Since when do Samsung literally put dogshit on their phones?
The Moto G runs a relatively clean version of Android but even in that case some of the additions of Motorola made me cringe. It generates 'help' messages in the first days of usage that I have found very confusing for new smartphone users.
I wish that Google would control its software more tightly, OEMs just can't be left to their own devices, they will always feel the need to make their phones stand apart by any mean necessary.
I would like to be wrong, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon, Google would lose way too much marketshare with such a move.
Most companies like Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola, etc. customize Android. Some more (Samsung), some less (Sony, Motorola). Plain Android are on Google and Chinese devices.
What's wrong with Hangouts? I quite like having an all-in-one text message + internet message + phone and video call app that I can use from my phone and computer web browser seamlessly...
Half of my contacts never get messages from me in Hangouts. This makes it unreliable, and therefore useless.
Additionally, if I video call someone (eg my wife sat the other side of the room), Hangouts informs me that she is not available for a video call. But she has zero notifications or alerts or ringing or ANYTHING.
The inability to see if someone is online/offline also makes it useless. If I am having a conversation with someone sat next to me, I would like to know if they're sat next to me else I'll be talking to a wall. Chatting with people on Hangouts is like talking to a wall.
It truly is bad.
EDIT: I noticed the INSTANT downvote after writing this. Are you disagreeing with me on Hangouts or something? Or are you saying that I made all of this up or something? Hangouts does not work for me, full stop. I have used Android since 1.5 and Talk was far superior. The lack of proper UI (screen-width listview for contacts????) and behaviour on Hangouts (I am using a tablet) does not encourage decent applications. Compare the quality of Hangouts to GMail on a tablet for reference.
But if someone doesn't use it, or isn't online, I can just tap the little voice bubble icon (mobile version) on the bottom of the chat where you type in your message and it lets you switch to SMS and back.
Also that is weird that you don't see people as online/offline. Mine (again, mobile version) shows the person with a green voice bubble if they are online or a grey one if they aren't. It shows the last time they were seen and inside the chat, it shows their little avatar/icon below the last message they read.
I can certainly understand wanting to use a different SMS client (which I'm pretty sure you can do easily) and being able to choose different default apps is one of the things I like about Android in general. I haven't used it on a tablet since I broke my Nexus 7 but from what I've seen in the web version and the phone version (both iOS and Android), it's gotten much better since the initial move from Talk to Hangouts.
When i was playing around with an andriod you could choose to have it take over sms or not, is that no longer an option?
No it's still an option. They just didn't bother to look for it, or don't realise that they may not have the phone number and Google profile of their contacts synced...
But yes, if the person you're messaging has a phone number and Hangouts profile, and those are applied to the same contact, you can choose to SMS them or send a Hangouts message.
The problem exists for iPhone users as well I think - Messages will send via SMS or Internet and there is confusion amongst my relatives with regard to it. They don't know if they've sent an SMS or if it's gone via the Internet, so I won't get messages on my Mac/iPad because it's gone via SMS etc. etc.
Muddying the method of communication is a disservice.
It's fine to not like Hangouts, but your complaints are just plain false.
My other brother will send messages to me via Hangouts from his phone and it doesn't appear on my phone (running Talk), and won't appear as a notification every time on my tablet (running Hangouts). Only when I log into Gmail on my laptop do I get a popup regarding the message. This makes it unreliable.
I also attempt to video call my family from my tablet using Hangouts - they don't get notified, either those running Talk or those running Hangouts. I try ringing them from my laptop and they don't get notified.
If I call my brother from my phone running Talk, he gets notified. If I call my brother from the SAME ACCOUNT on my tablet running Hangouts, he doesn't get notified.
Your understanding of online/offline is different to mine then. If I am talking to someone next to me and they walk off, knowing when they were last next to me is of no use to me if I wish to continue talking to them. I need to know that they are still right next to me.
This is the way it used to behave in Talk and also the way it STILL behaves in Gmail chat, just NOT Hangouts on mobile. Hangouts tells me when they were last seen yet lists everyone I know in the contacts list. It would be far far far far far more useful to show those that are online NOW, not were online 2 days ago in my list. This is the way IM has behaved since I don't know when: for examples, see MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, face-to-face conversation etc. etc. etc.
You seem to act like software never has bugs.
So every piece of software ever made sucks?
