Assignment 1.1 – My Experience with the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G

Part 1: Describe My Device
I use a Samsung Galaxy A53 5G Android which is not a common one to see people use in North America. I was visiting family in South Korea and saw my father-in-law using it and was impressed with the quality of the camera and screen resolution and size. When we got home I got myself one and until today I am still happy with it.

It has a lot of good features like support for 5G, 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display and a 64-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization, NFC, 6GB memory, 128GB internal storage, and much more but those are the big selling points for me.

I like having a big screen phone, especially when watching videos. The downside is that I have to carry around that hunk of a brick with me everywhere I go. Holding it in one hand gets uncomfortable and always uncomfortable with edges and corners pressing hard in the palm just to keep it balanced. It gets worse when I try to type something because my thumbs can not reach the letters on the keyboard at the other end. I ended up buying a case, actually I’ve tried a few, to help me hold it comfortably with one hand and finally landed on Spigen case which is a good protector and helps holding it in one hand.

Another thing I am not happy about is the lack of wireless charging. I never cared about that when I first bought the phone but now I see wireless charging stations are becoming popular and available in different places like in cars, airports, hotels and even mug warmers. I was surprised to know that my phone didn’t have that feature and that is something I am going to pay attention to when choosing my next phone.

Part 2: Reflect Like a Developer
The issue with holding my phone makes me think about where I would place buttons in an app. A large screen gives me more space but I would not want someone to struggle to reach a button they use all the time. I would try using the app with one hand during testing rather than checking that buttons and visuals look good on the screen. Also, I would try to avoid jamming things in the layout just because the screen size allows it. That would have bad consequences when viewing the app on a different/smaller screen size.

For development, I would personally start with Android for three main reasons:
1. Familiarity with Java. I am more familiar with Java than C and C++ which gives me Android development advantage for me.

2. Publishing cost. Android requires a one-time registration fee $25 where for iOS it is an annual subscription of $99. So even if I am developing something for fun or just testing Android development is definitely is the cheaper option.

3. I already own an Android device and Android Studio makes it much easier to develop, test and deploy on a connected physical device. It also allows testing on virtual devices (different screen sizes).

That being said, for production development and commercial there is no escape that if you build an app you need it to be available on all different platforms. That takes this post in the direction of hybrid app development vs native, performance quality, and development cost but that is a different post 🙂