Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone
Many Android users are finding their shiny new handsets almost impossible to use due to a plethora of issues needing ridiculous workarounds, from creating and deleting multiple cloud accounts to repeatedly hard resetting. The problems aren't with Android itself, though the platform still suffers glaring omissions such as its …
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Which translated in to non dickhead means ...
"Yeah sure, Android setup takes a little bit of forethought, but that's to be expected because Google services are not for dummies (who need the simplicity of iTunes)."
... Apple's UI is easier to use.
Seriously, that is a really, really poor argument. Android is harder to use so it's better ? Really ?
With power comes resposibility
I'll have to assume iPhones are easy to use because everyone says so. Every time I'm presented with an apple device (mac or iphone) to straighten out for my techno challenged friends, I need instructions on opening a browser, or finding an app I was just using. I've never had an issue setting up a google account, but find itunes to be a config nightmare. I always assume these issues are my fault. But I do expect more powerful systems will require more effort. If your phone can do more, you have to spend more time telling it what to do.
The problem is the Apache license
A lot of problems will be solved if handset vendors had to share their code. The problem with the Apache license is that vendors can add proprietary extensions without submitting those back to the open source community. This leads to fragmentation and we are already facing non-compatible Android software for the various makes.
Compete with the iPhone? No chance - ever heard of "divide and conquer"? Most execs of handset manufacturers will typically have their heads so far up their arses to even think about letting their precious proprietary code out for the benefit of the Android community and therefore will always be also-rans to the current leader.
The download problem: With the Pulse (1.5 Cupcake), just cancel the download when it hangs and try again - assuming you have the correct Google credentials. If not, just change it in Settings.
Bum gravy
"A lot of problems will be solved if handset vendors had to share their code. The problem with the Apache license is that vendors can add proprietary extensions without submitting those back to the open source community. "
No, the problem is a lack of QA. That is all. Allowing a few hundred bored linux coders to fuck with your stuff may or may not match your definition of QA, but either way, the problem is the lack of QA, not the lack of beards.
I doubt that would happen
"A lot of problems will be solved if handset vendors had to share their code. The problem with the Apache license is that vendors can add proprietary extensions without submitting those back to the open source community. This leads to fragmentation and we are already facing non-compatible Android software for the various makes."
I don't see that ever happing. For a start, Google would have to open source the extensions to Android they have made, and if you asked the manufacturers to do that, they may well abandon the platform rather than reveal their secrets.
FWIW
"I don't see that ever happing. For a start, Google would have to open source the extensions to Android they have made, and if you asked the manufacturers to do that, they may well abandon the platform rather than reveal their secrets."
I don't think it's so much about the secret sauce (although that may be an aspect) it's more likely just that the handset mfrs and the carriers can't be arsed (and in any case aren't competent) to manage a FOSS project. They can't manage to do QA on their in house stuff, after all, so I'd hate to see them try and wrangle a couple of hundred hairy prima donnas all committing code at once.
oh dear...
OK - I'll bite...
"though the platform still suffers glaring omissions such as its inability to support a Bluetooth keyboard or proxy internet access"
How is this a glaring omission?? File transfers (like on my Dad's iPhone) - that's a glaring omission, something kids and adults like to do is occasionally transfer a music or picture file with each other... I have literally never been asked "how do I connected my bluetooth keyboard to my phone?!"... and I'm usually my friends/family goto tech person.... so point 1==bollocks... point 2?
"The problem might have manifested itself because you made the mistake of configuring it with an old "Googlemail.co.uk" account, which would be foolish indeed"
My wife has her hero setup to googlemail.co.uk... still working...
"it may ask you for all your details, including credit card and billing address, but it will (probably) fall at the last fence and claim network problems. That's a lie, obviously, but you'll be used to the handset lying to you by now"
Love how you qualify with a probably... like you are giving us solid facts, reproducable issues.. but not...
"Get past all that and you've got a working system that's directly comparable to the iPhone experience "
Comparible?? Really? My Desire gets constant attention from iPhone fanatical friends when seen working...
"Many Android users are finding their shiny new handsets almost impossible to use due to a plethora of issues needing ridiculous workarounds"
Many android uses? Plethora of issues, ridiculous work arounds? I've never come across these issues, occasionally my phone switches to roaming (I'm on 3), and I have to restart a failed download, that's it... and I know of nobody hitting these problems in real life... unlike a lot of iPhone issues, like battery life dissapearing post updates, slide-to-answer not working, that sort of thing...
"Not that everyone has these problems - some lucky Android users just buy phones that work. "
Currently hitting 100% working from a sample group of about 30 people... what is your sample group, or are you just seeing occasional posts in forums? Be nice to know.
"things will (probably) be OK from hereon in. But phones aren't supposed to be like that - they're supposed to just work, something Apple has achieved with the iPhone."
As I've pointed out, missing features (background apps until recently, file transfers, grip of death, botched updates (for me at least)...
