so low because over 40% of standard android apps SCALE PERFECTLY on honeycomb so app makers don't have to make their apps tablet specific. That brings the app count to 60,000! Why doesn't Google publish these statistics?
I tried to post a link but I don't have my eight posts yet.
Just Google: honeycomb 60,000

even if they scale perfectly many don't make use of the added screen estate and really aren't optimized. Even so finding any tablet optimized apps is a pain. The featured tablet section has a few but there is no way to sort them based on price or category which is really quite a shame

legion21 said:
even if they scale perfectly many don't make use of the added screen estate and really aren't optimized. Even so finding any tablet optimized apps is a pain. The featured tablet section has a few but there is no way to sort them based on price or category which is really quite a shame
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. First thing Google needs to do is actually optimize the market for tablets. Make it easier to find stuff and let us actually rate and review apps while using our tablets. That would help all of us.

the google market hasnt been that impressive since i got my android last june which is why i installed appbrain to help but even that app isnt tablet friendly

I think theres more to making a tablet optimized app than scaling. Optimizing use of the larger proscessors or other hardware (when applicable), redisigning the UI to be compatible/useful on a tablet screen i.e using extra space to offer additional functionality and navigation (instead of things like having buttons in the center away from your thumbs or buttons that span the whole screen).
I recently saw an app "Qello", I think that is a good example of a well designed tablet app in appearance and functionality.

Opinions

I have a friend thinking of getting one of these phones and I wanted to get some opinions whether this is a good phone or a peace of junk
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA Premium App

The games that are made for the xperia play are crap but you can run a lot of emulators on it that work really great with the hardware keys.

yes the emulators are great on the play
with a great gamepad
the games on the xperia play are just as good as on any other android phone
while there are better spec phones out there
the games for them can run just as good as on ours with chainfire3d

Lol ya except they cam play them without staring at fingers ad thumbs and only being able to see a small portion of the screen. Seriously though tell your friend if he likes game he will destroy everyone who doesnt have a play in multiplayer.
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If you play games at all, get the Play. If you don't play games at all, then get whatever the hell looks cool, i dunno, iPhone cause why not, everyone and their mom has one.

I'd recommend this phone for serious gamers only.
Especially those who love old school emulators.

Red_Kop said:
I'd recommend this phone for serious gamers only.
Especially those who love old school emulators.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree and also disagree . This phone has a nice big screen and playing the touchscreen games off the droid market works as well as on any other phone out at the minute. The game pad is just an added extra for me. I enjoy/play with the emulators & fpse alot but even if you forget the gamepad it is still a good phone.
After rooting mine and freezing the bloat. Nothing i have thrown @ the phone has caused it any trouble apart from some fpse games, but thats the same with most phones even dual cores ones. Nothing is perfect but this phone does an above average job as a normal phone with the added bonus of amazing game play on emulators or any game that supports the game pad.

Mozza2k11 said:
I agree and also disagree . This phone has a nice big screen and playing the touchscreen games off the droid market works as well as on any other phone out at the minute. The game pad is just an added extra for me. I enjoy/play with the emulators & fpse alot but even if you forget the gamepad it is still a good phone.
After rooting mine and freezing the bloat. Nothing i have thrown @ the phone has caused it any trouble apart from some fpse games, but thats the same with most phones even dual cores ones. Nothing is perfect but this phone does an above average job as a normal phone with the added bonus of amazing game play on emulators or any game that supports the game pad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do agree it is a good phone but they should have put a much nicer screen on it. My Iphone 2G had a nicer screen. The Play's screen is impossible to use in sunlight. It's just a bit of a shame. Other things lacking would be HD video recording and a top of the range camera. But don't get me wrong, it's still good and I love it.
ps. what have you froze mate, just rooted myself cos I was sick of the phone stuttering and general choppiness on the likes of Gameloft games. Looking for ways to improve performance.

