Been sitting on this write up for several days tweaking it etc. but about time I uploaded it.
So, you are looking at a phone thinking of picking up one of the latest fangled smartphones and effectively faced with making a base choice from four possibilities, Android, iOS, Windows or Blackberry.
I will stick my hand up here and openly admit I am very much in the Android camp here but my recent experiences has made me wonder what the current manufactures are doing to their poor Android handsets and how it can impact on the general public. Let me see if I can break down a few stereo types, do forgive me if I offend.
iOS phone = typical Mac user, loves the shiny gloss and all the techie stuff hidden away from them numerated to a couple of button selections
Android phone = typical Windows/Linux user, loves to fiddle and customise to their heart’s content
Windows phone = probably somewhere in-between…
Blackberry = Possibly the same, can’t say I know much about the range of phones unfortunately and probably the last you’ll see me type it for the ret of this entry.
Apple kicked off the big smartphone trend when they released the iPhone powered by what is now known as iOS, took a normal smartphone, heavily glossed over the technical gibberish to make it accessible to the masses and it worked in a big way, made the Windows phone at the time seem very clunky and Symbian just, well, outdated (and speaking as a former Nokia owner as well). So of course Google wants a bit of the pie and has iOS well in it’s sights giving birth to Android.
Google and Microsoft have one thing in common that set them apart from Apple, they just do the phone’s OS, it’s up to the manufacturers to put the hardware together… but this is where Google and the Android platform could fall over with it’s open nature and it would be the fault of the manufacturers unless Google can get some sort of handle on the situation.
Where as there are some hardware guidelines for a Windows phone for the manufacturers to follow, Google leave it completely up to the manufacturers and so all sorts of model configurations are being stuck out into the market and some with heavy customisations. The word ‘fragmentation’ comes into play here but that is not what this is about and personally think this is more strongly connected to the OS customisations that the manufacturers apply to the Android OS making the overall behaviour of the Android OS inconsistent. So what am I saying then?
I am the owner of a HTC Desire and never been so happy with a phone but it wasn’t without its gripe, internal memory. Prior to the Android 2.2 update apps could only be installed onto internal memory and phones with low internal memory where quick to run out. Google addressed this with Android 2.2 by allowing apps to be moved to SDCard however the app had to support it and system critical apps where advised away from the feature so in the grand scheme of things phones with low internal memory where no better off.
Now to more recently, Android 2.3, HTC Desire owners get some bad news, they are not getting the 2.3 update, massive uproar meaning they had to rethink the plan by cutting out select apps. You see, if HTC had have just put in that little bit extra internal memory.
Before HTC u-turned on the decision I finally had it, rooted the phone, s-off’ed it, replaced HBOOT reconfiguring the internal memory partitioning and put on a custom 2.3 rom… I effectively ripped my phone apart software wise and put it back together again.
It was literally like having a new phone, smoother, more fluid and presently don’t have to worry one bit about running out of space when installing new apps. I don’t know if what I’m experiencing was solely down to but it got me wondering about what was and could be going on.
You see, the way I’m seeing Android phones at the moment is equivalent to manufactured PC’s, use the cheapest hardware possible for the cheap spec you want it for and then stick on a load of completely useless software that serves nothing more than to use up space and clog up the operation of the phone… and that is just the manufacturers, the carriers get a hold of the phone and make it worse!
I have to admit, the core user experience of Android isn’t the best out there and so the manufactures add and customise to try to get round that but they are not apple, they can’t tell us what we want, we android users do think for ourselves and so everything that is included with any Android phone is not always welcomed with open arms… assuming it all works to any feasible level in the first place!
Add to that there are plenty a stuff on the marketplace to provide any given wanted function to an acceptable feasible level so do we ultimately need all the custom stuff put on phones anymore? Or at least to a point they can be removed if we find a better alternative.
To me all this coupled together could be killing the expected Apple alternative experience, we know how apple devices work, smooth and fluid, I now know for sure that an Android handset can be the same but for me to get there took the action of taking off what was already on there.
This example is a simple little thing and is something I’ve seen mentioned a number of times. Take browsing the installed apps, Apple you flick through the pages, responsive and smooth, Windows Phone you scroll around panes and hubs, again responsive and smooth, my Android phone pre root, jittery as hell and have noticed the same thing on numerous display phones as well. I root etc. and suddenly the simple task of browsing apps is responsive and smooth… well, that proves the hardware was capable of it so why the hell was it all jittery before hand?
Really makes me wonder what the manufacturers are doing to their handsets.