Nexus S review — Engadget

On a slightly brighter note, there are big improvements in word suggestion and selection, including new markers which you can use to grab selections of text. Well, let’s be clear — Google still has major issues with text selection and editing on Android devices. The first striking problem is that there is not a consistent method of selecting text on the device. None. At all. In the browser, you long press on text to bring up your anchors, then drag and tap the center of your selection — boom, copied text. In text editing fields, however, in order to select a word you must long press on the word, wait for a contextual menu to pop up, and then select “select word” — a completely counterintuitive process. In the message app you can long press to select only the entire message, and in Google Reader? You can’t select any text at all. Even worse, Gmail has a different method for selecting text from an email you’re reading, and it’s far more obnoxious than any of the others. There, selecting text goes from being mildly annoying to downright silly. Want to grab some text out of an email? Here’s your process: hit the menu key, hit “more,” hit “select text,” and then finally drag your anchors out.

via Nexus S review — Engadget.

This is the sort of thing that puts me off buying an Android phone.

That said, it’s generally a positive review. Still deciding…

I Wish The iPhone Did This

Android robot logo.
Image via Wikipedia

When you download it to your Android phone, it integrates AddThis sharing right into the phone’s native user experience. Simply long press any link on your device, touch “Share page” and AddThis will help you share to any of the ~300 social networks, online tools, and services that we support.

via AddThis Blog » Blog Archive » AddThis Android App Makes Mobile Sharing Easy.

The fact the {en:Android_(operating_system)} allows developers this sort of integration into the OS is what tempts me away from the {en:iPhone}. Developers simply can’t provide this on {en:iOS}. This isn’t me speaking as a developer but rather as an end-user. And in terms of being able to easily share, it doesn’t help that it’s a pain in the arse to create a bookmarklet too.

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