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I'd also recommend to base your decision on the overall service you get over the 1-2 years you'll own your phone. I've had an Android phone the past 2 years and
by GBKS 14y ago
I'd also recommend to base your decision on the overall service you get over the 1-2 years you'll own your phone. I've had an Android phone the past 2 years and am completely disillusioned with Android/Google/HTC. Everything is great for a few months, then issue after issue kept piling up.
For example, the first system update my phone had problems installing. It took two weeks of Googling and Verizon store visits to figure out that I had to do a factory reset for it to work. The second system update has been lingering on my phone for about 3 months. The install process simply never finishes, no matter what I do.
Second, apps simply stop working one by one. Flipboard doesn't manage to load images anymore. Wunderlist can't sync anymore. Installing Instagram breaks the built-in camera and gallery completely. Lots of random errors in other apps. The weather app stopped automatically refreshing. The alarm app doesn't go off anymore. Not to mention the application cache limitation to 150MB. So even though I have 500MB available storage, I can't install more apps, since they don't have room for temporary files. If that's full, apps simply stop working (only fix I found was a 1-hour phone-rooting process).
The touchscreen sometimes stops responding (off/on fixes that). Tapping a bookmark on my home screen loads the browser, but not the actual link. The phone randomly restarts at times. The unlock screen started misbehaving recently. And on and on.
In comparison, my 4 year old iPod Touch is more reliable and more fun to use than my 2-year old HTC. My 3.5 year old MacBook just upgraded to iOS6 and everything runs smooth as butter.
So my experience is that Android phones get worse over time, and Apple devices get better over time (or at least stay the same). Of course, your experience may differ, and maybe Android is more mature by now. But I'd highly recommend not to base a switch on a few features, but to take the overall service you will receive over two years into consideration.
- kuida0r3 14y agoWow, can I ask which Android version/HTC phone you're using? I kept my HTC Incredible from 3~4 years ago rooted for development and sometimes as a music player in the gym. All of my apps still function. That said, I don't use it everyday nor as a phone so the issues may just be non-obvious to me.
- billswift 14y agoI have seen that one discussed often enough on forums, I believe it is the "Apple Fanboy Android".
- halfwit 14y agoGood point, everyone who has problems with Android must be an Apple """"fanboy"""". Even those who run Android-themed websites and have complaints -- they're covert Apple agents. We're through the looking glass here, people.
- GBKS 14y agoIt is an HTC Incredible 1, I got it right when it came out (Wikipedia says it was first released end of April, 2010). It's most likely the same you have then. I haven't rooted it, just used it as an average person would for Facebook/browser/weather/etc. It was very surprising to see the phone degrade so much over time.
- TheBurningOr 14y agoI had the same experience with my Incredible 1. It was wonderful for about 6 months until it became absolutely unusable. Random bugs all over the place. Updates not coming in. So much lagginess in the UI that the interface became basically unusable.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoI know it's been said before, but there's a one word answer: Nexus. The current Nexus is getting long in the tooth, but I'd still recommend a Galaxy Nexus over an S3 or 1X. The fact that it's half the price off contract makes this easier.
- Karunamon 14y agoWhy's that, if you don't mind me asking? The S3 is a newer device and has slightly better specs (and a better battery.. the thing that led me to dump my GNex in the first place) and a larger screen. Every review I've read say that Samsung's UI isn't even particularly bad.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoExperience indicates that the S3 may not get Key Lime Pie. Even if it does, the S3's version of Key Lime Pie will probably be a hybrid bastard that looks and feels more like Ice Cream Sandwhich than Key Lime Pie. Also, the next Nexus (or nexuses, as rumored) is likely to arrive in October. Anybody with a GNex already has a good phone and can afford to wait a month or two.
- fumar 14y agoYou are correct about recommending the Galaxy Nexus over any Android phone at the moment. The specs might not be as high as the SGIII but its still the only stock device on the market. I recently, had a friend ask me which non iPhone smartphone to buy on Verizon. I recommend the Nexus, he bought the Droid 4. He returned it in three days. I had an HTC Incredible running cyanogenmod that was a decent experience. I am really looking forward to a new Nexus device.
- fpgeek 14y agoThis is why I am really, really hoping the "Nexus 5" rumors are true...
- lawdawg 14y agoI hear stories like this all the time, but every single person I know that has an Android has very few, if any, problems (most own Samsungs or Nexus phones though). I mean to be honest, I hear a lot more complaining from the iPhone crowd, but that might be more because they expect more and things like the battery dying after 10 hours of moderate use really piss them off.
- anu_gupta 14y agoI have an Android device and I really don't like it. It's a Nexus. Oh, and to be honest as well, I don't hear many complaints from the iPhone crowd.
- eavc 14y agoIs it a Galaxy Nexus? Because if not, you're talking about a pretty old device, and I hear people complain about their two+ year old iPhones all the time.
- enraged_camel 14y agoThe only real complaints people tend to have about their old iPhones is slow performance, and that's pretty normal. IPhones do not have the "apps randomly breaking or giving odd error messages" issue.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoThere are also complaints about battery life. Lithium batteries have a half-life of about 3 years, so it's not surprising that older iPhones need recharging sooner. A lot of people blame it on an OS upgrade rather than deteriorating batteries, though.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoWasn't there a study done recently where they determined that applications on iPhones actually crash more often than on an average Android, except that no error messages are thrown up at all.. you're just sent back to the home screen so the user thinks "Oh I must've pressed the Home button by accident" My own anecdotal Nexus experience (I own the Google updated GSM version): no crashes (although there was a brief syncing outage last night), updates are smooth and fast, and the whole "it just works" thing applies.
- Karunamon 14y agoErr... your MacBook upgraded to iOS6?
- GBKS 14y agoNice catch. It's a MacBook Pro (completely forgot about the existence of non-Pro MacBooks).
- eropple 14y ago> Nice catch. It's a MacBook Pro (completely forgot about the existence of non-Pro MacBooks). Given that Macs don't run iOS, this casts a lot of the rest of what you say in a very strange light (and he gave you the chance to correct it were it a 'typo', but you doubled down). I was curious as to the problems you said you had with your Android devices but honestly I'm wondering now how much of it is user-inflicted for reasons other than "I installed Instagram".
- GBKS 14y agoSure, be nitpicky. My MBP downloaded and installed iOS 6 on my iPad, that's it. And it got it's own OS X 10.8.2 upgrade. It was so simple, that I barely noticed it. In the mean time, my phone just asked me again whether I want to install the system upgrade. And once again, it did the countdown from 10 to 0 and then got stuck.
- eropple 14y agoOn a site called Hacker News, it's not particularly "nitpicky" to expect someone to demonstrate a certain level of competence and to question what else they may not be competent about when they don't. I also question my relatives' competence when they starts talking about "the computer" being the monitor on their desk, too. And my Galaxy Nexus installed the 4.1 update by pressing one button on the device. Anecdotes are interesting that way.
- Karunamon 14y agoYou're on the wrong site if you can't even tell the difference between iOS and Mac OS.
- ak217 14y agoFWIW, I've been using the Galaxy Nexus and it's a rock solid combination of Samsung hardware and unadulterated Google software, above and beyond the iPhones I've used in all parts of the experience except battery life (it lasts as long as an iPhone 3GS did for me). This is in contract with the Sprint-modified Galaxy SII that I also got to use, where the software was messed with for no good reason, and the capacitive buttons would sometimes become unresponsive.