(no subject)

[torkell]

I am amazed at how primitive Android is.

Case in point: while playing around with the GPS on a Samsung Nexus, I wanted to see what sort of reception it was getting as it seemed to be taking a very long time to calculate the position. So I went looking for some sort of satellite status screen. On my Nokia 6210 Navigator this is easy enough - select Satellite Status from the menu of either the built-in Maps app or the built-in GPS data app, and it'll show signal strength. An alternate view shows the satellite constellation.

On Android, there's no such feature that I can find. There's also no option to control whether or not to use assisted GPS, let alone any configuration for that (such as which server to use and whether to use the server when roaming).

The next surprise is that the built-in camera app doesn't handle QR codes. Okay, to be fair, neither does the camera app in the Nokia, but that has the excuse of being nearly 6 years older. But both lose out to the 3DS which can handle QR codes just fine.

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

QR codes are essentially a failed technology, so that doesn't surprise me much. The GPS/satellite aspect is primarily that Android is intentionally not providing access to a "GPS" and is instead providing access to "Location Services". The way that something like 'number of satellites' is provided is simply through accuracy, not through anything specific to GPS.

The latter is a choice to provide an abstraction barrier above raw GPS data so that location looks the same regardless of the source. I think it's a decision I'm not personally happy with, but I don't think that this is 'primitive' so much as it is "deliberately hiding implementation details that you actually want to know".