It still absolutely amazes me that you guys usually pay for incoming SMS messages.
I mean come on. W T F? If the carriers started charging each time you charge your battery the US public would just bend over and take it.
What? I've never seen a carrier charge for incoming SMS.
Many people have a plan addon that includes receiving some SMS for free, but the basic stock plans do not.
For the last few years, texting to the US had always been at the same rate as Canada (and covered by texting plans). Rogers decided to switch that on me when I wasn't paying attention... although I'm pretty sure I asked, and the Sales guy lied.
In either case. One complaint to the FCC in the USA, or CCTS in Canada will get things your way. Both countries, from my experience, has pretty terrible customer service. I can barely understand half of Verizon's CS team, and one guy at Roger's CS actually told me I should just do nothing, even though I felt cheated, because "if you sue, our company has more money than you, and you'll lose for sure". Sigh.
I called Bell to have them block all incoming text messages and they said that they could not do it because it was somehow tied to their emergency 911 location determination service. After much prodding they said they could turn off incoming texts (but I should hope that I never have to call 911 with my mobile) but came back with a $3/month plan for like 500 text messages so I just took that instead.
I switched to Rogers and am now on an iPhone plan which has text messaging but I would love to be able to block incoming texts again if iOS 5 and Google+ gets serious traction.
Verizon: "20¢ per text sent (per recipient) or received (including Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands)"
AT&T: "All AT&T customers with Text Messaging-capable phones are pre-activated to send and receive messages at $0.20 per message with no monthly charge."
Straight from their websites.
Also it could quite possibly be that I am indeed living under a rock as I am very satisfied with my carrier so I don't actively look at plans of others.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=incoming+text+message+...
Contrary to most the promises politicians make, this one costs no money and simply involves signing the right bills into law. It will even be good for the economy. Of course, they would have to withstand the rich and powerful lobby of said behemoths, which is of course why such a politician will be very hard to find.
the problem is CTS tests API consistency with the goal of preventing platform fragmentation for app developers. there is also a separate set of tests that specify minimum hardware requirements for each version of android, and specs such as battery life, etc.
compatibility and android brand licensing also requires a certain set of minimum apps, such as the phone dialer, calendar, contacts, music player, etc. but (and quote[3]):
> The Android upstream project defines a number of core applications, such as a phone dialer, calendar, contacts book, music player, and so on. Device implementers MAY replace these applications with alternative versions.
and further -- the gmail, chat etc. apps are proprietary Google apps, and there are various licensing reasons why they can not be enforced as part of 'compatibility'.
API compatibility is good, but UI and app compatibility is very flexible - and given such flexibility, carriers will almost always go the crawpware route.
[1] http://source.android.com/compatibility/android-cts-manual-r...
[2] http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html
[3] http://source.android.com/compatibility/2.3/android-2.3.3-cd...
Clearly this phone is one example, if the battery is discharging itself so quickly (and generating so much heat) in an hour.
How about the only sane option is to not buy a phone with crapware on it? This is what markets are for - so that crappy products can die. If Verizon sells phones with crapware and T-Mobile sells phones without, choose T-Mobile.
Even better, if the US market finally wakes up to buying unlocked phones from electronics vendors rather than locked phones from carriers, you can actually choose between handset brands like consumer electronics is meant to work.
If I buy a digital camera, I have to do a bit of research to find out which one is good. If I'm not that demanding, then the extent of the research can be asking my friend who just bought a camera which one she bought. It would be an easier choice if only two companies made decent cameras and I just had to choose one or the other, but that's not how it is, and I suspect the camera market would also stagnate in that situation.
Sorta gives me a bit of hope on capitalism. I stay with them on principle.
Give me a break. Just get a phone "with Google" and use the pure Google experience and it's a breeze. All of this spinning and complaining about what OEMs are doing to an open source OS is like complaining about the DIY boxcar racer you bought and put together turned out like shit. (and you want your money back.)
Most consumers don't know the difference between Google-made Android phones and the others. You're missing the core point which is that the Android platform is fragmented and regular people are being given a phone full of advertising and apps built for up selling.
Regardless, the intention of my point was that manufacturers were given "blueprints" and "tools" and they built a shitty product. Even though Android is Google's product, the end result is not and to point fingers at Android is wrong. Is it the fault of Google if people are using the tools improperly? If anything, Google should've better managed the Android trademark so as to not associate their toolbox/blueprints with sub-par implementations.
The "with Google" branding meaning nothing in terms of actual phone experience, and Samsung isn't the only vendor at fault here. After my experience, and dozens of similar accounts like this blog post, I don't recommend anyone buy an Android phone that isn't a "by Google", like the Nexus line, and even then, only if they have some strong objection to getting the iPhone, which I would recommend over any current Android device.
