EDIT: Android phone recommendations?
- The whole fragmentation and apps being made for iPhone first and sometimes never even making it to Android
- There is no Android store to take my device for a quick free fix or free replacement (Apple has replaced many of my idevices at no cost and done so quickly)
- A new Android device is released weekly; many cheap inexpensive ones. It just doesn't feel sexy/special to me as there is one iPhone millions lust for and the press and consumers go ape nuts over.
- The carriers and device manufacturers have a stranglehold on Android. Many Android users are not able to update their 2010 or 2011 Android device to 2012/2013 software as you can choose to do so with the iPhone. Also the device manufacturers create they own UI and add bells whistles. Android does not have one UI/UX to rule them all like iPhone.
With that being said as a long time iPhone owner .. I am annoyed by....
- Apple's tight control on it's ecosystem .. it indeed stifles innovation. I wish they would allow developers to build onto the built in apps (plug ins) like the camera, maps, alarm clock, facetime and other built in apps.
- New Maps definitely a step down from Google Maps
Overall I just wish there was only one Android device in which the UI/UX is controlled by Google. That would solve my Android complaints, but Google's M.O. is to be on as many devices as possible and thus Android doesn't work for me.
I'm tired of this meme. It's grounded in truth as the best memes are, but otherwise mostly it's "much ado" by we technorati, doting on SF and NYC public transportation and using "Google" Maps like a paper map to see what's nearby (campus, neighborhood, etc), and thinking everyone's use case mirrors theirs. It's easy to join this chorus. It's harder to voice disagreement by pointing out the huge usability strides in Apple Maps vs the earlier app. You will be mocked. But...
In most of America, cell coverage is sporadic and slow. Try to pull up where you are on former maps app and you wait ages for tiles to come in. Zoom, wait ages again. Drive or hike in marginal coverage with Apple Maps and the difference is night and day -- Apple Maps seems almost like it is in offline mode. Stats and tests prove it uses a fraction of the data, and holds far more of your map in memory.
In most of America, getting from A to B needs a car. The "Google" Maps didn't do real time turn by turn, much less offer the spoken guidance, glancable visual guidance (and status bar guidance while in other apps) of Apple Maps.
In the rest of the world, the famous public transportation options of Google Maps weren't necessarily available. In Rome, for example, a public transportation search simply returns no public transportation found. Apple opened transit up to local providers, and now cities worldwide are already offering local-grown transit apps that hook in. In this country, professional guidance companies like Navigon have already hooked in with "urban guidance" that can blend car to get into city, walking to get from parking to public transportation, and transit to get around town, in a single route.
Blogs show screens of Apple's 3D view mapping satellite onto 3D models poorly. So it's not Google Earth. For everyman's workaday use, so what? Articles joke about addresses being in BFE instead of downtown. Google Maps does that too, more times than not, unless you're careful to give enough precision in the search terms, and even then it will prefer Queens or Brooklyn to Manhattan for similarly numbered streets in "New York, NY". You have to use "Manhattan" to get the street 2 blocks away.
There's a report issue button, and as users use Apple Maps, the glitches will improve. In the meantime, what's amazing is how much more usable the foundation and architecture of the app and server side data is compared to the old app. This is not a step down, it's a huge step forward that can be readily built upon, and the launch day quirks (that can be found in any mapping app when you know your own area within a data set that covers the planet) simply do not get in the way of the typical user's everyday use.
I'm a mapping hobbyist. Google Maps have gotten almost as good as hand made paper maps from the past, but still have a long way to go to get to the level of a Richard Saul Wurman. Apple Maps already have map usability techniques that offer clearer info with less clutter, and in the months of using the beta test app I rarely had complaints in the greater NYC area other than transit, which has now been even better solved by the whole new class of beautiful and usable third party transit apps. Yet technorati have scared regular users from upgrading for fear of "losing" their Google Maps. That's a huge disservice to the normals who count on us for guidance. (And of course they can add Google Maps back to their home screen. It only works online anyway, why aren't we telling people how to have both?)
Apple upgraded Maps to offer guidance to regular people in flyover country. Of course Apple should be held to task for insufficient debugging of place points, but even aside from the other fantastic features of iOS 6 (eg shared photostreams), friends and family just wanting to drive to work on the best route to avoid traffic should be encouraged upgrade today.
