Not so Essential phone
medium.com
medium.com
> My <Android phone> is two years old and, as every Android, becoming slower and slower. The battery has degraded too, and now the phone is not holding even half a day of moderate usage. {author says other words to same effect later}
Although I am an iPhone user myself I hope this is hyperbole. My phones have lasted a lot longer and when I have replaced them it has been for new features (original -> 4 -> 6S Plus). I have had my current phone for a couple of years and don't see a reason to upgrade yet.
I'm not saying this to say "apple good others sux", I'm saying that surely this kind of planned obsolescence can't be the rule.
On another point: part of the benefit of Android is you don't have to run the stock apps, right? So as long as the hardware is decent, you can run the google camera app as the author did and got the best of both worlds.
(BTW I know a bunch of the Essential folks including Andy and the same guy spec'd/designed the camera hardware for Essential and, before that, Google).
I love how the new phones look but can't justify replacing a perfectly working phone.
Compared to the Galaxy S4 I had prior to it, this Stylo was definitely a big upgrade. No more SIM not found errors, band 12 support, better battery life, for less than a quarter of what I paid for my Galaxy S4.
Look up 'Nexus 5X Bootloop'. I had one before it started doing that. It's a common problem with that phone and it's predecessor, Nexus 5.
Apple actually forces recyclers to shred old devices rather than allowing said hardware to be repaired or pulled apart for parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F66BapDvpU8
Very nasty process, super wasteful!
It's a robot that can take apart and iPhone and separate its components for recycling.
From what I've heard from family who works at Apple, they're the king of duplication, every project has multiple teams doing the exact same thing, and the right hand has no clue what the left hand is doing. Secrecy is the core of their corporate culture, overriding everything else.
I switched to the flagship 2014 Moto X in October 2014. I got the material design update (iirc lollipop) in march 2015 and by then it was slow. The battery life was terrible. The camera was worse than the old windows phone despite the superior resolution.
Having a less than one year old unusable flagship sucksss. I got the iPhone 6s at launch and was blown away by the battery life, and the speed. I'm no Apple fanboy (as my post history proves), but iPhone is hard to beat. I'm thinking of getting an iPhone 8, not because there's anything wrong with my phone now, but because I want a shiny new toy. (and now I'm starting to rethink if its a wise decision...)
I've been burned by android and I just don't feel like I can trust the device to still work in a year. Kind of like the worst of Windows devices in the mid 2000s.
Personally, I'd like for no app to be able to run at boot or run in background or go online without explicit (revocable) user permission. I agree with you. I am not very optimistic about it.
I don't have crappy apps like Facebook or Snapchat which drains the life of any phone. I think the biggest problem of Android is the background process and how devs use too much this and not for improving the user experience but for revenue. Facebook tracks everything it can in the background to show you better ads, this is not possible in iPhones. Android Oreo might solve a little bit this big problem, so let's see.
Hangout was another problem app. Hangouts liked to crash, and after crashing it would leave something still going that would drain the battery unless I manually killed the Hangouts process.
These anecdotes are just to say I've found my battery problems are typically some app doing something bad without my knowledge. I'd like more strict control over background processes as well.
For my case, I found that a hard reboot -- turning the phone off and then back on -- brought resource/battery use back in line. That is, an additional reboot, after the one initiated by the update process, itself.
I never did encounter an explanation for this.
After my Nexus 5X -- whose battery life was already starting to shrink more and more -- bootlooped at about 1.3 years old...
Well, I look at my friends with iPhones that "just work" and last until new features compel them to upgrade their device. And it's increasingly tempting... (Just, I don't want to drop a grand on a phone, per the reported upcoming pricing for the iPhone 8.)
Try getting an old Nexus or Google Picel they have worked okay for me but funny enough I still use my iPhone as my main work phone and barely use the Android Nexus.
I swapped the Samsung ROM to CyanogenMod (now LineageOS) shortly after release; inmediately gaining some speed from the process and noticeably improving with each major Android version bump.
Add: Skype, I think is a great example. I used to use it (maybe through immo.im) on Nokia 5233 and it was fine. And today Nexus 6P is getting hiccups.
That's a good point. I do have three messengers installed (WhatsApp, Telegram and Riot), but I don't have any apps from the usual social media bloatfest. I do use "Swipe for Facebook" but not the official app nor Messenger.
As far as battery drain: i believe the usage pattern and how much time you invest in configuring your phone go a long way (did it for android, did it for ios. For example: background app refresh? Nope. Gps while not using the app? Nope. Look at battery usage over the day and see what kills your battery)
They get updated independent of the OS, which is in some ways a good thing, but does play a role in things gradually getting slower. My first phone for example became essentially unusable thanks to those, as my internal storage got completely filled up.
And it's Google's main-highway for collecting user data. It obviously takes battery and processing power to tell Google everything about you.
Other than that, I've had it over 4 years and had no performance issues. The battery lasts 2 days or more.
I think quality control of app performance must be a big factor. And not just 3rd-party ones. Google are really not good at software performance where obsolescence is a concern - things can only be expected to be usable on new setups.
So you have people like me and a lot of people that never use that connection. And I guess a lot of people buy the phones based on the feeling when they catch them, and thinner phones feel better and people are more likely to buy them. Thus say bye to the 3.5mm connection and loss the hope for bigger batteries. Buy trends is what matters for business.
> Thus say bye to the 3.5mm connection and loss the hope for bigger batteries.
Sounds like a couple of great reasons to stop buying music to listen to on the phone, stop buying game apps, etc. And to stick with my current phone as long as possible.
I'd also lose a lot of the positive aspects of Airpods: I don't have any recent Apple devices that I use regularly, so I wouldn't get to take advantage of many of the auto-pairing features.
It’s fundamentally not essential anymore for many - even possibly most - users of new devices, especially when the other port can duplicate the functionality through the same DAC.
I know it’s a big change but honestly Bluetooth audio has got so much better - the newer more advanced codecs are basically CD quality sounds - and most decent new BT headphones are pretty high quality.
That said and though the audio quality is improving, they are still a pain to use between multiple devices, remember to keep charged, often uncomfortable to wear in bed/lying-down (usually have some battery bulk going on).
So I'm still glad my phone has a headphone jack for backup and times I just don't feel like faffing with the far from perfect bluetooth, like right now I just got out of bed, plugged my wired headphones into my phone and started listening to a podcast.
(Also, I understand that some of my issues will be solved when 'AirPod'-level headphones become more affordable).
The Beats X are solid little guys and sell for normal decent headphone prices. I’ve had no problem switching with those for example.
But I do see the advantage in paying more, then making use of the typically better warranty/guarantees to keep them going for years, rather than accepting breakage as I do now.
I'm still only prepared to pay that much if they really do solve the 'device switching problem' though, otherwise I'd rather stick with multiple pairs of budget bluetooth headphones (1 for gym, 1 for desktop machine) ...
Would be nice for stuff to get down to that price tho.
For the record - I haven’t had any issues switching devices with my Beats X