Android is a fat mess, with flagship phones from premium manufacturers being incompatible with various OS features, and devices from different manufacturers being incompatible in ways that never happened in the iOS ecosystem.
If you want a full blown "Android" experience, you end up buying all google devices, and in my experience google support are as bad if not worse than Apple. I have a pixel 3 phone from Google that is still under manufacturers warranty. The power button seems to have gotten stuck, and maybe once or twice a day it gets stuck in a reboot loop, and in that process the phone gets _hot_ and ends up running the battery to 0. It's happened when I'm driving too.
Google's advice has been a factory reset, or a replacement device for $300. They claim I must have dropped it, or otherwise mistreated it and as far as they're concerned that's that.
So here I am, 2 years later with a $700 android phone, contemplating an iPhone 12 because the situation is no different on the other side...
Best 150$ I ever spent, I was going to replace it this year for sheer embarrassment of using such a piece of junk, and then the coronavirus happened and I don't need to physically meet any of my tech-judgmental peers.
Today, when shopping for devices at a comparable price, their specs are usually worse than S5, a phone that's 6 years old at this point.
Many of the new budget phones today come with 2GB RAM (Laughable), and a less than 1080p screen (Usually some weird resolution like 1520x720?). For me to get the same performance/screen quality as the S5, I would now have to spend around $400-500, not $225 like I did 5 years ago. Mid range now seems to mean $500-700 phones, an amount that wouldn't be out of place for a desktop PC, and way more than I'm willing to spend on a phone.
What was it about tech getting cheaper again? Doesn't hold in my experience.
Based on my experience using one of those for development, I'd rather not have a phone than rely on one of those daily.
https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
Lots of OSS (software) developers have been working with it since the earlier development hardware releases, though I've not bought one yet myself.
Probably will in the next few months though. :)
On my fifth Android handset, I have really not found the incompatibility you point out to be an issue. Sure, some companies, like Samsung, try to offer some exclusive features. Just avoid them.
I have to use an iPhone for work, there are a lot of critical annoyances, like how poorly cursor selection works, and then some apps don't support the space bar cursor. Everyday things like changing settings are so much nicer in Android.
My 3 year old Pixel 2 has been a fantastic daily handset, absolutely no complaints, before that my Note 2 was also excellent, though I was glad to get away from Samsung's attempts at exclusive features (the Pixel is "pure Android", albeit with some self-contained on-device "AI" features that are actually useful).
Although there are a lot of cheap Android devices to choose from that can drag down the brand reputation, I would really push back against the suggestion Androids are exclusively "cheap" in the pejorative sense. Most are Just Fine at least. Apple is generally much more conservative in rolling out features, and offers less configuration options, so I guess it's a safer choice, but if Apple weren't such a status symbol I think most people would be more than happy with the lower cost (3a, 4a) Pixel line.
I know someone whose iPhone XR glass back broke after a year (they had a super robust case), Apple's response was it was not cost effective to repair. Ultimately devices designed to be repaired is the best answer (and maybe not have glass backs?), but I don't think there's that much difference in many cases here.
> Sure, some companies, like Samsung, try to offer some exclusive features. Just avoid them.
If your advice is to ignore the largest manufacturer and manufacturers of the most high end devices, that says a lot about the state of the ecosystem. Samsung and huawei have both had massive incompatiblies with other devices and android products - work profiles, pay, fit being my examples.
> Although there are a lot of cheap Android devices to choose from that can drag down the brand reputation, I would really push back against the suggestion Androids are exclusively "cheap" in the pejorative sense
I never claimed they were cheap. My experience is with flagship devices and premium manufacturers, who in many cases are the same price as apple - a galaxy s20 is £900, a oneplus 8 is £800.
I don't mean to avoid Samsung (or any other Android) devices altogether, just don't use anything that takes away your portability within the Android ecosystem (which, granted, has various lines in the sand when you rely on Google, outside going no-identity, which is impossible on iPhone). It was easy enough to do when I had my Note2, there are many people within user communities who care about things like this and make sure it's possible without much effort; for example by putting pressure on vendors to enable choice for what apps are used for what purposes. In my experience, Samsung offers its own App Store, I just ignored it, I used Google's calendar instead of Samsung's default enhanced one, etc.
