<story><title>I&apos;m sick to death of Android</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/im-sick-to-death-of-android/20242</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>makecheck</author><text>I had an Android phone for roughly a year, after having a not-smart flip-phone for about 7 years!  And even though I found real value in my old phone for 7 years, I tossed the Android for an iPhone 4S almost as soon as the new iPhone came out.&lt;p&gt;When I first bought the Android phone (HTC Hero) I thought it was amazing.  It really had some neat features, and there were things the iPhone couldn&apos;t do (like totally change the home screen manager).&lt;p&gt;But it was never updated.  Not once.  It took just months to start seeing apps in the Android Market that only worked with newer OS versions.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;d also discovered battery issues; it was &lt;i&gt;abundantly&lt;/i&gt; clear that the carrier, Sprint, had the phone pre-loaded with apps (&lt;i&gt;in the ROM&lt;/i&gt; so they &lt;i&gt;could not be removed&lt;/i&gt;).  Not only did ALL of these stupid things auto-start when the phone was powered on, but they were apparently set up to &lt;i&gt;start themselves&lt;/i&gt; every hour or so because even with an app-killer I&apos;d still see this junk back in memory sooner or later.&lt;p&gt;Say what you will about Apple, but they keep the crap off your phone.  Carriers can&apos;t put a &lt;i&gt;damn&lt;/i&gt; thing on there that you don&apos;t want.  I&apos;ve also &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; received 2 OS updates from Apple, which is 2 more updates than I ever received with Android.&lt;p&gt;I also realized that even though Apple doesn&apos;t let you customize as much, their UI is also &lt;i&gt;not broken&lt;/i&gt; the way Android&apos;s is.  For instance, some of the default HTC Sense UI did really stupid things in my opinion.  Sure I was able to &quot;fix&quot; problems by downloading replacement keyboards, etc. but with iOS I don&apos;t even feel the &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; for that because Apple&apos;s UI is by default more sensible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CrazedGeek</author><text>Two things:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Say what you will about Apple, but they keep the crap off your phone. Carriers can&apos;t put a damn thing on there that you don&apos;t want.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;True, but they do a damn fine job of keeping things off:&lt;p&gt;iPad 3G video downscaled, blocked over AT&amp;#38;T network: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipad-3g-video-downscaled-blocked-over-att-network/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipad-3g-video...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;AT&amp;#38;T and Apple Admit Deal to Block VoIP on iPhone: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170661/atandt_and_apple_admit_deal_to_block_voip_on_iphone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170661/atandt_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;AT&amp;#38;T cracking down unofficial tethering apps like MyWi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intomobile.com/2011/03/18/att-blocking-unofficial-tethering-apps-like-mywi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.intomobile.com/2011/03/18/att-blocking-unofficial...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Granted, Google&apos;s complicit to the carrier&apos;s requests here too -- however, I&apos;m still perfectly able to install anything I want on my phone.)&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;But it was never updated. Not once. It took just months to start seeing apps in the Android Market that only worked with newer OS versions. [...] I&apos;ve also already received 2 OS updates from Apple, which is 2 more updates than I ever received with Android.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, it isn&apos;t. The Sprint HTC Hero got an official upgrade from 1.6 to 2.1, roughly eight months after the phone came out and five months after 2.1 came out. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slashgear.com/sprint-htc-hero-android-2-1-update-released-1986138/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slashgear.com/sprint-htc-hero-android-2-1-update-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>I&apos;m sick to death of Android</title><url>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/im-sick-to-death-of-android/20242</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>makecheck</author><text>I had an Android phone for roughly a year, after having a not-smart flip-phone for about 7 years!  And even though I found real value in my old phone for 7 years, I tossed the Android for an iPhone 4S almost as soon as the new iPhone came out.&lt;p&gt;When I first bought the Android phone (HTC Hero) I thought it was amazing.  It really had some neat features, and there were things the iPhone couldn&apos;t do (like totally change the home screen manager).&lt;p&gt;But it was never updated.  Not once.  It took just months to start seeing apps in the Android Market that only worked with newer OS versions.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;d also discovered battery issues; it was &lt;i&gt;abundantly&lt;/i&gt; clear that the carrier, Sprint, had the phone pre-loaded with apps (&lt;i&gt;in the ROM&lt;/i&gt; so they &lt;i&gt;could not be removed&lt;/i&gt;).  Not only did ALL of these stupid things auto-start when the phone was powered on, but they were apparently set up to &lt;i&gt;start themselves&lt;/i&gt; every hour or so because even with an app-killer I&apos;d still see this junk back in memory sooner or later.&lt;p&gt;Say what you will about Apple, but they keep the crap off your phone.  Carriers can&apos;t put a &lt;i&gt;damn&lt;/i&gt; thing on there that you don&apos;t want.  I&apos;ve also &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; received 2 OS updates from Apple, which is 2 more updates than I ever received with Android.&lt;p&gt;I also realized that even though Apple doesn&apos;t let you customize as much, their UI is also &lt;i&gt;not broken&lt;/i&gt; the way Android&apos;s is.  For instance, some of the default HTC Sense UI did really stupid things in my opinion.  Sure I was able to &quot;fix&quot; problems by downloading replacement keyboards, etc. but with iOS I don&apos;t even feel the &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; for that because Apple&apos;s UI is by default more sensible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nextparadigms</author><text>It&apos;s quite amazing how besides charging carriers the &lt;i&gt;full retail price&lt;/i&gt; for an iPhone, which gives them like $350 in profit per phone, they also don&apos;t allow them to install any of their apps. If only Google had the same negotiation skills.&lt;p&gt;There are so many things that Google could do for the benefit of their users, not necessarily for themselves, if only they took a tougher stance with the carriers, or convince them somehow that letting the customer be the #1 priority, and not the carrier itself, is actually a good thing in the long-term for the carrier. And a good example of that is the iPhone, which even though had the customer (and Apple itself) as the priority, the carrier still benefited a lot from all the customers and more expensive plans.</text></comment>