Hot Take Don’t judge Android by the worst of Android

[Ink]

If you buy a $100 Android phone, you're going to have a bad time. That doesn't (and shouldn't) represent Android as a whole.​

In two recent reports, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) showed that more people than ever are jumping ship from Android to iOS. The agency says that most of these folks — about 53% — leave because of “prior phone problems.” In other words, the users weren’t happy with their Android phone’s performance in some way and decided iOS would be a better fit.

My concern with people leaving Android for iOS because of “prior phone problems” is that at least some of those people will not have experienced the best of Android phones. Instead, they might have experienced the worst of Android and jumped ship based on that poor experience. It saddens me to think that there are smartphone users out there who think the platform as a whole is terrible and are basing that opinion on predictably terrible experiences with phones that were never intended to be a good example of what Android can be.

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Don't judge all of Android by the worst of Android

Bought a $100 Android phone? Congrats: you've experienced the worst of Android. Please don't base your opinion of Android on this.

www.androidauthority.com

 

[TairikuOkami]

DuH, if you want to play games, you do not buy Celeron and if you want to take photos, you do not buy a phone with 2MB camera. Specs are not a secret.
I bought 2 smartphones for $120/$150 and I can not really complain, though the first does not receive security updates, but I have it only as a backup now.

That article seems more like a typical advertisement: Do not buy a cheap alterative, just buy iphone. Do not use an inferior free AV, buy a security suite, etc.

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

Why does Google licence Android to poor quality manufacturer's? Oh wait...

...and, for the price of a 'good' Android phone, you might as well enter the Apple ecosystem and start enjoying the benefits that come's with.

For me, its never been about individual device feature point scoring. For $A1.5k, I want everything to work properly. Device, OS, apps, app store, customer service and resale value.

So far no one has provided an Android device that covers these areas.

 

[roger_m]

Why does Google licence Android to poor quality manufacturer's? Oh wait...

...and, for the price of a 'good' Android phone, you might as well enter the Apple ecosystem and start enjoying the benefits that come's with.

For me, its never been about individual device feature point scoring. For $A1.5k, I want everything to work properly. Device, OS, apps, app store, customer service and resale value.

So far no one has provided an Android device that covers these areas.

What issues have you had with Android phones? I bought my budget Android phone second hand for AU $130 at the start of 2019 and for the most part it's worked very well and I'm still very happy with it. Maybe I'll upgrade in a few years.

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

What issues have you had with Android phones?

I have never owned an Android phone.

But, when I buy something I generally do a bit of research and with this, as it relates to mobile phone's, you quickly find out, Android phone's, lack a decent device-wide ecosystem, for the most part, security patches are rare and/or sporadic, the hardware and OS are usually from different companies and not necessarily 'matched' for maximum performance, the app store is full of malware/viruses/scams and non-functional stuff with zero quality control, the preloaded OS comes with huge amounts of bloatware(60Gb in the latest Samsung flagship I believe) and covert data collection functions enabled by default, poor build quality/life cycle for non-flagship devices and next to no resale value.

Apple suffers from non of these issues, so why would I want to own an Android phone?

Congratulations on your phone. Obviously what I have outlined doesn't apply to every Android phone.

But I don't think I'm guilty of being the only person on MT that takes the liberty of occasionally generalising things...

 

[roger_m]

I have never owned an Android phone.

I've never owned and iPhone. The lack of updates is a big problem with Android devices. On the other hand, I've never been infected due to not using updated version of Android. There are issues with the Play Store, but it's nowhere near as bad as it might seem. My last two budget Android phones have excellent build quality. Some cheaper Android phones have bad build quality because there are made as cheaply as possible. But there are plenty of budget and mid range phones that have decent build quality. So I don't think it's fair to say that Android phones in general has poor build quality. It 's a bit like judging all Windows laptops based on the quality of $200 or $300 laptops.

According to some people, Android is better than iOS for privacy.


Having said that, I believe that both Android and iOS are good options. At some point I'll buy an iPhone to play with as I've never extensively used one.

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

According to some people, Android is better than iOS for privacy...

Interesting video Roger. Strange dude, but makes some interesting points.

He's right though, if you're going to overthrow the government, dont use a mobile phone.