There are some cases, per your examples, where there's a distinct branch in what's supported. Samsung and Huawei are really competitors to Apple more than Google in this case. I can only say that like repairability is the best answer to some questions, interoperability is the best answer to others. Being locked in to any ecosystem, especially over time as our digital lives become linked to health and wealth, is bad for everyone.
My last comment, about "cheap" perceptions, was intended for another comment in the thread, sorry about the confusion.
Understand re; samsung, but as a consumer I don't want to spend weeks researching compatibility between all of the devices I own/plan on purchasing. Another example; I bought a sony bravia TV which runs android TV. Android tv advertised that it supports dvr recording features. Except sony force you to use another third party app "youvirw" which they ship an outdated version of which doesn't work with androids flavor of live recording.
Unfortunately this is rife across the android world; watches incompatible with payments, stock launchers that are incompatible with android OS features, the list goes on and on. And the issue is that all of these are sold as "android" devices, and it's not until you're knee deep in the ecosystem that you realise that it's all just lipstick on a pig.
Mt experience with the manufacturer-alternative apps is that in some cases their existence stops the alternative from working correctly (samsung knox vs android work profiles, fitbit pay vs google pay, huawei photos vs google photos),which just sucks. And you can only know about these issues if you research the compatibility of every app you want to use with your planned device...
And understand re; cheap devices, the comment thread is deep here!
While Google tries to address this by centralizing everything to their services app (which is a nice Open Source solution since it can be swapped; we'll see what happens with Huawei), some vendors still want to claim their turf. I thought that has been getting better, but for the past few years I've found it best to buy Google's version of whichever product, and have been very happy with them (perhaps since I've become more conservative, the crazy pace of innovation lives on in the mainstream Android world, with Apple waiting to see what's sticks before they include it).
I don't "blame" people for buying iPhone, it's certainly a safe choice, but even though I'm not that demanding I just find iPhones to be too limiting (that is partially a Raskin vs Englebart thing). Oh yeah, and Google's on-device AI features are actually useful. However, in the long run Apple is developing a vast closed world akin to a monopoly that will create problems (and if I hear that cheesy default ring tone again or see another film/tv person pull out an Apple device which are the minority in use, I'm going to lose it).
is no longer guaranteed to receive security updates.
Also worth mentioning, after three years most people who purchased a new handset will have upgraded. If they spend $400 on each handset, their long term expenditure will be lower, and they'll always have an up to date handset (the early cheap Androids were pretty bad, but a decent smartphone is a commodity these days, the main thing more money buys is better image capture, though Pixel kind of defies that for now). The hardware is probably still good, except maybe the battery, which becomes cost ineffective to replace (in this sense, the company that provides the most easily serviceable devices wins, which I heartily endorse). At that point, many Androids can have a third party OS installed for new features. Not so with Apple.
I can’t believe that after 5 google phones/tablets they were willing to lose a customer over a minor hardware problem.
If you're not someone who can directly generate significant bad PR for them, you effectively don't exist.
If repairability was top of my list, I'd be using 4-5 year old device that's proven repairable. Silly me, I tried to be "reliable" and choose a samsung - you know the largest manufacturer of Android phones, and when that didn't work out for me I tried Google - the people who make the software. If your advice to people is to avoid all of the premier manufacturers, I think that shows that the ecosystem has major problems, no?
I've seen you try to make this point everywhere in the thread and I can't for the life of me even understand what you mean by this.
As a developer, I often reach for open source libraries, tools and platforms before any "premium" offerings (databases are far from the only examples, but they are an obvious one: to wit, Postgres vs Oracle or SQL server), and the OSS options are also the ones I suggest when I'm asked.
In another example, my current laptop is from a niche manufacturer instead of by Dell or Apple.
So, yeah, I don't understand what you mean by this question. Then again you also say that repairability is not high in your priority list while TFA is explicitly about that so I don't actually understand the general point you're trying to make in this discussion.
Seems like you should just use Apple products.
Fitbit claimed to be fully android compatible, except when I contacted support it turns out they support fitbit pay, not Android pay, which isn't the same thing. And it doesn't work when used with Samsung Pay.
> Pure Android you don't even require Google, you can buy Android one mobile.
