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> When I switched to Android I discovered it is strongly tied to Google

This is a common misconception. It is very easy to replace Google apps commonly found on Android phones (such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, etc.) with non-Google apps. If Google's services start to get shitty, manufacturers will simply replace it with alternatives. For example, in China, where Android phones are popular but Google services are largely inaccessible (due to the government censorship rather than anything that is Google's fault, but the situation is sufficiently similar to Google losing its edge), Android phones come with Baidu as their default search engine. There was even a phone released on Verizon that had Bing as its default search engine (Microsoft probably paid Verizon a ton of money for that).

Yes, but in China Google services aren't nearly as prevalent as they are in the US. Baidu is as popular, so naturally it'd be okay as a default standard.

The Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S1) on Verizon had Bing included by default, and there were quite a bit of complaints about it - not to mention the fact that the device wasn't too competitive with other devices on the market at the time.

From Engadget's review:

"This was maddening to us. We don't have a personal issue with Bing, but it's not our engine of choice, and we'd be willing to bet that it's not yours either. Now, imagine buying an Android phone -- a Google phone -- only to discover that not only was Google not defaulted to as a search engine, it's not even an option! For us, this is actually a deal breaker. It's fine to throw a new choice a user's way, but to force them into using nothing but that choice seems pretty low. Even on the original iPhone you were given a choice between Google and Yahoo!. Here, you've got Bing unless you want to get hacking -- and most people actually don't want to get hacking. They just want to use their phones. Again, it's not that Bing is a bad search engine, but Google is the standard. If it's not even offered, what does that say?"

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/07/samsung-fascinate-review/

> Yes, but in China Google services aren't nearly as prevalent as they are in the US. Baidu is as popular, so naturally it'd be okay as a default standard.

And if Google's services became so crappy that people started using something else (like Bing) on their PCs, then it would be trivial for Android phones to switch over to that as well.

My point was that Android phones are not tied to Google services, and that Chinese Android phones are a good example of that.

> The Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S1) on Verizon had Bing included by default, and there were quite a bit of complaints about it

Yes, because people didn't want or expect Bing, they wanted Google. The reason why almost all Android phones (outside of China) have Google as their default is because people want Google to be the default, not because Google has mandated it.

I agree. I've ranted previously about how Samsung is toxic for Android in the past, mostly because they really did copy Apple too much, which gave the impression that "Android" (since Samsung is a very popular Android device provider) copied Apple too much.

eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4346221

The problem is that whenever they don't blatantly rip-off Apple the designs they come up with are terrible. And beyond just design they're clearly lacking on the software quality front.

Exhibit A, The easy root exploit via /dev/mem:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2048511

Exhibit B, the copy bug where copying more than 20 items in a single device session would break copy/paste across the entire device, causing any app which tries to access the clipboard to crash. The bug they didn't fix for close to a year (they never really fixed it per se, they just waited until the normal Android system OS refresh cycle and didn't include the bug in the next revision) and whose "workaround" was doing a factory reset of your device once it got into that state (you could also fix it by rooting the device and manually deleting some protected files but of course that wasn't officially supported).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/22/samsung-cop...

As someone whose current job involves Android development, it is nearly impossible for me to avoid Samsung's terrible devices (95% of the time they are the ones I have to investigate device specific bugs on in our app) despite the myriad of problems I have with them.

The only Samsung device I've touched that is tolerable to use is the ARM Chromebook, presumably because they had virtually nothing to do with the software on it.

> The problem is that whenever they don't blatantly rip-off Apple the designs they come up with are terrible. And beyond just design they're clearly lacking on the software quality front.

Actually I find their blatant copies of Apple some of the worst offenders when it comes to their design. The ugly bars all over TouchWiz are pretty much darker tinted variants of the default bars found on iOS. The Samsung messaging app is ugly and essentially copies the iOS messaging app with a darker color scheme.

But really Samsung's designs are just terrible. They should try to work more with Google and leave as much of the stock UI as it is.

> The Samsung software I have seen on their TVs, laptops, phones has been adequate at best.

