They got phone design right.
I just can't get my head around it that even Apple, which is supposed to be THE design company, is making phones that can't lay on a table without wobbling like a barstool on a crooked floor. It just feels so broken to me. So detrimental to my sense of aesthetics.
Google phones tackled it with an elegant solution. Thanks for that. I wouldn't know what phone to use if Pixels didn't exist.
You may be right about the aesthetics (and Lord Jobs may well have agreed with you) but they may have made the tradeoff consciously.
I don't think there's a single modern smartphone that I like. My latest favourite smartphone was iPhone 4S. No camera bump. Perfect size, fits well in my hand, operable with one thumb. Perfect display size, enough to present all information I need. Perfectly usable without ugly case.
Why would you buy an ugly case and not a clean and well designed, functional one ?
If you liked the original iPhone design, getting a rounded and hand fitting case would be the go too IMHO (on the size difference, there's no way out at this point)
Of all the controversial design choices, I think Apple got this one right.
I do not care if my phone wobbles when flat on the desk. I don’t use my phone like that. It’s in my hand if I’m using it.
I use my phone camera sparingly, but when I pull it out I want it to work very well. And it does. If it takes a little bump out to fit better optics then I don’t care in the slightest.
> Google phones tackled it with an elegant solution. Thanks for that. I wouldn't know what phone to use if Pixels didn't exist.
Making your entire phone choice revolve around the shape of the camera island is the oddest top priority I’ve heard yet, but I’m glad you found one that works for you.
I think HN mostly doesn't appreciate any defense of Apple or other large companies. I really should stay away from any threads that turn into collections of complaints about big companies because the audience they draw is only interested in negative comments about the companies.
How about making the phone more durable by adding 1 mm to its thickness, so that a 50 gram, 4 mm thick case won't need to be added.
Without a case it's like holding the last gasps of a bar of almost flat soap. Also keeps it from sliding off surfaces.
Gesture navigation on Android was introduced half a decade ago and it is still broken. In most apps my edge swipe to pull out a drawer or a swipe on the right side to 'forward' are still detected as back button swipes. Editing details at the edge of a photo often gets detected as a back button swipe. Ridiculous.
2°) Android followed UX/UI 101 about where to put frequently used buttons: where you can reach them with your thumb. Basic design, right ? Apple iOS: the close/back button is usually on the top left corner, unreachable by right-handed users that only constitutes 90% of people, number about the same in all countries and cultures. That's only one example, but that bag where it comes from is deep.
You should take a few steps back before displaying publicly polarizing opinions and maybe nuance your words a bit.
2) disregarding another blatant discrimination of left-handed users: I switch a couple times per week between android and iOS devices for various reasons and the android UX is so janky and unintuitive it hurts - it might just be my particular device and it’s much better in other cases.
This might be extremely polarising but I agree with GP.
It is the default on all modern Android flavors and the overwhelming majority (>90%) of users sticks with defaults. It is likely Google is going to deprecate the navigation bar within a couple of Android versions.
> Apple iOS: the close/back button is usually on the top left corner, unreachable
You clearly never used iOS, because you just backswipe. You rarely if ever touch back buttons.
Not that I disagree although you're fighting the wrong fight. The big problem is controls being on the top instead of the bottom. Neither Apple nor Google has attempted to fix this, only Samsung partially has with OneUI. And they can't force developers to adhere to "content top, controls bottom". Ironically enough Apple had this fixed until iOS.. 12? From 7-12, the control center was at the bottom. All they had to was move the notification centre there and figure out a way to make it compatible with a gesture bar.
> right-handed users that only constitutes 90% of people
People tend to one-hand their phone with their non-dominant hand to keep their dominant hand usable.
> You should take a few steps back before displaying publicly polarizing opinions and maybe nuance your words a bit.
I use and develop for both platforms. You just sound like an angry, unknowledgeable fanboy.
