What’s your worst experience with an Android phone

[kaardowiq]

Today I tried a S20 and was disappointed about the lack of 2FA SMS… Still can‘t automatically handle them in all Apps or Websites (Chrome Beta). I love this feature on Apple devices over years

 

[maxjohnson2]

Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5. Horrifying Touchwiz bloat. So slow basically unusable, this is coming from a someone who used to root phones and do all that. And extremely cheap plastic material.

 

[Barbareren]

Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5. Horrifying Touchwiz bloat. So slow basically unusable, this is coming from a someone who used to root phones and do all that. And extremely cheap plastic material.

I remember those ones… 😬 👎

 

[Bluetoot-]

I used a BlackBerry Classic for a bit and it was a fantastic phone. The OS was great; just no freaking apps. Incredibly sad as it was a real quality device. BlackBerry OS 10 was pretty good, IMO. I miss the Hub.

But, this is about Android phones. I think the worst Android experience I ever had was a Samsung something or other; so bloated with a ton of AT&T crap and the battery life sucked. I don't remember what device in particular it was, but I was not a fan.

My favorite Android devices are probably the Xperia line as I'm a sucked for hardware; I thought the Z3 was a beautiful phone. I liked the stereo speakers, too.

One more note: the Surface Duo is really awesome hardware from what I can tell and feel. I don't own one, but it seems well built. Software, on the other hand was clunky when I tried to use it.

 

[Barbareren]

BlackBerry OS 10 was pretty good, IMO. I miss the Hub.

I very much agree!

My favorite Android devices are probably the Xperia line as I'm a sucked for hardware; I thought the Z3 was a beautiful phone. I liked the stereo speakers, too.

I very much agree when it comes to the Xperia-line as well, hehe.

Haven’t had a chance to try the Surface Duo, but it seems interesting, at least hardware-wise, as you mentioned…

 

[Bluetoot-]

Haven’t had a chance to try the Surface Duo, but it seems interesting, at least hardware-wise, as you mentioned…

I kind of like the concept and I could see myself using it for work, but it was very unintuitive and laggy when I tried one out. Granted, that was at release time, so the software may have gotten better, but I doubt it.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Ironically, my worst Android experience was with my all-time favorite version of Android, version 2.3, Gingerbread. Although it was not so much the OS as much as the hardware at the time. Ye Olde LG Optimus V, complete with almost no internal storage. One app and it's complaining about low disk space and nothing syncs.

I had a huge Apple bias since I was against Smartphones for a long time, until my Nokia 5185i's battery had gotten so bad that my boss handed me a 3GS and told me to use it or get fired (he couldn't get hold of me for service calls when my Nokia had almost no battery and less than 10 minutes of talk time! NiMH batteries really did suck!). That iPhone was my first iPhone, and it had me spoiled with the skeuo UI and smoothness. Nothing Android offered then was remotely close. Android equated often with random reboots, lag, stutters, and almost no internal storage for apps. GMS which was the predecessor of Google Play Services contributed mostly to the lag and battery issues as well.

So for years I wanted to love Android, understood its purpose, but I was too spoiled and biased from my iOS experience. That now has become less of a thing since my S20 FE runs circles around my 6S. 120Hz does make a huge difference. I also have total control over my phone, including disabling ALL updates (iOS 7 was the update that made me no longer trust updates) and making it as skeuo and Android 2.3 looking as possible (thanks to backward compatibility!) without the caveats such as low internal space and lag or limited RAM.

Android has come a long way both on hardware and software, no longer are random restarts, hot-temperature phones, 4 hour battery life STANDBY, or ANRs (Your app isn't responding, do you wish to close it? No, thank you Clippy! Just be more patient!) or the other issues.

Android's 'lack' of updates actually is a feature for me, as I hate updates. I don't like change, or my apps rearranging themselves where I have to learn everything over and over again, or having crap UI designs. So I don't update anything period. I leave it alone, and just enjoy using it. I know how to interact with each app so well I can do it blind. I also de-Google most of it, leaving only YouTube Music, Search and Maps installed. I tend to prefer Bixby over Assistant since it does so much more, and use open-source apps in place of Google's.

So the 'crap' period of my experience with Android ended around 2013 when I got a Samsung Galaxy S4.

