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How many of you have actually used an Android phone?

J

Jb07

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 31, 2011
433
1
Dallas
I am just curious if any of you on here have actually used an Android phone extensively.
I don’t have any of these “Android problems” like lagginess, bad battery life, etc. on my Samsung Galaxy S Captivate that many people on here use to hate on Android. It is actually very nice, it’s just not as polished as iOS but it is still a good operating system.:)
 
I just switched from an Incredible and a Droid before that, so I have lots of experience. Battery life was horrible and it was very buggy. It was my best option until the iPhone came to VZW with the 4S.
 
I've owned two - the Motorola Droid and the HTC Thunderbolt. I too am amazed at how many people play with them at Best Buy for 3 minutes and declare them laggy and unusable. I found them very responsive and fun to use. I do have to say though the iOS experience is a lot more polished.

I am still saving my pennies to buy an unlocked Galaxy Nexus though... :D

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kat.hayes said:
I just switched from an Incredible and a Droid before that, so I have lots of experience. Battery life was horrible and it was very buggy. It was my best option until the iPhone came to VZW with the 4S.
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That I have to agree with. The Thunderbolt had the WORST battery when 4G was turned on. It lasted me 4 hours. When I turned off 4G it would last me two days. That phone was not ready for the 4G prime time and is a great indication of why Apple has waited so long to get into that game...
 
You don't have to use an Android to know that it's a horrible copycat of a phone.

Just look at what Apple's lawsuit claiming that "Samsung" copied Apple. Really, we all know it's Google who's the copycat.

And because Android is open source, it behaves differently on every device. So, different phones that run "Android" run it differently, sometimes, in the case of the Amazon tablet, with a whole new UI. Apple knows that open sourced software is not the way to go for mobile devices.
 
ZBoater said:
I've owned two - the Motorola Droid and the HTC Thunderbolt. I too am amazed at how many people play with them at Best Buy for 3 minutes and declare them laggy and unusable. I found them very responsive and fun to use. I do have to say though the iOS experience is a lot more polished.
Click to expand...

I agree. 3 minutes is not enough time to decide how good or bad a phone is. I love my Captivate, it’s fun and customizable, and I get a lot more compliments on my Captivate than on my iPhone 4. :) I like them both and they are both great OSs’ :D
 
Jb07 said:
I am just curious if any of you on here have actually used an Android phone extensively.
I don’t have any of these “Android problems” like lagginess, bad battery life, etc. on my Samsung Galaxy S Captivate that many people on here use to hate on Android. It is actually very nice, it’s just not as polished as iOS but it is still a good operating system.:)
Click to expand...

My final year project focuses on a comparison of both Android and iOS so I have an HTC Wildfire S. Its a very nice phone, I'm never afraid to admit that Android is a good OS - its silly how a lot of people bash it as crappy but then I imagine people do the same to iOS on Android forums. I'll agree that its lacking polish and in some regards it feels hacked together, but at the same time I like the freedom of it. It can be a bit laggy too, but then this phone was only £130 compared to the iPhone 4 being around £400 - if I paid £400 for an android phone and it was still laggy then I'd be a bit annoyed.
 
I had the HTC Evo 4G from December of 2010, until getting the 4S on launch day. It's so awful, that even rooting and using a custom ROM didn't help, especially with the lag and battery life.
 
It's funny how often people assume you've never owned an Android phone before - especially when criticizing Android's flaws. "Fanboy!" and "iSheep" is used way too often.

It's quite the opposite for me. I've had 4 Android phones in my life; Samsung Galaxy S Captivate, HTC Nexus One, HTC Inspire 4G, and the Samsung Infuse 4G.

So many bad experiences... I remember the day before I got my iP4, I was so angry with my phone. Put it on Craigslist, and sent it out the door.
 
I have (owned one)... unlike all the iPhone bashing phandroids in my office who have never used an iPhone.
 
I owned a Nexus One. Sold it 2 months later. Still have a SGS2. The hardware is excellent, though I can't say the same for native Samsung softwares and battery life. I customized the beejesus outta it with bloatware-free and power-optimised ROMs. Somehow the user experience is still instinctively so much better for iOS. To me, android is too... uncurated and wild in a sense, at least the apps are. I finally realized it really isn't all about hardwares, but a balance in everything.
 
I've had the samsung 4g on sprint. I was an Iphone hater, mainly because sprint didn't have it, and android was the only way to go. I hated the android platform so bad, I went back to my palm pre with the webos system, because it was that much more smoother then android. Once I got the iphone, i have to say it is by far the smoothest less buggy phone system I've ever used. The only thing that will make the 4s better is if it's jailbroken. Oh I've also used windmo phones too. I'm really considering going back to my palm pre though because I need my phone to tether, until the 4s gets jailbroken, then it will be iphone forever.
 
i think the problem is there are lots of android phones and they are not all created equal. you'd need to compare the cream of the crop to the iphone. and they also appear to be improving at a very quick pace, so people who used one a year ago don't really have an updated comparison. I had a motorola droid a couple years ago, liked it at first but then it got laggy after awhile and i wasn't blown away by the quality of the apps. but that was 2 years ago, so my experience is obsolete.

and i agree you have to do more than just play with something for a couple minutes. people get set in their ways and don't like change... its the same thing with people coming from android to iphone, they don't like something just because its different, but then once they get used to it they may love it.
 