Red_Kop said:
I do agree it is a good phone but they should have put a much nicer screen on it. My Iphone 2G had a nicer screen. The Play's screen is impossible to use in sunlight. It's just a bit of a shame. Other things lacking would be HD video recording and a top of the range camera. But don't get me wrong, it's still good and I love it.
ps. what have you froze mate, just rooted myself cos I was sick of the phone stuttering and general choppiness on the likes of Gameloft games. Looking for ways to improve performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed in full on sunlight its not the best but indoors i thinks it is really a fully decent screen.
About what i have froze i followed the safe apps to remove thread here. Just froze most on the list i dont use and froze some not sure about to test if the phones ok after freezing (still figuring out what i want to be frozen as well). Mainly tho the following;
Moved all gameloft/preinstalled games to sd via titanium backup (free)
Anonymous useage stats
Iplayer
chinese keyboard
both the digital clocks
everything facebook related
google maps
media server
postcard
retail demo
setup guide
store
street view
support
talk
anything timescape related
twitter extension
+ a few others i have forgot
But i have not filled my phone full of crap i dont use. Just kept the stuff i use regularly and will install others as i see fit. Currently Internal Memory: 161mb used / 219mb free. Ram: 120mb used / 254 mb free.

The Good -
- Hardware Buttons work GREAT with emulators. Honestly this is an emulators fan dreams come true.
- Hardware buttone work GREAT with Gameloft games. You think they are good on the iphone? They are 100 times better on the Play.
- Android Market Games are starting to work pretty good with the Play. Lots of games support the D Pad even if they dont mention it.
The Bad -
- Auto Brightness still cant be disabled as a stock feature.
- Low RAM means sometimes games stutter a little bit. (This is hardly an issue, but if you look close you can see it in some games, so it's worth mentioning)
- More games need to start appearing
Conclusion -
I personally hate using touchscreen for games. My finger prodding on the glass gets completely agitated to the point it drives me insane. The hardware buttons as controllers is an awesome feature.
You get all the Android software working excellently as you would on any Android phone.
It is a solid gaming phone, but does have room for improvement. The screen has an excellent display, but it's not as good as some phones. The auto brightness is a part of this reason.
Battery Life is decent. However it's unlikely you can last 2 days without charging. You will need to charge every night.
Speakers are very decent. The loudest on a phone i have ever heard.
Gameloft games are cheap and plentiful. Forget almost every other developer though, decent games other than Gameloft games are almost non-existent.
Basically if you love gaming and enjoy Gameloft + Emulators, then this phone is most definatley for you. If you dont care about gaming onphone and just want a quick touchscreen game every now and again, then go for something else. Either an iPhone or a powerful Tegra 2 chipset.

Gamer's Phone
The obvious reason to get this phone is the controls.
Basically, if you game on your phone, get the Play. If not, get something else. It really is that simple.

The controls rock. Emulators are perfect. Nothing better than playing old school NES or Sega games. The gameloft games run great, and lots of games in the market have support but dont mention it. I sit at work and play all day long.
The analogs work better than you think they would although it takes some getting used to. I
As a phone I have no issues. Its just like any other android I've had. Dont let the specs fool ya, its pretty quick, camera is good enough for me and I've only used the front facing camera once. It was fine. Mine came with a class 2 sd card so I bought a class 10. Made a little difference. Noticeable at least.
I like it.

Red_Kop said:
My Iphone 2G had a nicer screen. The Play's screen is impossible to use in sunlight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I beg to differ, the iPhone 2g had an inferior screen.
The Play's screen may not be good in the direct sunlight, but it's still far from the worst. I have no troubles reading stuff in direct sun. Sure, colors go to ****, so pictures and videos suck, but as a phone it's still completely usable.

How do the apps run on the N7?

I'm about to buy the tablet myself in a few days but everywhere and anywhere everyone and anyone says that Android doesn't have nearly as many tablet-optimised apps as the iPad. Do the apps run fine or not? I mean do they look good and is it easy to use them or not? Because for the iPad I know there's a separate category so there'll be apps for that.
So could someone confirm if the apps on this tablet run fine or not?
Thanks

They run crappy.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium HD app

Ok just my experience, on android many more apps are tablet optimized.
When I was using an ipad it seemed they were all small or had the option to 2x it making it blurry and horrid.
I guess though the Google play store just doesn't show you apps it they're not compatible though, which is fine because for an app that isn't compatible with tabs there are 10 others that are.
And poster above.. I have no words
Sent from my Optimus 2X using Tapatalk 2