I really, really, really wanted to like Android, but you can damn-near put an 18 month countdown on the majority of the Android phones before the manufacturer abandons it and you're stuck using XDA developers or the like for updates, patches and improvements, or just to fix the stock crap they ship. On a 24 month contract cycle, that's just unacceptable.
Somewhat broad generalization ahead...
About once a year, Apple comes out with ONE new phone, an iPhone. If the phone is bad, Apple goes out of business. Apple bets the company every year on that new iPhone, and to make that a reasonable bet, they spend tons and tons of marketing on design, engineering, quality, and customer support. Apples knows a bad iPhone makes WSJ / New York Times front pages. Apple knows that to make a bad iPhone loses them iPad, iPod, Macbook,... customers.
And so ... by and large, Apple does not make bad iPhones.
In contrast
Four times a year, each, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Kyocera, Huawei, Sony, and others, come out with a new Android phone. This phone is one of many many products made by each of these companies. The success or failure of any of these phones means almost nothing to the company. And so, the product development and rollout of any of these phones is not a bet-the-company gamble. Accordingly, very little effort is made on design, engineering, and customer support. None of these companies have terribly loyal customers, most seem to buy a given phone based on carrier affiliation, or based on costs. Losing a customer here is bad, but does not carry the long term cost as losing a customer at Apple does.
And so there is very little incentive to make anything but competitive (in all the wrong meanings) phones here. There is a race to the bottom mentality going on.
"We think the phone we make is good, at least as good as the phone they make. Let's get some more marketing dollars from our partners for it and we will all be happy"
I then went to look at Creative's website, and looked through their list of products. They had 16 separate models, many of which were very subtle variations (e.g. the 316 vs. the 316z). There was no breakdown page that would show you the differences or help you decide. Some of them had LCD screens, some of them played WMA, some of them had more space, some came in multiple colours, but you didn't know which had what or what it cost until you clicked on the page. Making a completely informed decision would take hours of clicking links, making notes, hitting the back button, and then clicking the next link.
I marvelled that not only was Creative competing against Apple, they were competing against themselves. They produced 16 different models, which requires 16 different manufacturing processes, 16 different packagings, 16 different manuals (each in a variety of languages), 16 different QA processes.
The same thing is happening here. Manufacturers are largely unwilling to challenge Apple in the high-end of the market (where the Galaxy S, Nexus S, iPhone 4, etc. all live), so they work in the smaller end. The lower prices mean lower margins and lesser quality parts. This also leads to less testing and QA, meaning a lower quality finished product.
As a result of these lower margins, they need to sell more phones, which means producing more models of phones and shortening the lifetimes of the phones in order to encourage people to turn them over faster. It's becoming a race to the bottom.
People compare Android and iOS to Windows and Mac, but it feels like the better comparison is Mac vs. PC hardware, not software. Apple makes very few models of computer (Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro), which they refresh lately. There are lots of variations, but you have four base models which are simple to understand. In comparison, if you go to Dell's website, there are a dozen models you can buy, each with subtle variations, and even with different prices depending on which business unit you buy from. Other PC manufacturers all do the same thing, and because they don't control the software they ship (other than crapware), they can only really differentiate on price.
It's become a race to the bottom, trying to slash costs and increase volumes at the same time, and PC manufacturers have realized that they're fighting over a huge chunk of the market and leaving Apple to actually make the profits. Android certainly has the potential to surpass Apple in market share, but they're going to be fighting over a much smaller chunk of profits, fragmenting their efforts over multiple products and competing against other manufacturers' multiple products.
It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Google needs to create a new platform that curates as well as Apple does. Or sit and watch while Amazon builds one on top of Android.
In the long run, Google needs to do something about this, or face it doing severe damage to the image of their platform.
I bought the MyTouch3G (2nd Android phone ever), the G2, the Nexus S and recently the Galaxy Tab. Overall, I'm very happy with the experience of each of these phones. There are other phones out there that have great experiences as well. As a consumer, I will research these purchases which matter and will pay with my time to get exactly what I want. If you want to, instead, pay for one company to handle quality end-to-end for you, then you will pay for that, too.
For me, the pluses in Android outweigh the (few) minuses (that remain).
For anyone else, it's great that they have the choice to make. :)
If years of market research prowess fails me and I consistently see similar stories crop up every month or two where other technically inclined people regret purchasing some other Android device, it says to me that I didn't simply get a lemon or make a huge mistake in my decision making but the market itself has a problem, whatever issues and loopholes allowed it before have remained unfixed. Since the price difference between iPhones and top end Android phones are basically the same ($100 variance or so on a >$2k total cost...big deal), and that I can mindlessly buy whatever the next iPhone release will be and have pretty good assurance Apple has my back, I'm completely unwilling to waste time researching Android devices and still possibly get bit in the ass for my efforts.