

What's the point of Android now? - dustywusty
http://blog.dustindoiron.com/whats-the-point-of-android-now/

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sofuture
Your two complaints are that 1) your phone is slow and old, and 2) a specific
app is poorly put together. Somehow, from this, your conclusion is that the
entire Android ecosystem is broken/worthless/something.

That's ridiculous, to put it mildly.

~~~
barista
The phone is not slow and old, the OS is a resource hog. Compare the specs to
a Windows phone and see how smoothly it runs with similar hardware.

~~~
freehunter
You have a point. The tighter you can control the hardware, the tighter the
integration with the OS will be. Windows Phone, iPhone, game consoles, they
can all make due with slower hardware than more general-purpose systems.

Android makes some tradeoffs to give their users choice. It has upsides and
downsides, but the true benefit is that people can decide for themselves if
they want beefier hardware to run the same relative speed but have more
control over the OS, or if they want the other give-and-take. There's less
overhead on iOS and WP7, but there's also less control.

I love the market we have right now. There's almost literally something for
everyone. I just wish Palm was back in to round it out with WebOS.

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hcarvalhoalves
He is complaining that the best feature one should expect from an Android
phone would be the seamless integration with Google's services. If even at
that it fails to deliver a good experience, what's the point then.

And whoever complained he's using an old phone... I'm still using an iPhone
3GS (released _2009_ ) with latest iOS. Why can't he complain about a phone
that is almost a year newer?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I would be more inclined to take his "I'm outta here... moving to iOS"
statement and the "seamless integration with Google's services" argument a
little more seriously if the article had outlined even a short history of all
Google services repeatedly failing to seamlessly integrate on the phone over a
variety of situations. But one coupon, in one app, for one service, one time
sounds more like someone just looking for any reason to say "screw Android...
I'm getting an iPhone". Yes, he does say "countless other" apps have issues...
that really isn't very specific nor does it show a pattern. I've had times
when (for no apparent reason... other than maybe the phone trying to multitask
_too_ much) an app loads slow... when it worked fine before and after that.
I'm not willing to accept that iPhones don't ever have similar hiccups...
ever. I'm in a house divided so I get to see first hand the frustrating things
that the iPhone and iPad can do.

But even that doesn't really matter to me. I hope he finds what he's looking
for... whether it is with an iPhone, a Windows phone or even a new Android
phone. I wish everyone luck in finding the phone/OS/carrier combo that works
best for them. I'm just so glad that there are plenty of those combos for
everyone to choose from.

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guelo
They really did do a bad job with that Starbucks coupon, it isn't integrated
with the Offers app at all but for some reason they still pushed you to view
it in the app. Not that I'm ditching my phone over it.

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notatoad
i agree, the offers app is useless.

why does offers need to be an app? it would work perfectly well in-browser.
it's not android that's pointless, it's the tendency of users to expect an app
for every little tiny feature that belongs on a website. and it's only worse
on iOS.

~~~
freehunter
I actually like having apps that might only launch another browser to take me
to their mobile page.

Opening a browser and going to a website is great on a computer, and I'd hate
to have a separate program to do that, but on a phone it's nice to have a
shortcut right where everything else is. I like that when you click it, it
does one thing.

It's just my opinion, and I know not everyone shares in it, but I abhor mobile
browsers. On a screen that small you either sacrifice viewing space or easy
access to navigation. I keep my bookmarked sites stored in my app list,
because launching an app is rote versus launching the browser app then opening
the bookmarks menu then selecting the bookmark.

The problem with this app, from what I got from the author, is that it
_doesn't_ launch a browser window, but instead has a complex and slow app,
_then_ redirects you to a browser. If it simply opened the browser window, I
don't think this article would have been written.

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cryptoz
Google's trying to build the future.

They don't care about your ancient phone that was designed _last decade_. Get
over it.

~~~
jiggy2011
Well I bought my phone last _year_ and there is already dwindling support for
it (no OS updates, just extra HTC crap), not to mention that the same model is
still on sale as new now.

Many people buy smartphones on a 18 month - 2 year contract and often will
wait until the price has dropped a bit to buy it. So I think 3-4 year old
phones should still be well supported if they want to gain people's trust.

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lukejduncan
My T-Mobile contract ended this month and I am very much looking forward to
switching to an iPhone

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hack_edu
Summary:

Guy complaining about his Nexus One being slow. It should be, that phone was
designed to run up to Android 2.x and has long lost any support for system
updates. It wasn't even originally designed to run Android 3.x. There's a
whole lot more about your phone's compatibility than "still duking it out
specifications wise", in his own words.

Edit: Oops, yes, no claim to run ICS. Either way, he's using an incredibly
dated phone. The comparison isn't far off from trying to run iOS 5 on an
iPhone 3GS.

~~~
lukejduncan
Nexus One was release approximately a year ago. Is it really an unfair
expectation that it should be able to download coupons in a non-painful way?

~~~
modeless
Correction: over two years ago. Anyone who bought a Nexus One at release is
out of their 2-year contract by now and eligible for the full subsidy on any
new phone with any carrier.

~~~
eli
Did any carriers offer a subsidy for the Nexus One? I was under the impression
that everyone who owns one bought it outright.

