When the Android UI gets too clever
Rating: Tales of the unexpected
Playing with the T-Mobile G1 Android phone the other day I came across an unexpected flaw with the UI. The handset kept anticipating something I didn’t actually want to do.
Actually the G1 was going into Global Shortcut mode when I didn’t want it to. That meant as soon as I typed certain letters into the search bar, the G1 would jump straight to a different application. Which was quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, I borrowed the G1 for such a short period of time that I never actually managed to get to the bottom of this flaw. I do, however, know what was supposedly causing this glitch.
There’s a special key on the G1’s keypad which is a dedicated ‘Search’ button. It’s between the ALT and @ keys and naturally has the usual Google magnifying glass as its icon.
In theory, you hold down this key and then press another key so the handset jumps to a specific application. As standard, holding down the Search keying and hitting the letter ‘b’ takes you to the browser, for example. Fine.
The trouble was, I wasn’t touching the Search key. Messing around with various settings seemed to make the problem disappear temporarily but I suspect I won’t be the only one who this happens to.
Which brings me to bug fixes. The G1 very sensibly supports OTA (Over-The-Air) software updates and I’d anticipate that once HTC/Android/T-Mobile discover what accidentally triggers the ‘Global Shortcuts’ function they’ll fix it.
The strange thing is that news of an Android ‘hack’ has recently emerged. It’s an application which is freely available via the Android Market called PTerminal. This enables a software enthusiast to get to the root of the Android OS. But why is this a hack? Surely it should be a G1 feature to illustrate how ‘open’ the handset really is.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s what I thought the term ‘open’ meant.
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