

"Why I abandoned the free and open Android rebellion" -- a traitor's UX review - Terretta
http://technologyviewer.com/post/3329004010/droid-to-iphone

======
kls
_I installed third party roms such as Bugless beast, and Cyanogen, I over
clocked the stock 550 mhz processor to 800mhz, but in doing so I took a chance
that my hardware would never work again, as a well as suddenly relying on
these third party developers to keep me up to date, and secure._

 _But close the camera app, and try to use it again later, and it was a 50/50
chance, at best, that the program would crash upon starting. Even if it did
start and you took a pic, occasionally the photo wouldn’t save properly. The
droid camera is just buggy and slow, and I believe it was on the hardware
level, not the software level because these problems occurred in every camera
application I used, including the default one._

I think the first quote negates the certainty of the latter. I find it a hard
stretch to blame the device when you have installed custom ROM's. Unless you
have pulled dumps and logs off of the device and stepped through the code to
find the issue and isolated it for certain, the first suspect should be your
modification to the device, not the hardware and not Android as installed by
the manufacturer.

~~~
jokermatt999
Stock Droid owner here. I love my Droid, and I'm admittedly biased against
Apple, but I agree with his complaints about the camera. I've never done any
OS modification at all (even rooting), and I've noticed the Camera app is the
crashiest thing I've got on my phone. Even when it starts up, it takes about
10 seconds before I can actually take a picture, and the quality is...lacking,
overall. I'm no photographer, so it doesn't get to me too badly, but I can
understand his frustration even from just using it occasionally.

~~~
code_duck
I started having problems with the camera on my Droid 2 right away.

The color balance is random and difficult to reset. Sometimes there is a 5
second delay before the shutter fires (it is confused by motion - like rain or
snow even). The pictures are often fuzzy. The Sport setting is the only one I
use, since these problems are worse in the other modes.

It even crashes sometimes and takes down the entire phone (it reboots!).
Sometimes the flash gets stuck on for 15 seconds first. Yes, the picture
quality is often bad on the Droid 2 - sometimes it is perfectly good, though,
which is even more frustrating. I can't rely on the camera at all.

The camera on my iPod touch is actually better, though it has 1/4 the
resolution. It's reliable, has good white balance, snaps right way, and the
photos almost always look good.

I'm definitely wary of Motorola products as a result of this and a few other
issues with this phone. It has nothing to do with Android, though. I wish I
bought a Samsung or HTC, not an iPhone.

------
Udo
_I have been called a whore and a traitor by my friends, but I did it anyway.
Last week I turned off my Motorola Droid, and activated an Apple iPhone 4 on
Verizon. This was considered by some of my Android loving friends as an act of
war, by some just an excuse to banish me from their twitter circle._

Friends dumping you over your choice of mobile software aren't really your
friends. Not even by the loosened-up social networking definition of
'friends'. Useless melodrama...

~~~
ryandvm
I doubt his friends are really "dumping" this guy over his choice of phone.
What kind of sociopath would void a friendship over something like that? Most
people don't even have access to _one_ person that nuts, let alone a
plurality.

I would guess that they're probably just tired of him preaching the
superiority of his new phone and have just phased him out a bit. I mean, he
_is_ a blogger. They're not exactly known for holding back.

My suspicion is that this guy is probably just feeling the effects of Miguel
de Icaza's "Well, actually..." syndrome
(<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html>).

~~~
Udo
"Well actually" has some interesting dynamics that I haven't quite mastered.
For example, my inner voice goes "well actually" all the time, especially when
I listen to some skilled socialite acquaintance going off on a funny tangent
that keeps everyone entertained. Since puberty, I'm not giving in to "well
actually" anymore, it stays firmly in the realm of inner monologue.

But once in a while, when I'm following an entertaining story being told in a
social setting, another guy will pop up and say "well, actually..." and people
will not stop admiring him or her, they will say repeatedly how smart and how
unexpectedly brilliant this person is (even if they just pointed out a very
obvious flaw).

So I'm calling bullshit on "well, actually", because it often works when a
charismatic person with a huge ego does it. That means the problem is clearly
not in the smart-assery of the content, the presentation itself is faulty.

------
chapel
That is cool that he enjoys the device he purchased, that is really what
matters, but I feel that he was hardly entrenched in this so called war. Not
only that, he is comparing the experience of a 1.5th generation phone versus a
4th generation phone. The Droid is a good phone, but I wouldn't call it great.
It has a slower processor, less ram, the hardware feel is what some call
flimsy. In my opinion Motorola didn't make great phones at first, and their
drivers had lots of issues. Don't get me started on their penchant to lock
down the phones.

The iPhone 4 is a great phone, but I wouldn't trade my Nexus One in for one,
not even if I was paid. There are a lot of reasons, more than I wish to
extrapolate in a comment. I started out with a G1, I have been in the
'trenches' if you will since the start. I know what Android has achieved, and
how great it really is, because I saw it when it wasn't so great.

He didn't abandon anything, he just got a new phone.

