My big fat Android rant

[NTUser]

Hey everyone.
First off, this is 100% my own experience. If you like Android I'm not trying to offend you personally. In fact, if I read this post a year ago I would have jumped all over me myself.
Also, I know that I'm a new member here. I hardly want my account to be perceived as nothing but ranting. I feel like I have much more to contribute than a rant post, and I hope this won't damage my reputation in any way. That said, if the mods here don't feel that this kind of post is appropriate I understand.

So here's my story.

I bought an HTC Incredible 2 in November 2011. The problems started almost immediately. I didn't like Sense one bit, so I got GoLauncherEX. I hated 2.3.4's default keyboard, so I got Swiftkey. It was good, for a while. But then came the lag. It's unbearable. I run out of memory constantly. At least one app will crash every half hour. Now, I understand that if you're trying to run a high performance game on a lower-spec device it's going to hate it. But this is ridiculous. So I downgraded to a more conservative launcher (there was no way I was going to stare at sense every time I went to my homescreen). Didn't help.

As of around April 2013 I was still using stock 2.3.4. I had tried rooting several times, only to fail and nearly brick my device. By this point I was quite fed up with Android. Why should I have to put up with carrier bloatware that I didn't even want? Why can't I remove it? So I decided to try to root one more time. I didn't care if I did brick my phone by that point, I was done. So I rooted. It only made things worse.

I removed all the carrier bloatware from my phone. That's it. All of Verizon's stuff. I didn't take out anything critical. I didn't mess with anything that had HTC in its name. I'm still running the stock version of Gingerbread. My phone is an unstable mess. Everything lags now. My messaging app lags. My browser lags. I can't pick up calls half the time because the phone part force closes.

Well, you're probably thinking, I rooted. It's my fault right? But I didn't do anything that I should've been able to do in the first place. This is the stock version of GB, not a ROM. I didn't delete some critical part of the Android OS. I deleted the Verizon apps and games that should have NOTHING to do with the OS's internals.

TL;DR: The fact that in order to remove things like "Let's Golf 2" and "NFL Mobile" I have to risk breaking my device, and then have my phone turn into an unusable piece of junk when I finally do remove them (what good is a phone if you can't even make calls?) is just absurd. Good riddance Android, I should have expected this much from a Linux distro on a phone.

 

[spaulagain]

My girlfriend just replaced her Droid (2 years old) with a Lumia 928.

Android was a mess on her phone. The phone lagged beyond belief. Every time I tried to use it I wanted to throw it. I can't believe how long she stuck it out with that POS. Every button click was a good 3-5 second delay AT LEAST. Her pictures just started randomly disappearing one day.

Then, once we got her the new phone, we tried to pull her contacts off it through Nokia's contact transfer. But her phone would only let her transfer text messages through Bluetooth. So we had to manually enter in contacts she didn't have in her Facebook/email account.

Clicking through each person on that Droid was laggy as hell. We often ended up back on home screen because it would just crash.

I know the newer, highend Android phones are getting better. But I can't ever see using an Android device after dealing with hers. So I can definitely understand your rant.

 

[James8561]

Try Windows Phone. it's great! 0 lag. never out of memory (you won't be allowed to download apps that you don't have enough ram for anyway)
I'm staying away from Android for the forseeable future. the reported lag and google spying are the main reason. other than that the HTC One is probably my favorite design right now. If HTC bring that over to WP im totally buying it

 

[coip]

Me and my entire family were on Android for the past 3 years and we all had the same problem: the Android operating is a sluggish nightmare. It gets slower and more unusable with each day, regardless of whether you reset the phone or not. Google does some things well, but coding operating systems is not one of them.

We all switched over to Windows Phones in the last few months and are blown away by how much better of an operating system it is. Not only is it designed better (it looks cleaner, fresher, and is more intuitive to use), but performance-wise it makes Android look like a joke.

 

[fatclue_98]

I don't like Android either but when I have had it, I just install AntTek app manager and I "freeze" unwanted apps. They don't even show up on the launcher and frees up some RAM. If you're not going to flash a custom ROM, this is the best way to disable bloatware.

 

[MikesChevelle]

I agree, the only way I liked android was rooted running vanilla. It does seem that the devices become obsolete WAY to fast

 

[sdc1]

I wanted to like Android, I gave it a fair chance with a Huawei Ascend G300. At first it was ok and I was quite impressed but the problems soon shone through. The Play store is a mess, there is far too much crap in there. The phone became laggy and almost unusable. It wasn't for me.

 

[sumothong01]

I also was with android. Started with the original Droid then went with a Droid bionic. When I first got my original Droid I was in love with it. But over time it got slower and slower. Same thing with the bionic. Android also seemed like I had to down load apps just to get the phone to work. Google play is horrid between the 500,000 fart apps and all the others that didn't work I was fed up. When it came time to upgrade I wanted something easy to use and worked. IPhone was out of the question so that left WP. I went to a Verizon store and played with a 928 until a sales rep became available. She was no help and told me that if I didn't want an iPhone she couldn't help me. After going back home disappointed I went to another Verizon store and specifically asked for a rep with WP experience. Got a guy that updated to a 928 from a iPhone5 the day before. After seeing how happy he was and him showing me more about the phone that's what I walked out with.

 

[mase123987]

In all fairness Android to def. better than it once was. I wrote a review about the LG Optimus G Pro (easy to find on here). Overall, I thought the phone was pretty darn amazing. It ran incredibly smooth and did thing I wish my 920 did. I returned it only because the 5.5" screen wasn't for me and I still preferred the layout of WP.

I would never go low-end on Android but there def. are gems out there.

 

[MikesChevelle]

Agree'd definately feel you need to have a TOL device to make a good review, its the blessing and curse of android, you can get it on cheap device, problem is people dont lower their expectations with the price

 

[Shawn Magm]

In all fairness Android to def. better than it once was. I wrote a review about the LG Optimus G Pro (easy to find on here). Overall, I thought the phone was pretty darn amazing. It ran incredibly smooth and did thing I wish my 920 did. I returned it only because the 5.5" screen wasn't for me and I still preferred the layout of WP.

I would never go low-end on Android but there def. are gems out there.

I like the Optimus G Pro a lot. It's on my watch list. The IR Blaster is a nice feature to have.

 

[jaj324]

My phone is a HTC 8x but this new Nexus 7 Tablet I picked up last week takes the Android experience to another level. It has a quad core processor, 2gigs of RAM and a high def screen and is running pure 4.3 android. Android ain't what it used to be.

 

[pseudoware]

I just sold my Windows 8 tablet, an Acer Iconia W5, and also picked up the 2nd gen Nexus 7. Apples to oranges, but the N7 is very sweet.

 

[spazzmeister]

Don't ***** about a 3 year old OS (Gingerbread). Android is about using a flagship device, anything else will make you cry. Even MS is the same, you cannot compare a Lumia 900 experience to a 920, its different versions of an OS. So why do you compare a Gingerbread device to a WP8 device?

 

[ag1986]

I would say OP and rest should compare a 2-3 year old Android device with the original Windows Mobile OS. I had similar experiences with Android up to 2.3, I was about to switch to iOS when I had a chance to use a Galaxy Nexus with 4.0 ICS. That changed everything.