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Android 4.2. Next child in fuckup-saga!

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Android 4.2 JellyBean has come to my phone this night, so Android Fuckup saga continues. Of course, again, I have lost my nearly entire data plan, during middle of the night, because on of the biggest Android 4.2 fuckups is, that it again download system updates via GPRS, giving a damn shit, whether user decided to update everything via WiFi only.

Serious fuckups

1. Ever heard about multitasking? In Android? In 2013? No? Good, because it is a myth! Most popular mobile system in the world, in its newest version, not only is unable to download or even install two or more apps in the same time! Android even is unable to download second app, while installing first! I don't know, how to call that? We've got twenty first century and multitasking was introduced to Windows nearly twenty years ago, with Windows 95... But, hey -- Its Google, right?

2. The biggest nightmare of entire Android system (all versions) is of course Google Chrome. It is the most unstable, hangable, resource consuming piece of shit I ever found in entire mobile world. It fails to sync bookmarks and passwords, it hangs on so simple operations like closing or opening new tabs, etc. etc. Actually I don't recall any other application on entire Android system, against which I would have to use Force close option so often. And it is also the only application, that had ever hanged my entire system. It should separate pages / tabs into separate threads (that's how this application is marketed) to not to blow entire browser on poorly written webpage. But it turns out, that on certain pages, it can blow up not only entire browser, but whole system as well. I can still remember by extreme surprise, when two seconds after clicking on some link I saw famous Android logo and noticed, that my phone is actually restarting.

3. From time to time you'll see Storage folder appearing among other of your folders. It turns out to be a hard-link to your entire storage. It shouldn't be visible there, ever, but because Android developers are morons, it not only appears and you can also delete it without any problems (no special rights required for deletion of this folder). You can of course imagine, that deleting a folder that is in fact hard-link to your entire storage means, that you will purge your entire storage in one, simple delete operation. Just like that! Delete one, single Storage folder and loose all your photos, videos, audios etc. Pretty fuckup, huh?

4. If you change some media-related content directly on mobile device and only inside some folder (i.e. you didn't added or removed entire folder or folders), media scanner won't be able to detect that changes in most cases and your media library remain out-dated. You will be forced to plug your device to a computer and unplug it or to restart phone to have media library updated.

5. In "Gallery" app you'll find Video folder, showing all your videos, which... Gallery actually can't play! When tapped, you're redirected to your default video player. Nobody actually knows (except Google Fucks) what is the logic behind showing unsupported files in Gallery? It's like, when opening images in Paint, you would see .mp3 files, that Paint completely can't open.

6. Do you know, that Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia or Iceland are bigger than Poland? Or maybe not bigger, but at least more important to Google. How can that be? Quite simple. All these countries deserved to have own, national keyboard layout for hardware keyboard, while Poland doesn't. Though there are more people using Polish (including over two millions in USA and half million in Western Europe) than speakers of all these four languages counted together, there is no way you can write something in Polish in Android 4.2, using hardware keyboard, as you won't be able to enter any Polish national character. To make things even worse, if you browse through all nation-specific keyboard layouts for hardware keyboard, you will realize, that Poland is actually the only European Union country (and one of really few in entire Europe) that does not have own layout in Android.

Google knows better... again!

1. Yeah! Success! Google Fucks required only two versions of their system (4.0 and 4.1) to finally figure out, that vibration of the phone upon each screen unlock may be a little bit irritating to some. So they've removed it. Again, without giving any option in configuration to let user decide himself, whether he wants or doesn't want vibration during unlock. If you get used to it through two following versions of Android and now would like to have it "the old way", you can forget about it. Google knows better, what you need or want.

2. Now, let's talk about Gallery, a shit placed in Android, to help you organize photos on your mobile device. Here Uncle Google proved the most, who rules and decides! Not only, it shows some photos, that you have never placed on your device (for example, in Photos in profile and Inbox folders), but you -- of course -- can't delete them. But, there's more. You don't even have a control over when and what photos are added to folders like these. For example, I had there photos of my contacts that I have already deleted from my Google account. And in "Inbox" folder I had a screenshot of GMail (made on my computer, not on mobile device!) made... about two years ago!

2. Here comes Gallery application, again, containing not only your folders (photos stored on the device), but also some scrappy shit from Picassa! Even if you haven't ever used that service. As with nearly everything in Google's world these folders are completely uneditable by a user. You neither can't delete particular photos from them nor you can't remove entire folder. You can't add new photos to it and you can't update existing ones. So, the only way to get rid of them is to login to Picassa (though you never use it before!) and remove all the garbage, Google has once put there for you. Google will never change. As long as this company will exists, they will always know better what you want or need. They will always decide for you or add some crap to your own devices, services or programs. And of course, will deny you from any easy way to remove, delete, change or take back what they has just fucked up. Though this is your device and you should be the first one to decide, what you want or need. You -- the end user -- will always remain as mindless piece of shit, too stupid to decide about anything. Don't you forget about to as long as you use anything that has Google in name or logo.

Tapping, tapping, tapping

1. You can tap and hold any message thread in SMS application, to switch to selection mode. Then you can select other messages, you want to delete at once. Cool. Pity, that you still have to delete messages in single thread one-by-one, because implementing the very same logic to one thread, as they have implemented to many threads, is far beyond devs imagination.

2. And what about updating apps in Google Play? You can select Update all and you go with all apps, with just one tap. You don't have to confirm anything. You can't of course check more than one app to be updated at once (it is either all or one-by-one again). But, even if you decide to update each application manually (because, for example, you want to update nine out of ten and leave one not updated), then noooooo waaaay! You gonna tap-out yourself. For each application you have to:

  • tap on Update,
  • wait,
  • tap on Accept & Update,
  • wait,
  • tap Back twice to get back to apps list.

And then the whole story starts over again for next application you want to update.

I could never understand Android engineers stupidity -- why to I have to accept terms or privileges when updating single application (to avoid harm to my phone, right?), while I don't have to do this, if I'm making a massive Update All process (no harm possible to my phone in this situation?). Madness!

Smaller stuff

1. On calendar reminder window, where you see all current events they have used black color to draw a round circle for repeated events. They have actually forgot that this window has also black background. So you have to have an eagle eye to see it or make it distinct from not repeated items (events).

2. If you receive a network message (text message presented directly on the screen, deleted permanently, once you tap OK), for example arrier info, than a number you've been trying to call is now available, you must dismiss it at once. If let your screen go off (dimmed) without dismissing that message, and then you get an incoming call, your screen will remain black and you won't be able to see, who is calling you or pickup that call. Phone will ring (and shake, if you enabled vibration), but its screen will remain black.

3. In Android 4.2 you will often see, that your phone is blinking with notification diode, but when you un-dim (unlock) it, you'll notice, that there is nothing new -- no mail, message, application update or calendar reminder.

3. Android 4.2 introduced quite interesting time rounding algorithm. You can have first call made at 11:37 and open dial log at 13:24, but you'll still see, that previous call was made "one hour ago". Anything what is not precisely two hours is one hour for Android. So, even 1:59 still means that you made a call "an hour ago".

The Android Fuckup Saga consist of following articles:

Happy reading!

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