BTW for those who don't like the 'ads' built into Samsung's own apps, two ways of disabling it:

1. Go to settings-->connections>Private DNS and put 'dns.adguard.com' in there. It will report 'couldn't connect' but works anyway

2. Install NetGuard No-root Firewall from Play Store. Turn off mobile data and/or wifi access to apps such as Samsung Health, Music and Messages. No ads and app still works. You can use the feature-rich apps without the garbage adverts. Sometimes, the updated apps got rid of ads, the updated Weather app has gotten rid of the ads and has added a beautiful weather picture where the ad used to reside.

 

[Newjack171]

Moto G6. $300 down the drain

 

[Smellmet]

Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5. Horrifying Touchwiz bloat. So slow basically unusable, this is coming from a someone who used to root phones and do all that. And extremely cheap plastic material.

The materials and build quality on the S5 were absolutely awful. Samsung didn't really start to compete until the S6.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I honestly preferred the plastic to the metal/glass sandwich. If I dropped my S5, it remains usable, but you have to put the battery back in and put the cover back on. With a modern phone? replace the phone. Metal/glass is also heavy in the pockets. My S4 Mini disappears in pockets.

The lifespan was longer for the plastic versions. My S5 (of course I took care of it since I bought it outright) still looks new, except for some chips of paint missing from the USB cover. It's 7 years old. Will my S20FE still be working in 7 years?

 

[Jack Neill]

Galaxy S7 with Oreo. Terrible experience.

 

[Bodhitree]

Let’s see… my uncle in the last phase of his life bought a OnePlus 8 as a phone he could use to take some better photographs and do whatsapp on, but he could never get it configured right. He is not so technical, so to set the right settings and things he would rely on his son, who is a professional IT guy, and between the two of them they could never get it set up in such a way that my uncle was comfortable with it. This was about 4 months before my uncle’s death of cancer.

Life is just to short to deal with unnecessary crap.

 

[Fried_Gold]

HTC Sensation, worst phone I have ever owned.

 

[Smellmet]

I honestly preferred the plastic to the metal/glass sandwich. If I dropped my S5, it remains usable, but you have to put the battery back in and put the cover back on. With a modern phone? replace the phone. Metal/glass is also heavy in the pockets. My S4 Mini disappears in pockets.

The lifespan was longer for the plastic versions. My S5 (of course I took care of it since I bought it outright) still looks new, except for some chips of paint missing from the USB cover. It's 7 years old. Will my S20FE still be working in 7 years?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the glass backs but the quality of the material in the S5 just felt awful, the 'chrome' around the edge just scratched and chipped so easily. I thought the S4 felt much more solid.

 

[Ixon2001]

Another Vote for the HTC Sensation was shocking, camera was crap & the thing bricked on me for no reason, got it repaired and sold it on eBay was glad to see back of it.

 

[nickdalzell1]

One thing to give credit to HTC for though ^^ IT had the best UI of all back in Sense 3. I got a Thunderbolt that still works, and ironically it works better now than in 2011. Partly because it can't drop to 3G/1x anymore. My SIM doesn't support anything other than LTE, so it made battery life so much better. Back when it released, it was awful for battery life.

 

[kamikazeeMC]

HTC Desire HD, bought a BlackBerry Bold 9900 soon after.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I only had one BlackBerry, a Curve 8520, for about a year (2011-ish, wanted to see what was happening in CrackBerry land). It was garbage. A very confusing UI. It always froze randomly requiring a 'battery pull' (something you saw recommended often on the CrackBerry forum) and it took FOREVER to restart--mine could take 15 minutes! Also it had massive lack of apps. Windows phone had more. There was an app store but it sucked unless all you wanted was Brick Breaker or a very outdated version of Facebook that barely worked. I remember the CEO then of RIM saying 'no one needs anything other than email on a smartphone' which pretty much sealed their fate. They didn't want apps. They only added the app store to stop some of the whining. They even had a very bad clone of Angry Birds (Angry Farm). It was akin to the quote often attributed to Bill Gates "640KB RAM ought to be enough for everyone". They EOL'd themselves. They had the internet going through a third party service (they didn't learn anything from Danger, did they?) which mean when BIS EOL'd all you had for your smartphone was a basic texting/calling device. Forget even using the browser on wifi--it wouldn't connect.

