I'm sick to death of Android
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I'm sick to death of Android
1–10 of 147 posts
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#2Rational carriers and android hardware manufacturers would understand what's at stake here. Do they really want to hand the entire mobile device market to Apple because of a few updates?
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#3I think it's obvious that sometimes open is not best. Business at a certain point don't really care about customers if they aren't getting profit. They sell millions of phone if they were to let say charge $5-$10 to people in order to upgrade the OS this would solve the problem. Yes giving upgrades for free would be the right thing to do for a moral human being, but this is a company not a person. Companies have not moral compass and you can't guilt them into doing something.
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#4Rational carriers and android hardware manufacturers would understand what's at stake here. Do they really want to hand the entire mobile device market to Apple because of a few updates?
The update situation has improved quite a bit since the early days of Android. I don't see any reason to think that "all of a sudden now" the market will shift entirely to Apple. The new iPhone caused some market shift, and new Android handsets and OS version will likely cause some shift back.
Hopefully Google's new "streamlined and integrated" philosophy will continue to reduce update times and further polish and unify the interface. Only time will tell.
It is nice to have a good new contender on the scene with Windows Phone though.
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#5I had an Android phone for roughly a year, after having a not-smart flip-phone for about 7 years! And even though I found real value in my old phone for 7 years, I tossed the Android for an iPhone 4S almost as soon as the new iPhone came out.
When I first bought the Android phone (HTC Hero) I thought it was amazing. It really had some neat features, and there were things the iPhone couldn't do (like totally change the home screen manager).
But it was never updated. Not once. It took just months to start seeing apps in the Android Market that only worked with newer OS versions.
I'd also discovered battery issues; it was abundantly clear that the carrier, Sprint, had the phone pre-loaded with apps (in the ROM so they could not be removed). Not only did ALL of these stupid things auto-start when the phone was powered on, but they were apparently set up to start themselves every hour or so because even with an app-killer I'd still see this junk back in memory sooner or later.
Say what you will about Apple, but they keep the crap off your phone. Carriers can't put a damn thing on there that you don't want. I've also already received 2 OS updates from Apple, which is 2 more updates than I ever received with Android.
I also realized that even though Apple doesn't let you customize as much, their UI is also not broken the way Android's is. For instance, some of the default HTC Sense UI did really stupid things in my opinion. Sure I was able to "fix" problems by downloading replacement keyboards, etc. but with iOS I don't even feel the need for that because Apple's UI is by default more sensible.
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#6[deleted]
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#7The main benefit of Android, in my opinion, is the large selection of hardware. I like hardware keyboards, for example, and so I at least have some choice if I want it (unlike Apple).
However, that diversity in hardware is also the biggest problem with the platform. Handset manufacturers seem to look at a device as a "sell and forget" sort of item. They make it, sell it, and then move on to the next project.
It's too expensive, in their minds, to support a handset that they've already sold. They make money by selling more handsets, not by putting large amounts of effort into supporting and updating old hardware from which there is no revenue stream.
Apple, on the other hand, actually has a significant revenue stream from existing hardware through the sales of apps, music, and books. So, by providing updates for older versions of the hardware they are improving their ability to collect additional revenue. For example, when they added in-app payments, those APIs were available to all existing iPhone users, not just the newest users and thus were able to extract more profits from those existing users.
In the Android world, a manufacturer only makes money from the original sale. So, it seems that in order for Google to encourage on-going support, they should:
1. Participate in a revenue sharing program from app sales from the manufacturers phones that are running the most current release of the OS.
2. Improve the situation with drivers the large variety of hardware. If the Google distribution supported a large amount of hardware (CPUs, GPUs, sensors, etc) "out of the box", perhaps it would be easier for manufacturers to get the OS running on their devices and thus take less time to get updates to market. Or perhaps I'm being naive and there's something else that's holding up updates other than technical issues with drivers/hardware compatibility.
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#8If you want an update just root it download the update. People who are wanting the latest greatest incremental release are usually a bit techie anyway, so its not that hard is it?
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#9I had an Android phone for roughly a year, after having a not-smart flip-phone for about 7 years! And even though I found real value in my old phone for 7 years, I tossed the Android for an iPhone 4S almost as soon as the new iPhone came out. When I first bought the Android phone (HTC Hero) I thought it was amazing. It really had some neat features, and there were things the iPhone couldn't do (like totally change th…
I haven't owned an iPhone, so I've kept myself content by keeping CyanogenMod ROMs on my phones just to keep them updated.
I do think Apple's iron grip on certain parts of the OS is a problem though. For example, I really dislike the iOS virtual keyboard. All caps all the time? Really? I love that in Android there are dozens of replacement keyboards I can use if I want. Unfortunately, I don't think Apple will ever loosen it's grip and that's the biggest thing that keeps me away from the platform.
Re: I'm sick to death of Android
#10First, I know many people make a big deal about the transition to Android 4.0 being too slow, but I just think the issue is that it's a lot harder for manufacturers, and even the hacker community (hence no stable ICS ROM yet) to transition from 2.3 to 4.0, than it was to transition from 2.2 to 2.3 or from Honeycomb to ICS/4.0. I do believe/hope that the transition to 5.0 or 4.5 from 4.0 will be much faster.
Also remember that Google releases their version as soon as it's ready for them, unlike Microsoft who keeps the OS from being released until at least a few manufacturers have it on their devices and ready to ship. Should Google adopt the same model and in this case keep ICS from being released until summer 2012, when all manufacturers would be ready to release devices with it at once? Perhaps, but keep in mind that this would also mean using obsolete hardware, just like with all WP7 phones, and it also means they would be way behind iPhones and iPads in terms of hardware, when they adopt a model like this.
Second, can the solution for standardization be having some kind of a "virtual hardware layer", and by that I mean more than just what the Dalvik VM currently does - more like "universal drivers" that would make Android easy to upgrade and install on any ARM phone? That would be a dream come true for any Android fan.
One thing I know for sure is that Google needs to be working on something like this - even if it takes them years to do it, whether it's because it's hard to do technically, or because they need a lot of time to set-up all the right partnerships.
This goal is well worth pursuing, until things become too complex (thousands of devices). But I'm hoping they've been working on it already, and we're only 1-2 years away from seeing it.