------
eelco
His story reminded me a lot of the time I switched from Linux to OS X. There
was a point where compiling my own kernels stopped being fun and I just wanted
a computer that I could work with instead of work on.

~~~
dkarl
Why did you have to leave Linux? You could have just stopped compiling your
own kernels. Even the guys who tweak and compile the kernels we deploy to our
servers just run stock kernels on their desktop machines. Sounds like you have
the same hacker OCD that makes this guy overclock his processor and install
third party ROMs and then have the balls to complain about stability. (He
makes it sound like the modifications were necessary to make the phone work in
the first place, but overclocking the processor falls into the "I just can't
help myself" category and undermines his credibility a bit.)

~~~
bradleyland
"Compiling my own kernel" is often a metaphor for the effort involved in
running a Linux system. I run a dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu system right next to
my MacBook using SynergyKM to control both, so I have a good opportunity to
compare both on a daily basis. The "compile my own kernel" factor with recent
distributions of Ubuntu (9.10 and newer) is really, really insignificant.

So, it's a mixed bag. "Linux" means so many things that it's hard to say
"Linux is easy to use" or "Linux is hard to use" and not be right in both
cases.

------
markszcz
"If you live on your GPS, then this would be enough of a reason alone to
choose Android over Apple"

I dont live on it meaning I dont have to use it all the time, but when i'm
going to a new restaurant for example I love being able to either search at
home and send myself a map link or search on the phone and hit directions and
have navigate open itself up with everything set and ready to get me to my
destination.

I have used other stand alone GPS's and they all have their quirks about them
but theres something about the full intigration of the navigation with Google
that makes me love that feature the most on the Android OS.

------
stcredzero
_activated an Apple iPhone 4 on Verizon. This was considered by some of my
Android loving friends as an act of war, by some just an excuse to banish me
from their twitter circle. I feel as though I wear a scarlet “i” on my chest
everywhere I go_

Heh. "The Scarlet i" would make for a great parody play! I hope some talented
teen picks this idea up and gets their 15 minutes of YouTube fame with this.

Seriously, folks, it's just a damn gadget!

 _Yes there is a strong Jailbreak community for the iPhone, having been a long
time iPod touch user, It’s a community that I have even participated in. But
with every update of iOS, Apple makes it less and less necessary for the power
user, and it’s just not necessary at all for the average use._

I was a jailbreaker, and stuck with my 8GB 1st gen iPhone for a long time.
Now, my factory unlocked non-jailbroken iPhone 4 does everything I want. I
have no contract and I only pay $46 a month to T-Mobile. Sometime next week,
I'm going to get an alternate account AT&T sim so I can test an app with MMS
functionality.

------
stewbrew
I personally find it strange when people compare an android phone made by X
with the iPhone and describe that comparison as android vs apple. Unless it
were a nexus phone maybe.

~~~
code_duck
Right, the problems with the Droid cameras have nothing to do with Android
itself. It is just Motorola being shoddy.

------
code_duck
I don't "switch" operating systems or devices, I supplement them! My setup
with an Android phone and an iPod Touch works great as I am now familiar with
both OSs.

Similarly, I have a MacBook Pro, a Toshiba with Win 7 and also run Linux on
both of them.

I like Android, but I will be buying an iPhone 5 when they come out. I'll also
be buying whatever the next Nexus is too, though. Isn't that how most serious
device geeks operate?

------
kra1iz3c
Ehmm... who cares? Your so called friends are not talking to you anymore
'cause you changed phone? They're not friends, that's all. Go on and live with
it.

------
orenmazor
a traitor? a whore? you need new friends. its a phone.

------
Alucarddrol
It's ridiculous to say that you have abandoned something when it sounds like
you didn't even take sides with it in the first place. To me those who choose
the Android phones and tablets do so specifically because they want to
customize their experience with it and even get the dev kit and make something
of their own. After reading the article, I find that you're just another one
of these "Oh, look at all the pretty pictures I can take, I'm so media-centric
an creative now, I might even get paid for the photos I take with it". This in
itself is absurd and, were you telling me this, I would have smacked the
thought right out of your empty little head. This smells too much like paid
advertising and I don't like it. If it is real, I'd dock you a point (-1) for
Bad and inconsistent grammar, (-1) for Spelling Errors, (-2)for saying iphone
(An overpriced piece of shit with an environment that's toxic to devs and more
recently content publishers) is better than Android, which makes no sense
because you compared only the iphone against one android phone, and a bad one
at that. I mean, if you're willing to spend that much on an iphone, why didn't
you just get a better android phone? And finally, you are docked for
supporting apple, which the most bullshit company I've ever laid eyes on and
deserves all the bad publicity it gets. (-1) Also, -1 for advertising for
apple by not giving a fair comparison of solely the operating systems but the
phones. That's a 4/10. All in all, a failing grade for a failing article.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Not everyone chooses Android because of a desire to customize or tweak. I
bought my N1 because I wanted a smartphone with a decent browser on TMobile. I
know plenty of people who've purchased Androids for similar reason (wanted a
4" screen, wanted front facing camera, etc).

While all of us techno-geeks like to obsess over every minor difference
between the Apple and Android platforms, the reality when you step back and
look at it is that for most users, the difference is negligible.

People get _way_ too invested in these stupid product/platform wars. Everyone
needs to remember: You aren't defined by the products you buy and use!

