Smartphones...
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Blackberry? Are they still alive?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Yes. They're an Android OEM now. Their last few phones have been underwhelming both as droids (overpriced for the hardware inside) and as successors for bb keyboard fanatics (hardware keyboards that are supposedly a lot worse than the old ones). :doh: :doh: :doh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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As a Microsoft fanboy I loved my Lumia 640XL, but as that fanboyism is wearing off it is starting to annoy me a lot more than it used to with apps crashing and closing by themselves. The lack of apps as well is rather annoying and never used to bother me, but it's getting quite bothersome now as Three UK don't even have an app for it anymore. That said, even Microsoft's own apps seem to be at least as good on Android and iOS, if not better. Windows Phone was great but it has lost its appeal so it can be more like the others. The only thing is I don't think there's many good phones on the market. I want a phone that's supported for at least a few years and where the apps won't crash constantly. I want apps to be supported on my phone with the latest features, instead of waiting months waiting for features that have been implemented on the other OS's (ahem..spotify). I feel like an iPhone but there's no swipe keyboard. I then feel like an Android but will the phone even be supported past a year. I then feel like making my own phone but then I realise I'm not that smart, nor do I have the money to make one or hire those who are. Am I too old? Am I too picky? Am I depressed? Or is the phone market just that bad? Excuse my English, I hate writing on tablets.
Hassan
For Android your best bet for updates are Google's Pixel phones. They all get a few years of prompt software updates. Among branded devices, flagships generally get a year or two of updates; but tend to lag behind Google's phones by a number of months. Android 8 should help there somewhat by offering a stable (we hope) set of APIs that should let the user facing parts of Android be rebuilt for the newest version without also having to rework all of the driver layer components. OTOH given the glacial rate of adoption by OEMs, it'll probably be at least a year and a half before we know how well or if it actually works. (Next spring for the first Android 8 OEM phones, a year to see if it actually does help expedite updates.)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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I always want to agree with these types of posts, but the reality for me is entirely different. I have three Android tablets that have never seen a single OS update throughout their entire respective lifetimes--I've long come to the conclusion that when a device comes with Android version X, it'll die on version X. It becomes abandonware the moment you walk out the store. I'm faced with old apps that today are crashing all the time, manage to get the whole OS to reboot on a whim, web pages that won't render because the included browser is obsolete, apps that won't install because the OS is too old, etc. I'm done buying Android-based hardware. Meanwhile, Microsoft's latest mobile platform--Windows Phone 10--which has been all but abandoned, according to all tech media sources, still gets regular updates (the latest one for my Lumia 640 just came out [today](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/09/15/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15252-mobile/)) as MS is still keeping the phone OS in lockstep with Windows 10 Insider updates. The only app I've ever seen misbehaving in a predictable fashion on it is Microsoft's own Power BI. According to the MS engineer I traded emails with, he's not surprised the app is running into problems "given how resource-starved the Lumia 640 is"--which came as a surprise to me, because I never felt this was even the case with this phone--the OS has never felt sluggish because it's running out of memory, or the CPU was too slow, or anything like that. So...WP10 is a dead-end, I've been burnt too many times by Android, and I refuse to give Apple a dime. If I had an actual use for a phone, what the heck would my options be??
I agree with most of your comments. I too was/am a Windows fanboy. I gave in and moved over to Apple (simply for security reasons over android). Even 2 years later my work colleagues are fed up of me saying... but in Windows Phone I could do this and it was better... but at least the apps work well and I can see how much money I don't have in my current account.... due to buying an iPhone :laugh:
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For Android your best bet for updates are Google's Pixel phones. They all get a few years of prompt software updates. Among branded devices, flagships generally get a year or two of updates; but tend to lag behind Google's phones by a number of months. Android 8 should help there somewhat by offering a stable (we hope) set of APIs that should let the user facing parts of Android be rebuilt for the newest version without also having to rework all of the driver layer components. OTOH given the glacial rate of adoption by OEMs, it'll probably be at least a year and a half before we know how well or if it actually works. (Next spring for the first Android 8 OEM phones, a year to see if it actually does help expedite updates.)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
I guess I have had a better than average experience with Android. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2014 that has had several updates (though none in the last few months). I also have a Moto Pure (no vendor software or discount), again several updates have been pushed to me successfully.
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I guess I have had a better than average experience with Android. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2014 that has had several updates (though none in the last few months). I also have a Moto Pure (no vendor software or discount), again several updates have been pushed to me successfully.
The Note's a flagship; those tend to be reasonably supported. The pure looks like it was a flagship or near flagship by specs (the 808 was used in both depending on if the OEM thought it could handle the 810's excessive heat), even if the name's not familiar to me, and came out shortly after Lenovo completed taking over Moto. At the time Moto was still fairly good about updates, although they've been backsliding ever since. Today's stink is that they've been caught quietly deleting the promise initially made to upgrade the less than year old G4 to Oreo. X| :doh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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I always want to agree with these types of posts, but the reality for me is entirely different. I have three Android tablets that have never seen a single OS update throughout their entire respective lifetimes--I've long come to the conclusion that when a device comes with Android version X, it'll die on version X. It becomes abandonware the moment you walk out the store. I'm faced with old apps that today are crashing all the time, manage to get the whole OS to reboot on a whim, web pages that won't render because the included browser is obsolete, apps that won't install because the OS is too old, etc. I'm done buying Android-based hardware. Meanwhile, Microsoft's latest mobile platform--Windows Phone 10--which has been all but abandoned, according to all tech media sources, still gets regular updates (the latest one for my Lumia 640 just came out [today](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/09/15/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15252-mobile/)) as MS is still keeping the phone OS in lockstep with Windows 10 Insider updates. The only app I've ever seen misbehaving in a predictable fashion on it is Microsoft's own Power BI. According to the MS engineer I traded emails with, he's not surprised the app is running into problems "given how resource-starved the Lumia 640 is"--which came as a surprise to me, because I never felt this was even the case with this phone--the OS has never felt sluggish because it's running out of memory, or the CPU was too slow, or anything like that. So...WP10 is a dead-end, I've been burnt too many times by Android, and I refuse to give Apple a dime. If I had an actual use for a phone, what the heck would my options be??
My Huawei P8 got updated from Android 5 to Android 6 and got few security/usability updates. It took a lot of time getting it, maybe because it is carrier-dependent. I have installed a lot of apps from Microsoft, best of them is the launcher, Arrow. Outlook is good but sync is one-way meaning new contacts/edits does not go back to the Outlook Contacts. With the Android update Spotify got worse. Under Android 5 it was a protected app, now it is not - or it dies regularly, IDK.