I purchased a Nexus One on the day it was released and have been using it since. I also recently purchased an iPhone 4S to replace a Blackberry.
 
My son had a Samsung Galaxy S. It had a fantastic display and was fast & efficient. Sure I struggled to find things due to lack of familiarity, but I got used to it and it seemed like a fine phone. One thing that did become an issue was a memory error, despite there not really being a memory problem at all. We Googled enough to know that it wasn't an uncommon problem but couldn't find a fix.

When my 4S showed up he switched over to using my 4 and the Galaxy S now sits in a drawer.
 
I have and I thoroughly enjoyed it, it just wasn't the right phone for me at the time. If given the chance to have a choice of other platforms again I'd happily take it. There's nothing wrong with any of the available platforms out, just differences.
 
Yes I have! (So) but what I don't get is your on a Apple/Iphone forum wondering why so many aren't pro Android. Go on a Android forum and you will find many that hate Apple the IOS and the phone. nuff said.
 
Jb07 said:
I am just curious if any of you on here have actually used an Android phone extensively.
I don’t have any of these “Android problems” like lagginess, bad battery life, etc. on my Samsung Galaxy S Captivate that many people on here use to hate on Android. It is actually very nice, it’s just not as polished as iOS but it is still a good operating system.:)
Click to expand...

yes I have messed with them in stores. it is laggy, and honestly I just can't get over the cheap plastic toy like feel they have.

:apple:
 
I haven't, but that's not why I don't own one. I don't own one because I like my iOS Apps, I like iTunes, i like iCloud, etc.

I've seen some issues with Android anyways. I don't need to own one to see the unpleasant animations, lag with the phone, etc. I'm not saying your phone is bad (I'm glad it's working for you!) but out of the phones I've seen, they do have similar problems. The GS2 seems to be an exception in my own personal use (albeit for a short period of time) and based on what I've heard about the phone.

Samsung did a good job.
 
jca24 said:
yes I have messed with them in stores. it is laggy, and honestly I just can't get over the cheap plastic toy like feel they have.

:apple:
Click to expand...

I believe "messed with them in stores" does not qualify for a yes to the OPs question of having used them "extensively". That was the whole point of the question. Thank's for playing though.

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labman said:
Yes I have! (So) but what I don't get is your on a Apple/Iphone forum wondering why so many aren't pro Android. Go on a Android forum and you will find many that hate Apple the IOS and the phone. nuff said.
Click to expand...

I agree fishing for pro-Android comments on an iPhone forum is a futile exercise. But I believe the point of the question relates to the comments shoppers make about "lag" and "crashes" from playing with a phone for 3 minutes as Best Buy, and those adjectives keep getting repeated by folks who never even played with one for 3 minutes, and all of a sudden become fact.

First, most people that come to forums come to complain about something. Happy customers with no lag, no crashes, and no problems rarely have a need to come to a forum just to say how happy they are with their purchase.

Second, using a phone at the store for 3 minutes hardly qualifies anyone to be making such definitive judgements. Do Android phones have "lag"? Well, without defining what "lag" means I will go out on a limb and say yes. Because there are a ZILLION Android phone models with all sorts of varying specs, and Android OS allows you to do so many unnatural things to it, that is is virtually impossible to compare Apples (ahem) to apples. Instability comes with the freedom to mess with your phone's innards. And some Android phones are laggy. Many are not.

So the bottom line as another poster said he doesn't rely on people's opinions about one brand of phone on another brand's forum because they are invariably biased, not based on actual REAL usage (playing with it in the store doesn't count), and basically useless. However, occasionally, you get someone who has actually USED both platforms and gives USEFUL advice/comments. It is unfortunate you have to sift through so many fanboy comments to get to the small pearls of wisdom some posters have to offer.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.1; en-gb; Galaxy Nexus Build/ITL41D) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

HTC Hero, Nexus One, Nexus S, ZTE Blade, Galaxy S II & Galaxy Nexus. Yes I've used a few*.

Things have come on a long way since I got my Hero. The GSII and Galaxy Nexus are great devices.

I've had very few issues with the GSII. My biggest bugbear is the way it handles iTunes ripped/purchased music. It just doesn't read the id3 info at all. Thankfully, Google Music put an end to that.

Since I'm a tinkerer, the platform gives me everything I need in that respect but with the way ICS is performing on my Galaxy Nexus, I have a feeling my tinkering days are over.

*During that time I've also had an iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs and a Samsung Omnia 7 WP7 smartphone and I have my wife's iPhone 4 to hand if i ever want to use that.
 
I owned the samsung galaxy sII for a day before I returned it. In that day I've used it to the fullest extent possible and set it up as if I were going to keep it long time.

My issues were not with the phone. It was that my current setup is based heavily around Mac services. To use android I'd have to switch or modify more than I felt the need to.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Had a droid for two years and I couldn't be happier with my 4s. The battery was terrible and the system locked up all the time. It got to the point that I would only install 2-3 apps so I could keep the phone running smoothly.
 
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