You've clearly used a Samsung SmartTV then. The software is so slow, so clunky, so unreliable; it's a hair pulling exercise just waiting for the thing to load (1-2 minutes to bring up the dashboard). Its bad enough to justify hauling the thing back to the shop and getting a refund.

I have a SmartTV as well. Tried the apps once and never touched it again. It really is 90's era software.

I honestly can't fathom why the TV manufacturers are just sitting back, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for Apple to come in and make them look stupid. I mean really is a TV so much more complicated to build a decent UI for than a smartphone or computer ?

Very true. I feel like I'm sitting at a PDP-11, except a PDP-11 would be more intuitive than the Smart TV interface. I only use my Apple TV as an interface for Netflix, Hulu+, etc. now; the only thing I touch the actual TV controls for are changing sources.

So true. But the worst part is when their software update servers go down. Apparently SmartTV phones home about every 5 minutes or so, and when Samsung's servers are offline for any reason the TV pops up an annoying box in the middle of the screen telling you that your internet isn't working. Even if you're just watching TV or a DVD.

I contacted Samsung and they told me not to use my TV and that it should be fine the next day. In the end, I factory-reset my TV and didn't give it the wi-fi password.

I own a Samsung TV, a camera by them, and used to own a cell phone by them. My friend also has a GS3.

All of them are just poorly-designed, cheap imitations of Blackberry and Apple UI design. The Smart TV interface is a disaster. It's a mess; nothing works and the supposedly "smart" touchpad integrated into the remote constantly misses what I want to select.

The camera is decent; but it's only a camera, so not very much going on there.

The phone I used to own (a feature phone by the name of SGH-A867) was also okay with regards to UI. It was fairly intuitive and worked well; although AT&T probably designed most of the software for the phone. It was, however, on the hardware front poorly designed. The touch screen stopped responding after a year of light use. Unacceptable.

The GS3 that my friend owned really seemed promising. But the polycarbonate construction left a lot to be desired and the UI felt like a hobbled-together, piecemeal catastrophe.

I bought a Nexus 4 and am enamored by it. It's perfect.

>>those horror stories about people's Google account getting deleted for no good reason are very scary to a startup founder.

Afaik, Google also sells commercial support for email, documents, etc? As a founder, you'd probably want a company email address anyway...

Googlw would hardly dare to delete those company accounts without a court order?

Google's commercial support is shit.

And Google could very well delete (or block) "those company accounts" without thinking twice.

After all, it's not like "company accounts" are sacred. Especially when the company is some 3-4 person shop in Iowa or something.

PayPal blocks such accounts all the time.

Samsung have a lot of money, and a lot of resources to through behind making their software work better. I find it hard to believe that is that hard to get right.

If they had any sense they should buy BB or Palm OS.

Software is hard. Any company where you can ship production code with all of physical memory mmap'able world-readable/writable (Exynos Android 4.0 vulnerability) points to a seriously flawed software engineering culture.

I thought this was more due to the 'embedded' culture. After all, under VxWorks, isn't all memory addressable by all processes?

That's ancient VxWorks (sadly still shipping in some places, however).

More recent VxWorks - i.e. anything 6.x, since 2004 - has memory protection.

He, it's been a while. Thanks for the correction.

LG already bought webOS and all the other Palm goodies from HP back in Feb.

http://www.webosnation.com/lg-purchasing-hps-webos-division-...

They're going to use it as the basis for a new line of "smart" TVs. I still have my fingers crossed that OpenWebOS makes a usable phone to replace my Pre2.

I personally consider the Pre2 the high-water mark for smartphones.

A lot of people don't remember Palm OS, but as someone who owned a Palm TX device, I have most fond memories of it. And I still consider it the best handheld device that I had (including my current Nexus 4) in terms of both design and UI, and user control, and battery life, which lasted up to a week! It was a real bummer to see it go. I still miss it.

I lost my Android phone, so am currently using my wife's old centro. It's amazing how many things it does as well or better than the android phone did (battery life being the biggest one).

You may want to check one of those "lost/stolen Android" apps for your next Android. They allow you to control device remotely, find out GPS location, erase SD card, etc. Quite useful.