 

[Barbareren]

I only had one BlackBerry, a Curve 8520, for about a year (2011-ish, wanted to see what was happening in CrackBerry land). It was garbage. A very confusing UI. It always froze randomly requiring a 'battery pull' (something you saw recommended often on the CrackBerry forum) and it took FOREVER to restart--mine could take 15 minutes! Also it had massive lack of apps. Windows phone had more. There was an app store but it sucked unless all you wanted was Brick Breaker or a very outdated version of Facebook that barely worked. I remember the CEO then of RIM saying 'no one needs anything other than email on a smartphone' which pretty much sealed their fate. They didn't want apps. They only added the app store to stop some of the whining. They even had a very bad clone of Angry Birds (Angry Farm). It was akin to the quote often attributed to Bill Gates "640KB RAM ought to be enough for everyone". They EOL'd themselves. They had the internet going through a third party service (they didn't learn anything from Danger, did they?) which mean when BIS EOL'd all you had for your smartphone was a basic texting/calling device. Forget even using the browser on wifi--it wouldn't connect.

Yeah, well I didn’t like BlackBerry pre-OS10 either. Never considered them to be real smartphones, but BB OS10 was superb. Eventually it died off due to the lack of third party developer support (god forbid one should be allowed to have an alternative to iOS and Android… 😒).

 

[Ethrem]

LG G2x. Biggest piece of crap ever. The only phone I have ever had that straight up bricked itself and before it bricked itself, the performance was awful because LG screwed up badly, it ran hot, and the GPS never worked right. Having the first dualcore phone released in America was cool but it was plagued with issues. This thread goes into a lot of the issues but it was insane how problematic that device was. https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/g2x-issues-official-thread.1053737/

Replaced it with the HTC Sensation and I'll confirm that it was a terrible device. Ended up going back to my HTC Inspire 4G because the Sensation was overheating all the time and I needed a working GPS.

The first dualcore phones were definitely not good...

 

[nickdalzell1]

Even BB10 didn't have internet once the servers got shut down. Just like the many SideKicks that died once Danger died off. My Mom had a Torch, which was at least unique, and it had a superior version of the OS unlike my Curve which never got a single update, and it had more app support. She had at least newer versions of Facebook, Twitter, even a YouTube app. Mine only allowed one version of Facebook (this was when I actually used it) and it was identical to version 1.6.2 on Android 2.1.

 

[Barbareren]

Even BB10 didn't have internet once the servers got shut down. Just like the many SideKicks that died once Danger died off. My Mom had a Torch, which was at least unique, and it had a superior version of the OS unlike my Curve which never got a single update, and it had more app support. She had at least newer versions of Facebook, Twitter, even a YouTube app. Mine only allowed one version of Facebook (this was when I actually used it) and it was identical to version 1.6.2 on Android 2.1.

BB10 was an open OS, unlike the previous iterations and the SideKick and other US-only non-smartphones). I have no idea what you mean by ‘it didn’t have internet once the servers got shut down’. I had two BB OS10 devices which both worked great for years, until the third party developers decided to ditch the platform. BB10 was way ahead of its time actually. And the iPhone X’ gesture based interface was largely stolen from BB10 (according to rumours Apple hired developers from BB10 to help develop their new gesture based UI that started with the iPhone X).

 

[nickdalzell1]

BB OS required a connection to BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and once those servers died, so did any data connection. Wifi was severely gimped on the Curve, but since I had no access to a BB10 device to compare, not sure how wifi worked on those. But data had to die off since it got routed through BIS. It's the same thing with Sidekicks. Their data connection went through a server Danger ran that got shut down later on, rendering those devices useless other than phone calls and texts.

 

[nickdalzell1]

BlackBerry Internet services known as BIS will be closing on 31st October 2019 for Consumer and 15th November 2019 for Small Business and Corporate customers, so you won’t be able to use the following applications with your BlackBerry device: BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry World, BlackBerry Email, Facebook and web browsing. You'll still be able to use your phone to make and receive calls, send and receive texts, and may be able to use data through a WiFi connection or your data plan allowance. https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Texti...et-Services-BIS-closure-affect-me/td-p/809938

 

[Barbareren]

BB OS required a connection to BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and once those servers died, so did any data connection. Wifi was severely gimped on the Curve, but since I had no access to a BB10 device to compare, not sure how wifi worked on those. But data had to die off since it got routed through BIS. It's the same thing with Sidekicks. Their data connection went through a server Danger ran that got shut down later on, rendering those devices useless other than phone calls and texts.

That’s simply incorrect. I didn’t use BIS at all with my BB10 devices (that was only required prior to OS10) and both mobile internet and WiFi worked just fine.