My friend there are more apps in the play Store that you could ever use or even fit into the N7. With all the customizations you can make from OCing to roms the sky is the limit concerning the tablet. All the options that android offers will always keep apple in the rear view mirror.
Yes the apps are easy to access, start and run quickly.
Concerning apps and compatibility always use a browser to see all the apps and look at the comments to see if there are any made by N7 owners. Since I have modified the dpi on mine most apps come up as not available and that is when I check the comments. If it's something I want to buy I'll switch my dpi back to stock. It's a pain but I'm never giving up true tablet ui.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

apps
In my exp i've had by means of trade through best buy almost all of the most recent tabs. in order generic android tab eclair 1, archos 101, ipad, ipad 2, xoom acer a500, playbook, lenovo k1, hp touchpad, playbook again, xoom again, achos 80 g9, acer 501, and nexus 7. Android is my favorite. I also like web os and bb os. ios has better game selection hands down. Android has better free apps hands down bb web had no apps. so all depends on what you want it for

Well with all the quad-core machines coming out these days I'm quite sure there'll be loads of great games for Android too. The third post is interesting. So the apps don't seem like they're just multiplied in size. That's good to know. As long as they look natural I'm happy because the Appstore with all it's apps is horrible [my sister got an iPhone 4S the other day and I kept looking for apps and I wasn't THAT impressed. In fact the Play Store is MUCH better.]
I'm going with the Nexus and I'm sure I'll be a happy customer just like 95% of people who bought the thing. [the 5% are the people who're experiencing problems but even they were happy with their device.]
Thanks for the feedback! Appreciate it very much

A question before buying the Nexus 7

Hey.
Im interested in buying the Nexus 7 or 10, but probably the 7. I already have a SSG3 and have a doubt about the Nexus 7, since it would be my first Android tablet.
I know there are not many optimized apps for tablets, but do all apps work at least on android tablets? Will I be able to install apps that are for android phones? On the ipad, for example, I can install any app, even if its only optimized for the iphone. They show in a little box, but thats ok if at least they work. I dont know how android apps work for tablets. For example, a few apps I want to install are: Androzip, tTorrent, emulators (N64droid, GBA, etc), Mx Player, DS file, etc. Do these apps work on the Nexus 7 and will they work on the 10?
I dont care if they look bad on a tablet or if they look stretched out. On the SGS3 there are some apps i cant install due to not being optimized for the phone or something. How does this work on a tablet? Am I only allowed to install the apps that have been optimized for tablet mode or any app just like on a phone?
Thanks.

Yes, Android apps all automagically scale to the size of your screen, so you will be able to download phone apps that are not tablet optimized.
However, the Play Store has filters the app developer can use to limit what devices can download their app. For example, if a developer specifies that their app requires a back camera, it won't appear for us on Google Play. So far the only app that I wanted that I haven't been able to download is the Amazon Store App, but that can easily be sideloaded.

So the only difference is that they would look stretched out, right? Or do some apps optimized only for phones look smaller while showing black bars around it like on the ipad?
Do ALL apps stretch out always?

all apps are automatically stretched out to fit the screen size.you will not get that ratio adjustment button like on the iPad to show a small app within a large screen.
but you will come across device and hardware restrictions. where this is determined by the developer/company of the app itself.
the most recent app i can think of i wanted to download on my Nexus 7 but couldn't was the Samsung TecTile app. i wanted to be able to scan the Samsung NFC tags i have with my tablet. but can't cause Samsung is not allowing the Nexus 7 to download this app.

Sensamic said:
So the only difference is that they would look stretched out, right? Or do some apps optimized only for phones look smaller while showing black bars around it like on the ipad?
Do ALL apps stretch out always?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not always. But if the developer coded their app well, it will take advantage of Android ability to automatically scale apps. I would guess around 99% of apps behave this way.
One bad example would be Wikiinvest HD. They coded their app crappy and have it hardwired for 10 inch tablets only, so part of the ui is cut off. But as I said, things like this are incredibly rare.

Nospin said:
One bad example would be Wikiinvest HD. They coded their app crappy and have it hardwired for 10 inch tablets only, so part of the ui is cut off. But as I said, things like this are incredibly rare.
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Click to collapse
Agree 100%. A have like 50% of apps I have on my phone (DHD) also on Nexus and they all work. Games might be a different thing, but apps mostly work.