The quality of hangouts shouldn't be decided on anecdotal bug findings.
people that never appear online, even when you appear online to them
the ui disaster, and how I had to google to figure out how to sign out of it
my phone staying signed in and eating messages that I would much rather have had delivered to my laptop where I was actively conversing
all of this on a nexus running stock 4.4.latest
At least we still have Linux and Mozilla (and Canonical), so I still think more open mobile/tablet/phone platforms are comming. They might run Android apps -- or might not. They might be able to work with a workable for-profit/pay marketplace/app-store (AFAIK the only working such market place for open OS' is Steam -- maybe Valve will eat everyone's lunch in the end. Steam for mobile apps and games? Why not.).
Hangout exemplifies everything that is bad with the path Google is on. It replaces a system based on open standards, that (mostly, except for federation?) welcomed any and all existing clients -- and a system that allowed for having separate apps for handling IM and SMS (say, maybe you wanted your IM to alwasy use OTR, but not for SMS).
The sad thing is, contrary to what Google claims, I don't think publishing a Google app that did most things would have been untenable while basing the work off of existing standards. I think it would probably have been easier.
They don't want to be recognized as another android phone, because then consumers would simply move tho the cheapest capable ( or faster, or better camera) android phone.
My thought is that Samsung need that it's phones be seen as a totally ( and worth) product that Moto X. So they can monetize on this perceived value.
The non-removable Apple apps on iOS that exist only to up-sell other Apple "value add" services like Newsstand, Apple Watch, iBooks, Game Centre even iCloud to lesser extent are far more annoying to me.
(a) The whole ecosystem doesn't run off iTunes. You can setup, manage, buy etc without needing it. It's needed on OSX for buying music/movies/books but that's hardly surprising.
(b) There has never been any talk of or intention to bundle Facebook. It would actually be a pretty bad move for Facebook since it could be seen to be a pretty anticompetitive move.
But anyone who has dealt with Windows PCs for the past decade or two are familiar with the concept of doing a wipe and a fresh install on some poor chump's laptop or desktop because it came loaded with so much garbage from Dell or Gateway or HP that the thing ran like utter shit.
Thankfully, with a desktop OS, you can do that but on mobile, since the OS needs to be built with all sorts of proprietary drivers "baked in" it's not a matter of just installing base Android and running an update process to install the drivers for chipset and radios and other stuff.
It was bad enough when cheap PCs gave the entire platform a bad name because in theory you could fix that with an hour or two of work. But with something like a phone, it can be damn near impossible to get hold of "stock" Android properly ported to your device. Even when a factory image exists, it may require more tweaking and bypassing than most people are comfortable with to get the thing installed.
This does indeed reflect poorly on the OS as a whole but since OEMs only see Android as the solution to a "we need an OS for our hardware" problem, they don't seem to have much stake in the overall impression of Android.
After having a couple of HTC phones and a Samsung phone, I just started buying Nexus or Nexus-like devices (like the Moto X) because, like you, I actually enjoy using Android when my devices aren't kept on outdated versions and loaded with unwanted addons.
Yes, they do try to bundle a few additional third-party apps like Flipboard, Evernote, and Dropbox. I wouldn't call these bloatware as these are high quality apps that most people would actually like and find useful, but I am mildly annoyed at the imposition. They also have a few of their own google-like apps and services like S Voice, S Planner and S Finder. These are basically attempts by Samsung to pull a Google (which frankly, they don't have the chops for). On the whole, i would say these additions are only mildly annoying since performance hasn't been much impacted, probably because of the hardware(but this may change with time and updates).
Sadly, the same thing applies to all smartphone manufacturers, Nexus being the exception. The amount of useless apps that hog scarce resources and that the everyday user can't uninstall end up compromising the user experience.
The UI of HTC phones has consistently been very good (I prefer it to stock Android by a mile) and the Sony one is quite decent. It's mainly Samsung TouchWiz that sucks, and it's a pity because that's all the Android most people see.
The more somebody thinks he know whats better for me than myself, and pushes stuff down my throat, the more I resist, regardless of added value. same for school, same for these things
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I really think Google's permissiveness in allowing vendors to bundle their crapware really kills any prestige the brand might have had. iOS really isn't anything special, but when compared to the literal dogshit that Samsung puts on their phones, it's hard not to make a favourable comparison in favour of Apple's operating system.
I used to think Android had bad performance until I got my first Nexus-series device, at which point I realized that "Vanilla Android" is actually a pretty good OS. It's bothersome that seemingly nobody's out there making this point.
Samsung's insistence on bundling crapware is killing Android.