Perhaps take heed to your own advice :+)
Edit: if you want an example of something that Android does way better: notification management via notification categories. I get to disable stupid promotional or "typing.." notification categories from an app, whilst maintaining functional ones. iOS should take a page from Android there.
Because I often unlock it when it is on the desk I also miss Touch ID a lot, because with Face ID I also have to lean forward every time for it to recognise me.
Extremely sluggish on non-Chrome. Starts with a black blank empty page. Fans spinning. Takes way too long to load for just some text and some videos. Clicking a link does some SPA magic that takes me to another black blank page, and takes ages to load. Clicking back doesn't work anymore. I need to reload the entire page, again blank and waiting. Once done loading, scrolling is extremely sluggish.
Yes, there are probably some interactive widgets in there, but all that and much more has been done without bogging down the browser like you're running a 3D game on WebGL.
Oh, and of course reader mode doesn't work.
However, there was one spot where I had to give it to them: when I hovered over the content about Google Sans Code, it expanded horizontally. For a second, I wondered what was going on, then it clicked that the content must be horizontally scrollable, which it was!
Of course, that could be shown with a much more obvious horizontal scroll bar...
Pretty much every font I try has one or two things that bug me. I’ve spent the last ten years making my own, first in FontForge, now in Glyphs.app, but it’s incredibly time-consuming. I’ll work on it for a while, then give up for months, delete everything, switch to a different font, use it for a few days, start hating it… and end up back at making my own font again. This cycle repeats pretty much every year.
You’ll probably want to recommend your favourite font, but trust me, I’ve tried all the well-known ones, and they all have their quirks.
Edit: I’m going to try Guguru (“Google” pronounced with a Japanese accent) Sans Code for a few days → https://github.com/yuru7/guguru-sans-code , created by https://x.com/tawara_san
> Google Sans Mono was created in 2020 to support contexts that needed fixed-width characters for editorial design, at medium and large text sizes. Despite this, it soon got its first big product integration, replacing Roboto Mono in Google Chat. The only problem? Developers hated it.
[...]
> Recognizing this critical need, a dedicated effort was launched to craft Google Sans Code, a monospaced typeface specifically designed to make code more readable. This involved thorough research into the 20 most common programming languages and how developers interact with code, aiming to make the new coding typeface more visually appealing while reducing the ambiguity of similar-looking letterforms. Based on these insights, Google tasked the Universal Thirst foundry to meticulously focus on specific letters, numbers, and operators to meet these requirements. The result is an eminently readable and surprisingly playful typeface.
> Google Sans Code launched as an open-source font in 2025, and is the typeface used to display code in Gemini.
Definitely was too quick with my judgement. Still, it just looks really out of place at bigger font sizes and it makes me wonder if there isn't a more elegant solution out there.
--my actual reaction
...yikes...
...goes back to disabling custom fonts in browser.
i don't have your skills of actually customizing or changing glyphs in fonts directly but i've customized and used scripts to fix glyph characters available as open type features. I've done this for fonts like:
- [Iosevka](https://kau.sh/blog/build-iosevka-font-mac-os/)
- [IBM Plex Mono](https://kau.sh/blog/freeze-alt-char-open-type-font/)
- [Jetbrains Mono](https://github.com/kaushikgopal/JetBrainsMono-KG) (yes, plenty of customization there)
- [Recursive](https://github.com/kaushikgopal/recursive-code-config)
it really is a sickness. a terrible sickness, if you care deeply about fonts. I know you don't care specifically about recommendations, but inevitably i've found myself gravitating to these fonts:
1. Berkeley Mono (paid)
2. SF Mono (walled)
3. Recursive (truly open and legible)
4. Commit Mono
I love the above fonts, but there's a few characters or quirks that drive me bananas on certain days, so inevitably find myself switching between them.
Isn't this an incredible waste of bandwidth? Surely people only need the font once.
So now if two different websites embed the same remote font then visitors will have to download it separately for both sites.
Ok, who wants to tell them?
You read search results that are rendered via typography.