xandros9
Active member
I'm here to say that's overblown.
1. Updates
I agree that Android's update situation is not ideal. It's certainly inconsistent but once we get up to the midrange and high-end, the prospects improve immensely.
However, that doesn't mean low-end phones are neglected, but it's a matter of choosing carefully. BLU phones? Nope. But this cheapo mid-2016 Galaxy is still getting security updates.
Once we get higher up, we can expect at the least semi-regular security updates and a couple of major OS upgrades. Typical support windows are two years. Of course there are exceptions like the BlackBerry DTEK phones and OnePlus Two but it's not so cleanly cut. The DTEKs are still getting security updates monthly (with a couple stumbles) and the OnePlus Two has a healthy custom ROM environment around it.
The face of Android these days, Samsung, upgrades it's flagships with two major OS upgrades over the course of two years or so (even if it's customizations mean it's not the fastest) not counting security updates. (the Galaxy S4 on T-Mobile got the January 2017 patch which is a weird outlier frankly.)
And of course, Google is leading the pack with Pixel.
And we can compare to Windows 10 Mobile which as it is right now, is getting nothing but security updates and the occasional bugfix. (with many devices abandoned like on Android) That's a pretty low bar, even though Microsoft's infrastructure/update system allowing it to update most phones with Windows 10 Mobile (not counting the arbitrary device support drops) easily is a huge bonus.
2. Ads
I've used Android for a year on three phones (and here and there before that) and ads have not been showing up in unexpected places. Typically such ads come from adware-esque apps that have no business being installed anyway. But wait, there are ads showing up in some services too like Facebook, but those ads are more of a symptom/slight bonus to being neglected on Windows Phone. iOS sees the same too.
Now a couple manufacturers have indeed pushed ad notifications for their new phone such as HTC (U11) and OnePlus (5), but that's up to the customer to decide if it's acceptable. The one-off might even be preferable to the constant Messaging+ alert at every boot.
As for lag, freezing and stuttering, I'm currently using a phone with the midrange Snapdragon 625 inside and I have not found any of those except for when the odd app locks up but I see it on all platforms except maybe Palm OS 4. Sure, Samsung is known to add on a lot of extra stuff that can bog down their top-notch hardware, but it's not bad. The gold standard in smoothness I hear is the Google Pixel though. So performance quirks is not Androids inherent fault. However I would also want to draw attention to Windows 10 Mobile's quirks if we start talking about the small details.
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