Why didn't you just buy a Nexus? (i used to battle Android updates to, but it's not Google's fault... The Nexus proves that) (1st smartphone was a iPhone 3GS, the rest were all Androids)
I'm trying really hard not to start a flamewar, but as someone who has exclusively used (and still uses) Android since the first Moto Droid, Google cannot be trusted, even with the Nexus brand. Take the Galaxy Nexus as evidence, where a similarly aged iPhone was still receiving the latest iOS updates. Or take NFC: Android users have been quick to mock Apple for using NFC, but every time I asked a clerk at the one store nearby that supported paying via a phone and NFC the clerk had never seen it used. Google doesn't tend to "finish the job" for lack of better words.
With respect to the grandparent and the "Fighting", I have to agree with the grandparent. There is NOTHING NEW in the iPhone 6 and yet I'm thinking about getting it and making it my first iOS device because I'm sick of fighting everything from updates to not having the latest apps (which are iOS first usually https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000#up_4332278). The same thing happened with me and Linux as a desktop OS after years of use: http://xkcd.com/619/
I've installed Cyanogenmod on every Android device before and Cydia on my first iOS device (my first smartphone was an iPhone 3GS).
The clerk you are talking about, will still not know what NFC is for payments in a year from now. It doesn't change anything that Apple now joined the same game with Apple Pay... It's more infrastructure related and demand related.
Just like the Apple Watch, there is no actual demand for NFC Payments from regular users.
There was demand for the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Also Maps applications are used a lot (Navigation).
We don't use watches anymore (check your smartphone), we still pay with our wallet and with cash.
When I was living in the UK about 70% of my purchases were done with a chip and pin card, even a couple of beers at a pub.
This because in the end it was quicker and easier than using cash.
If NFC makes paying quicker and easier than using cash or cards, the demand will be there: by the end of the month there will be millions of iPhone6 customers waiting to test these new features.
If I were a shop/chain owner, I would be scrambling to try to please them, before the competition does.
NFC payments using a phone would add a few more steps, so I think that the wallet and card is going to win out for me. It would be very hard to get it much simpler than it is right now.
() There are limits. My MasterCard, for example, will let me make contactless payments up to a total of $50. At that point it will require me to make a Chip&Pin transaction in order to reset the $50. When this happens the reader will just say "Insert Chip" or something.
Also, it's often difficult to see whether a retailer has contactless even when you're standing Right There and then you do the normal chip+pin out of shame because you feel like a right fool with your card out.
Next time he goes out with them, he will have his wallet. To give back the money he borrowed from his friends.
When the above situation can be handled.. There is an option for a walletless life. Where i live (Belgium), this won't happen within the next 2 years
The vast majority of men in the US will have their wallets with them regardless. The iPhone 6 will not, and is not designed to replace driver's license, etc.
If that problem is solved, there can be a future for a walletless life.
It strikes me that our NFC infrastructure is way better than yours too. Somewhat a reverse of most patterns in tech-infrastructure. It's just a pity Google won't support the Nexus' NFC capabilities in Australia - I bet Apple will.
In fact, in young circles (in the US), this seems to have become the defacto way of transferring money socially between individuals. I don't think I have paid someone I know with physical cash in years.
Either way, you're comparing 2 year old phones. I also got tired of fighting with Android and installing custom builds, but it's not really necessary these days. Stock builds are much more polished, and many of the more advanced features from OEM and custom builds have been integrated into stock Android. I recently got a HTC One and have found little need to root or install any custom ROMs on it - it does everything I need and doesn't seem worth the hassle any more.
I do agree with what you say about Google not "finishing the job". Many apps and services have been released with a lot of promise, but then been left relatively unchanged from early versions. If Apple Pay succeeds where Google Wallet has failed to gain traction, it will almost certainly be down to Apple making more of an effort to get merchants and services to support it. Perhaps they simly have more influence, but Google isn't exactly a small company, yet they often seem to fail in these areas. In particular, they make little effort to support things (Google Wallet NFC payments is one example) outside of the US. They're an international company, they have offices in many other countries, and yet many of their services remain US only, or take at least a year to be offered elsewhere.
Having control over your own phone is a genuinely useful thing, not some abstract ideal. I've been using a wireless tether with a Verizon unlimited data plan for the last 5 years, something I simply couldn't have done with an iPhone. (And it's amazing how many hassles that removes -- I can get internet in the park, or in any shop no matter how shitty the wifi.)
1. I use this ROM: rootzwiki.com/topic/36706-romaosp62114-shiny-rom-ota-like-stock-android-444-ktu84p/#entry1031982
I have all the control over my phone I desire to have, it does everything I could never need it to, I don't have to worry about my own ROM, or if updates to the system come, I press the update button when the phone tells me to do so, in short, I have the phone-appliance, a construct I am supremely happy with.
Apple products only have three errors (in order of likelihood):
1) You did it wrong. 2) It doesn't do that. 3) and rarely, It's an honest to god bug.
95% of the problems I've ever had with my phone are fixed by turning it off, and turning it on again - this ease of use led me to buy a Mac, another choice I'm quite happy with, it all more or less just works - and with the Mac I have enough freedom to replace the built in apps that don't work with ones that do - Chrome/Thunderbird/Adium instead of Safari, Mail.app and iMessage.
Google simply stopped supporting the Galaxy Nexus because they didn't feel like it.
I too have the same problem with NFC, apart from here in the UK no Android payment systems are ready on the phone itself (you can only install it on some devices).
And yes google are terrible at sending clear messages.
Just look at yesterdays confusing discussion RE hangouts/gchat/gtalk/google voice.
No idea what is going on there.
I notice that people attempting to communicate via Hangouts (on their phone?) doesn't notify me in Talk. If I attempt to call someone who has Talk on their phone from my web browser (therefore using Hangouts), they never get any notification. I can therefore never get in touch with my brother, unless I call him using Talk from my phone. If someone attempts to talk to me via Hangouts, the message is shown in my inbox in the web interface, but NOT on my phone in GMail, nor in Talk on my phone. I therefore never find out about a message until I use the web interface, which I don't really do because I have GMail on my phone......
It's a bit broken.
Agreed about NFC, it's frustrating that I've had NFC on my phone for 2 years now, but still not been able to use it for payments. EE does have an NFC payment service now, but for some reason they only let you use it on a few specific phones, not including my HTC. I'm not sure if this is down to differences in the hardware or just favouritism. I'm hoping that Apple Pay will at least push more places and services to support NFC payments in general.
I keep the old one on my phone and resist installing the new one. Also, Google Local has gone?
That's the problem with cloud services I suppose, but at least if they had the decency to keep cloud services going whilst there were obvious users of them (without breaking things), that'd be appreciated. I mean, how long has MobileMe been going for OSX?
I'm not dumb. I used to write highly multithreaded network code for a living. I took Diff Eq in college! But Android makes me feel dumb, so I'm selling the N5.
But I can understand why it would be annoying.
It's almost as bad as "do you want to view this site in the tapatalk app?".
You just gave a far better explanation than I did in favor of the appliance-phone device.
What really frustrates me is the camera. Some photos are great, others look like the image has been made deliberately bad. I don't think the Nexus phones will deliver a great camera experience any time soon, and there's only so much compensation that G+ can make to a dull, blurry photo.
> if there was only one there would be less innovation
Does not compute.
That doesn’t really sound like innovation.
EDIT: Never mind, I didn’t pick up on the actual gist of your comment, that being the copying done by each company forces the other to come up with new, possibly innovative ideas to one up the competition.