You bought a $350 phone and received updates for 3 years. I think you're in for a surprise when you price out a new iPhone.
This was the case from day one, which is why it never became my daily driver. Good to keep up on what's going on with Android, though.
It runs, but far from fine compared to iOS it shipped with with basically no added value.
But this is also not an option on iOS, because of the apps support and you have to update eventually.
I'm numb to the slow response times, but the crashing applications make me want to ditch this for a 50% cheaper android phone which runs faster, and doesn't have planned obsolescence[0] (the link talks about planned obsolescence in iPhone 4S and iOS 9 )
Now I'm okay with most of the stuff apple does with it's walled ecosystem, and appreciate some, but this is going directly against a consumer.
[0]: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-4s-planned-obsole...
wait, can I get some more info about this? I assumed to cannot go back to old releases. Or are you talking about jailbreaking?
> iOS works fantastically bad on old devices
that's understating it. I actually think my nokia (symbianOS) from almost decade ago is faster. And I mean it is faster even today!
You have to jailbreak current OS, then you can downgrade to iOS 6. It'll be jailbroken, but it's just enabled ssh, you can use it without installing Cydia and everything should work as normal. It could be done only with iPhone 4S or iPad 2 and only if current iOS is jailbroken (at least that was the case year ago, I was able to downgrade from iOS 8 to iOS 6 on iPhone 4S). Keyword to Google: OdysseusOTA. Officially there's indeed no way to downgrade, only using vulnerabilities.
I've always spoken well of Apple's software update record but it comes with a nasty flipside in my experience: unlike an old x86 PC or Android device, once you update the OS, you're generally stuck. No downgrading and certainly no "slimmed down" builds or alternate OSes to breathe new life into physically intact but not-current hardware.
Quick charge is a game changer. Less pressure to make the battery bigger if you can make the phone charge way faster.
For me, USB-C is the worst part. Nobody else ever has a charger I can use, and when I plug into anything other than the wall adapter that came with the phone, it's always "charging slowly."
https://www.amazon.com/adapter-Adapter-Convert-Connector-One...
Isnt it [0]? A 10-100% gain in performance is about what I'd expect from a 2-year smartphone cycle, and we'd be lucky to continue to get such gains.
If you can present data that actually shows no performance difference between the 5 and 5X, I'd be interested to see it.
[0] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/nexus-5x-and-nexus-6p...
Also, 5X uses the USB-C connector, so you have to update all your cables and adapters on your desk and in your car. A real pain. When you're out in the world and need a charge-up, you'd better be carrying a USB-C cable, because no one else will have one.
I consider the 5X a side-grade and not of any particular value if you already have a 5. The 6P is at least a larger handset with a larger battery so it's got that going for it.
You do have to remember to collect them when you're done, but the penalty for forgetting every now and then is not ruinous.
(Local distributor here has a minimum 1.5x markup plus a very very limited range)
But being able to simply set my phone on my desk and keep it fully charged is a convenience I won't soon give up. I now buy phones with that in mind.
In theory, plugging in a cable isn't time consuming, but in practice, I only actually keep my phone charged during the day if I have a wireless charger nearby.
YMMV.
> Expensive phone
Really ? That phone costed less than half of what an iphone costs and you can easily get a well supported ROM if you wish to.
Granted the situation sucks, but Google has been upfront about their support timeline.
I don't pay a lot of attention to the Android OS, but I do recall there was a nasty exploit discovered about a year ago (called Stagefright) where a specially-crafted text message with a picture or image can cause malicious code to be run on the phone the moment the phone receives the message.
I can still buy 4.4 phones as new on my city.
If you ignore the hilarious security bugs --- like the fact that, as shipped, they forgot to disconnect the keyboard from a root shell, so that if you typed 'reboot' into an email hilarious things happened --- it actually runs rather well; it's smooth and perfectly satisfactory to use.
...holy crap Cupcake would run well on a modern phone.
Not that it matters much today...
Unfortunately its https library uses some obsolete crypto technique --- TLS 2? --- and as a result it can't connect to anything on the internet, not even to fetch updates from the App Market (not the Play Store!). I can't even log in to Google.
I did have Gingerbread on it at one point but it was very unhappy.
I found a partial Debian port but there's still not really enough RAM for that. I wonder if there's a NetBSD port...
I didn't know that the App Market doesn't work anymore - about 18 months back, my brother was still using it (as a backup phone, obviously).
Shitty Lollipop made me sell the Nexus 5 last year with its bad battery life and memory leak (and they still didn't fix the mobile radio wakelock), but when downgrading to 4.4 it was next to impossible to block the notification. I remember methods used at time just caused the Google Play Services to hold the wakelock, since the update checker became a part of it.
I'm really not impressed with the Nexus 5x at all compared to every other Nexus phone Ive had (2 others), both from a price and general performance perspective.
That's an overhead to code, backport and test. These resources could be spent elsewhere.
I've owned both the 5 and 6, it's definitely a matter of preference. The Nexus 5x would probably be closer to what you are looking for.
I still think Android's UX blows iOS out of the water these days, but the best UX in the world doesn't help me if the phone is dead, or too big to use one-handed on the go.
On another note I hated the Nexus 5 and that LCD screen always felt washed out!
But hey, for 350 bucks, it's a good deal.
Been in 4.4 for ages, after testing the awful battery life of Android 5 and going back.
I find the battery life in 6 be about the same as 4.4, after installing xposed framework and Amplify & Greenify modules.
Besides a change in colors from dark to white, and the new lock screen notifications that I'm still thinking about disabling, I don't see a lot in actual improvements using Android 6.
tl;dr Android updates on non-Nexus flagships are terrible. Updates are typically months late and stop after 12 or 18 months.
I don't really agree. I have always got regular security updates on my Samsung flagship phones. Yeah I will have to wait ~6 months for Nougat but that's hardly of any concern. There is no feature in Nougat that I don't already have from Samsung. The only thing you have to care about is the monthly security patches and Samsung has been one of the fastest to issue those every month.
Witness the $200 phones that get spectacular battery life on stock Android primarily because they aren't running hardware that mostly goes unused and are unburdened by poorly designed launchers written by enterprisey Java devs.
> $200 phones that get spectacular battery life on stock Android because they ... are unburdened by poorly designed launchers written by enterprisey Java devs.
Are you saying that there are launchers / home screens that are _better_ than stock android in some dimension? I'm interested to hear more.
Coming from Jolla, with a huge battery life, I was really disappointed that iOS can't make it an entire day without recharging. Even with bluetooth and gps mostly off.