If your advice to people is to avoid the largest manufacturerd of premium handsets, don't you think that says a lot about the state of the ecosystem?
That very month, I had to fly to India for some work and I decided to ask a local authorized Apple service outlet. The guy changed the display for me at no charge. The machine was out of warranty by atleast a year at that point. But still, Apple honored that warranty.
Six months later, I got a blue tint on my display and the guy did another replacement free of cost because the replacement display he gave me was faulty.
I spent $0.
Many Apple service outlets are pretty good, especially in Asia - Singapore has some good outlets too apart from the one I went to, HK, China all have very knowledgeable people running these outlets too.
Here's another one - I currently own a Samsung S10 phone. One of the speakers became bleak and service center A refused to honor the warranty because the phone had "water damage". It is an IP68 water proof rated phone. How the fuck can it have water damage? Especially when the phone is working just fine, except for the top speaker being bleak.
Service center B did the job of speaker replacement in under 2 hours.
This is the reality. My point is, service centers are like any other business, some people are knowledgeable, some people are spiteful, some people are stupid.
So how do you figure out which ones are good and bad? My simple rule of thumb is ask around your extended family, usually they will know someone who they can refer you to. Referral based jobs are the best, since there is an element of personal touch involved. If not, scan for google reviews of the place to find the ratio of positive and negative reviews. Read the negative reviews especially as its a good indicator of the center's competence.
A few years ago I had an iPhone whose mute switch would flip off on its own after 1.5 years of use. Went to an Apple Store in U.S. Northeast, described the issue in a sentence, handed it over, and five seconds later the bro told me I was getting a full replacement, which was in my hands three minutes later.
Then, in early 2019, my iPad Pro was having this occasional touch-not-registering issue, which to this day I’m not sure if it’s software or hardware. It also had a tiny tiny strip of dead pixels tucked in a corner, which was only noticeable when using a video player. I brought it into the Apple Store, this time somewhere in Asia, mainly for the touch issue, but casually mentioned the dead pixels since I was already there. Ended up getting a full replacement, and the lady told me it was lucky that this minor display issue was present, otherwise it would be hard to fix and basically impossible to get a replacement for that hard to reproduce and hard to diagnose touch issue.
1) Hardware problem with the light sensor that was fixed when they swapped the display (might be built in and therefore replaced too, or maybe the crack was obscuring it?)
2) After the hardware problem was fixed, they didn’t think to check the brightness, or forgot to do part of the procedure.
My guess is that the boot process ignores the light sensor and just sets full brightness, much like your fans going to full tilt (or at least a safe default) on your PC when you first boot.
Not defending apple here btw - but I don’t think it was purely a software issue at the beginning.
Needless to say, I'm happy now with Archlinux despite it took a while to set the whole thing up. I don't think I'll be buying any more Apple laptops but for phones, I don't think Android is doing any better.
When it came to upgrade time this year I skipped buying a mid-range iMac, built a hefty Ryzen desktop instead and had enough spare change to buy a Lenovo T495s.
It’s phone upgrade time in January. I don’t know which way to turn yet.
* Repairable (modular design, pull-tabs for battery)
* Good build quality (JerryRigEverything approved)
* Rootable
* Stable software, with long term vendor software updates
* Active community for ROMs (if the vendor stops supporting the phone)
* 3.5mm jack (with an excellent DAC)
* Relatively compact
* Flat screen, no notch/holepunch. Curved screens are more fragile and are more expensive to replace.
* Good battery life
* Spare parts available (e.g. main camera for $15 shipped)
* Cheap
* Decent processor, RAM and storage
* Comes with bloatware, some of it can only be disabled with root
* Rooting is a pain
* Spare parts in China, so might take a while to arrive
* Launcher is not great, but can be easily replaced
* Camera is not best in classThe iPhone 12 is lighter but has worse battery life, so that one is out.
The Sony Xperia 5 II is the current favorite as it has very good battery life and no annoying notch.
And the recent Apple vs Epic case is making the switch easier.
Some phones do exist already such as these:
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-z-flip/
Motorola razr 2020 https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones-razr
I'm still not sure though if the brightness was just at the minimal level, and that is just too low outside to see anything, or if it was even lower than usual, similarly as you describe.