On your device you get iOS 6, but 3D turn by turn NAV is designed to run in parallel (multitasking) with other apps like Mail or Messages. Consider the performance gain of the iPhone 4S vs the iPhone 4 (nearly 2x, see below), and consider how users would react if the background turn by turn nav was causing their foreground apps to freeze.
A hallmark of the iPhone experience is fluidity. It's one of the painfully obvious differences to owners of both OSs (I own a Google Nexus as well). Framerate and responsiveness make the UI feel more tactile and real, connected to your touch and intentions. My speculation is that the processing power needed for the turn by turn could degrade the experience while in other apps, so it was nixed.
I do have an iPhone, but do not have an iPad to compare tablet to table.
Much like you, I'm done with researching what device to get for weeks, finally settling on one (with the necessary compromises) and then get shafted anyway.
Plenty happy with my iPhone so far, I may reconsider Android once the no-upgrade, crappy custom skin, comes with crapware problems it's riddled with are resolved.
Clearly, all hardware manufacturers have an incentive to not give updates in order to compel people to buy their latest devices. It's just that Apple plays a slightly different game by giving updates, which make your device slower and slower with every upgrade until about 18-24 months later, you just fork out cash to buy their latest device.
At some point I imagine Verizon will simply stop supporting the phone, and the developer site will point to the last, 'carrier-blessed' OTA Android release.
If I can't trust a Nexus device on this platform, what can I trust?
I bought an AT&T Nexus S from Best Buy for $49 with a 2 year contract. It did not receive updates from Google even though it had a Google logo on the back and I had to update manually by downloading from the device image download link mentioned above. I have a Galaxy Nexus now that I bought thru Google, it updated to the latest point release as soon as I turned it on. As long as device gets purchased with a contract at a subsidized price, don't expect updates to get to you over the air.
At least in the USA that's often a sucker move. You pay full price for the phone, but still end up paying a higher monthly fee to cover the subsidized handset you didn't take.
A couple carriers do offer BYO handset pricing. But if you want to stick with a big carrier like Verizon then the phones Google sells directly are effectively coming at an extremely hefty premium.
I mean, Google releases updates to the Google Apps on Android for quite a substantial amount of time, so it's quite possible that unupdated Android devices are actually getting almost the same level of support as the 3GS. The only difference is that app developers have to bundle the [new APIs](http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.ht...) with their Android apps while Apple pushes the new API onto devices.
Microsoft has also only promised 18 months of upgrades for their WP8 devices. But I think 18 months is too little. It should be at least 2 years or 2 major upgrades. For example, any new device that comes with an Android 4.x version should receive at least the Android 5.0 and Android 6.0 upgrades (and of course anything in between them). Any new Android 5.x device should get every update up to Android 7.0 (including the Android 7.0 update).
I would be quite satisfied with such an upgrade process. That's what I'd call quality customer support. Am I being unreasonable to ask for this? Is Apple really the only company that can do this? In that case, I'm not surprised they are so much more successful than the others who forget about their customers almost the moment after they sold them the new phone.
There simply wasn't enough internal flash to hold the OS anymore without repartitioning it (something which carries a lot of risks). And the hardware just wasn't up to snuff.
I also owned the nexus one, but sad that it wouldn't go past gingerbread.
I don't get this argument. These Motorola phones are all using a unix like operating system. So why don't you say "That is what keeps me from unix like operating systems", which includes the iPhone?
Stop thinking of Android as a Smartphone. Your confusion will vanish immediately: The Galaxy sucks? Don't buy Galaxy anymore. Motorola does not support devices well? Then stay away from Motorola! (At least until the changed course for the mothership).
Apple is known for great long term support, so is Google. Buying a device from on of them usually guarantees good support.
Asus has a good track record as well. Samsung is not that great, but they still give software support for the Touchwiz OS on their Galaxy line for 12-18 months. This usually includes 2 major Android versions.
I'm not in the US, but I hear Verizon, Spring and AT&T provide horrible software support. Never buy a smartphone that has one of their Logos on it.
Your experience with a smartphone depends on a combination of hardware, software and service. Android is none of the three things, it's just the technology that most vendors use as the base for their software. It has nothing to do with service.
Other handset manufacturers have incentives that don't always align with an optimal user experience.
In general, it's better to get a phone whose manufacturers are involved in the OS like Apple, Microsoft/Nokia, and Google.
I wonder if there's a market for an email only device?