I don’t understand how could you pay such a vast amount of money for a phone that is not even subpar… it is unusable by your own testimony. Not trying to be snarky or anything, but why didn’t you return it?
I honestly can't even say one is better than the other, just different, and they've mostly stolen the good ideas from each other over the years anyway.
>Android 2.2 -> 12
Ha, that’s pretty much the entire history, minus the HTC Dream.
Same run for me. Started with Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S1). Jumped to iPhone 12/13 mini when Google designers hired Buffalo Bill and pushed his skin-lampshade-inspired-design in Android 12 (Material You Will Put The Lotion On Its Skin).
"All phones have these problems" is just false.
No?
Palm Treo 700
Motorola Droid
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
LG G2
Google Nexus 6P
Google Pixel XL
OnePlus 7Pro
None of them had glaring problems I had to live with or work around.
The battery life up until the LG G2 was a problem -- I usually needed to recharge mid-day if I was doing anything active. The G2 had the best form factor ever -- honestly, they should have kept the external dimensions the same and just improved the internals each year. 5.2" screen, 460 ppi. 138.5 x 70.9 x 8.9 mm. 143g. Eventually it developed a touchscreen fault that slowly spread.
The Nexus 6P was a great phone, but big. It developed battery problems after about a year. Up until then, fine.
The Pixel XL was a little disappointing because it didn't really feel like much of an advance, but it didn't have the battery problem.
I'm still using the 7 Pro, which, for a bigphone, is not bad. It has the excellent motorized pop-up selfie cam, which I like because I hardly ever use it. When I do use it, it deploys quickly. Battery life is starting to degrade (2.5 years in) and I'm thinking about either a Pixel 7 or an Asus Zenphone 9 this fall.
So, no. Not every phone has glaring problems.
We need to push manufacturers to be better, especially about providing timely and stable OS updates.
I can only think of one phone i have used that has what I would characterize as “glaring problems”.
Try a Motorola or a well reviewed model from another manufacture paying attention especially to people's complaints and whether or not they represent legit flaws. Spend at least 30 minutes reading reviews before you buy.
But that said the functionality of Android is much wider in scope, which is a blessing and a curse.
For my startup one of the core features is uploading photos/videos, and lots of them.. getting to know how each platform deals with background processes has been very eye opening. Apple : there's a couple of ways, it's on our terms, maybe, if we feel up to the task - but you know what you're getting. Android : here's the kazillion different changing API's on how to do it... you'll get there with better performance of what you want (maybe) but good luck navigating the landscape !
I suspect Androids eco system problems is just keeping up with ever changing APIs, or learning what worked fine on your Sony xperia 1 ii, fails miserably on your first customers Samsung S20.... then realising you're doing it wrong on the apis, then re-writing it, then the api's change....
So the chance of app bugs is far, far higher in Android.
The ecosystem has improved, and added a bunch of new optional stuff, a new language, a new way of making UIs, etc. Retrocompatibility is still very good.
The "stability" of Android Studio stable releases, how much Android build system requires as developer workstation (Google employees must all use gaming rigs), the artisanal tooling on the NDK front, lack of easier JNI integration after 10+ years,...
I have two exceptions that come to mind... My Galaxy J7 (Original version) was a lovely little device that still works, aside from lack of updates from the mfg. It wasn't fancy or fast, but it was cheap and has been able to do what I needed it to.
I bring that one up specifically because it wasn't a 'flagship' phone which tend to be as polished as possible (although often wind up with quirks on/related to new features), but a cheapish low to midrange (which often see problems around hardware choices and/or bugs around software for said hardware choices [^0])
I'm also going to give the 'WTF' shout-out to the Original Nexus 7 with HSPA+, you had to jump through some hilarious hoops to make it a device usable as a 'phone', and talking on it was something that became a meme among my colleagues... yet sadly was more 'reliable' than most of the HTC/LG shitshows of the day.
For a number of years, I was on a 'tiered' setup where my phones were WinPho, and I had either the aforementioned Nexus, or later a Samsung Galaxy Tab for my android 'needs'. The WinPhos sucked from an app standpoint but were otherwise the best 'smart phones' IMO between 2012-2016 [^1][^2]
[^0] I often wonder how many problems are related to firmware bugs versus a problem with the underlying hardware. As an example from another semi-related sector, consider the Intel Puma 6. You can try to mask some/most of the problems in firmware, but at the end of the day the design has a problem. Sometimes I wonder whether the extremely aggressive release cycle of phones is/was a way to 'mask' the problem.
[^1] Here! was far superior to Google navigation IMO, even had offline map downloading before it was cool. Call quality was always good, none of the weird drops/bugs I'd see on android, SMS was good except dual sim support on the late models.
[^2] I'll admit I don't really use iPhone. I buy them for my dad (he loved his WinPho for the simplicity and tile interface, but 'I like this too!' so that is what he sticks with now).