I guess my case is a bit different from yours, but I was very satisfied with their technical competence as well. I suppose it depends on the country in the end, in my case it was Singapore.
$100 trade-in value and they want to charge me $150 for repairs??? What?
I am going to iFixIt as the issue seems common, it's just a ribbon that is attached weakly that pops off of the attachment. The camera is still working.
Mass production is cheaper than custom repair labor. You're spending more than $150 on your own time fix it (which is great, you have that skill).
Note that Apple engineered the hardware so that the speakers are glued to the top case, so replacing either speaker entails replacing the whole top case, which includes the left and right speakers, the keyboard, the trackpad and the battery. An out-of-warranty top case replacement for the 2016 MacBook Pro costs $600.
My machine was now out of warranty, but the same exact thing happened just a little over three months prior and Apple did a repair by replacing the top case. I called to see if Apple would be willing to extend the 90-day warranty for repaired parts just a bit.
The call was transferred to a supervisor. The supervisor told me that it was the left speaker that was blown out last time, and it was the right speaker that was blown out this time, so they considered this to be a completely separate incident and there was no 90-day coverage at all for the right speaker to begin with. I would have to spend $600 to get this fixed, and the supervisor would not budge on the price, either.
I am infuriated because even though they replaced the top case, which, to emphasize, includes all of the parts glued to it - the left and right speakers, as well as the keyboard, the trackpad, and the battery, they do not consider the right speaker to be a component in the same part as the left speaker. Even more infuriating is how Apple glues parts to the case so they can charge exorbitant amounts of money for out-of-warranty repairs.
It also allows their staff to suggest braindead quick-fix solutions equivalent to "pay to replace the whole thing or go away," without actually diagnosing the real problem. I say this because the fact that a speaker blowing out was always preceded by the exact same sequence of events suggests to me that something else may be faulty, but the Apple technicians have never bothered to diagnose what the real problem was.
I am also immersed in Apple's ecosystem and I was ready to trade this computer in and buy a new 16-inch MacBook Pro this year once a new one comes out, given the myriads of issues I've had with my machine (it has also needed three display replacements and one keyboard replacement). I was also ready to buy the new iPad Air.
Now I've decided I won't buy the new iPad Air, and my next computer will likely not run macOS.
I’m with parent on the price point thing, and no doubt if aftermarket goes away then hackers will too. I keep a separate work phone anyway, employers have never had a problem issuing one if I need to be reachable. iPhone from employer, bunnie or something for me.
I wish I could get a phone with plain Linux but I don't think that my carrier (Comcast Mobile) supports any of them. I once used an unsupported phone, and the 4G would work for only a few minutes after a reboot (so it probably is an artificial problem).
starting at ~ 11:35 it shows how a lot of track pad issues are resolved.
While it was true that the glass of the screen had cracked due to a fall, the phone had operated just fine for many months since. The Genius told me it was likely a display issue while I told him it's much more likely a software issue. The Genius gave me the unfortunate advice of restarting the phone by holding down the power button and the lower volume button. The phone restarted, with the Apple logo in full brightness but would turn black when it came to logging in. Pity, since my password is too long to type it in without visual aide.
The Genius told me that to repair the display was $200+. I scoffed at the price and told him it's not the display, and it was unacceptable as I planned on buying the iPhone 12 next month. The manager came by and made it clear there's no room to budge on the price. I resigned and left the device with them.
When I was called in to pick up my phone, they told me that replacing the display did not work, so now my option was either to upgrade or to buy another iPhone 7 for $400+. I told them that's unacceptable and that it's clear it's not the hardware. I told them I am immersed in their ecosystem and I would easily spent another $2000 this year and to cut me a break. They told me, take it or leave it.
I took the phone back and started making my way home. Descending into the metro, I walked past an ill-lit part of the platform. I looked at my phone again and realized I could faintly make out the log in screen. I typed in my password, logged in, went to control center and raised the brightness back up. Perfect. Now, even if I lower the brightness to its lowest setting, it works as normal.
Not only is Apple's moves to cut out 3rd party repairs egregious, their own solutions and staff are rife with incompetence and their offer to you once you've immersed yourself into their ecosystem is, "Money now or go away".
I am not buying the iPhone 12 and my next machine will run Linux.