Continuing with my “gripe-series” (Symbian, BlackBerry, WebOS) the turn has now come to Android. This is actually one of the more difficult posts I have written so far, and the reason is that Android is arguably the most customizable/tweakable OS of all the relevant platforms on the market right now and as such there is very little that you cannot change or fix if there is something that you do not like with it.
Yet still, there is this one nagging issue I have with Android. In reality it is something rather visceral and though I can express it it is hard to put my finger on why it is an issue. What I am referring to is Android’s virtual machine.
I am aware of that the Dalvik virtual machine is arguably one of Android’s strengths: it is the portability of the virtual machine that allows RIM’s PlayBook or the upcoming Nokia N9 to run Android applications. But at the same time knowing that all the code runs inside a virtual machine instead of natively just does not feel…. ideal? We all know how much the virtual machine improved Android’s performance with Froyo, and that is a testament to the impact a VM can have on the overall platform. And it is the impact that “extra layer” that keeps nagging me at the back of my head…
But at the end of the day what matters is of course the user experience, and if a user cannot tell that the apps/OS are running in a VM then the point is moot, really.
But still….