"Put in the time and your Android handset will be just as good as the competition"
Enter single google account details -> syncs everthing"... hardly rocket science... if you were starting with an iphone from scratch you have many more hurdles, install itunes, check options for things like calendar, mail and address book... all that required a computer... plus the mobileme to battle with... if you wanted to sync with google calendar/contacts early on it was very tough too!!
"However, when someone else asks you what phone they should buy, you might find yourself recommending an iPhone - unless you want to be helping them configure the thing on your evening off"
I've never had to say more than "watch out the permissions you grant when installing apps".... that's it... I've had several questions about the iphone from my dad... like setting up the mail app for his google account, transfering files (which he can't do), why all his music on the phone dissapeared after plugging the phone into his new computer... lots of questions...
So to sum it all up - your article was crap. Must try harder.
Funny
I've had the HTC Desire for a month or so now. Yes, I had to set up a Google account to download apps from the Android store. I imagine you have to register in some way with the Apple store too if you have the iPhone? The thing is, by changing a simple setting on the phone, I can also download apps from any source I like and put them on my phone too. I believe that if you want to do this with the iPhone, you have to do all sorts of naughty things with it that probably void its warranty.
The one issue I have had is that if I start downloading an app when I have poor reception on the phone, it might stop when the connection drops. The simple workaround that I found for this is to go to the app store, find the app, cancel the download and start again. That, or turn the phone off and on again.
Overall, as mentioned above, this article is teeming with FUD. Almost makes me wonder whether the author is a shill for Apple, who got their misinformation training direct from Microsoft?
Sources please
>Many Android users are finding ...
Link to the market research report please, or is this a made up factoid?
>However, when someone else asks you what phone they should buy, you might find yourself recommending an iPhone -
Been using Apple since 1985 and have three of their machine in the office but phone-wise, I'd rather go Android for £100 than Apple for £400.
this is not my Android experience
I have an Android phone (HTC Hero), my friends mostly have HTC Hero or Desire. This is not their experience. I manage a team who are responsible for the company fleet of smartphones. For various reasons many of these are HTC Android. We do not have these issues.
I set my Hero up with an old Googlemail account, been no problem. Exchange works peachy too. When I first set the Hero up it just worked.
Any issues or queries I have had with the phone have been handled by HTC (dunno why you'd expect Google to fix it?) and I rate their support very highly.
Only nag I have is the hanging download problem which hit me maybe twice in the last 14 months or so I have been using the phone.
In 2 years or maybe slightly more of exposure to Android on handsets I don't recognise this article as being anywhere near right.
I'm getting the HTC Desire HD when it releases. I am a happy happy HTC customer.
your late
HTC Desire HD is released. ( click the expansys linky thing in the side bar>> )
I agree
I recognise everything in this article as i have tinkered with my HTC hero to within an inch of its life. I think Android is the business however.
What saddens me is that i still advise non-tekki mats to go iphone. The HTC desire HD however my just change this.
Galaxy S Trouble
Haven't had the problem mentioned in the article, but I have had a number of problems with my Galaxy S:
1) Text messages in the alert area sometimes appear to be from a random person in your phone book (as opposed to the person they are actually from). This has become quite a rare occurrence since the latest update, but has still happened.
2) Facebook doesn't work for contacts (by which I mean, I cannot get pictures to match up). Used to work on my HTC Hero fine...
3) Delivery reports appear in the notification area and sound like you have a new text message (sure this never used to happen on my Hero, though it might just be Android in general).
4) Turning the ringer volume down does not affect the text message delivery alert volume. This is just plain stupid.
5) The dialler used to just disappear, though the latest update seems to have fixed this (would just be a blank screen and require a phone restart). If this happens again, the phone is off straight back.
Other annoyances include:
A) No separate 'find' key, and holding the menu key down to emulate the find key doesn't always work. Samsung should have hard wired this in a bit better as some apps require a find/search key (bad design on the apps part, but still).
B) Kies software needs a bit more attention to detail. When you put the text message viewer in list mode, the sorting works the wrong way round (I'm a developer, I notice stuff like this). I noticed this, despite only using the software for at most five minutes in total. I'm sure there are plenty of other problems with it for people who rely on it for serious phone interaction.
C) Getting in touch with Samsung to report problems over the Web is impossible, unless you want to post messages to a bulletin board in the vain hope someone from Samsung might read them.
In short, if the 2.2 update doesn't fix the problem number 1 and also improve battery life (under a day), the phone will be sent back as not fit for purpose. Which would be a shame, 'cos it could be one of the best phones on the market.
I'd like to address some of those points
(I have the HTC Desire, but I'm making the assumption that the settings are in the same place on the Galaxy S)
1) Never seen this, but heard about it; I thought it had been fixed?
2) I guess the Facebook app for Galaxy S sucks then.
3) True, it's a 'notification' sound not a 'text message sound'. It would be nice to be able to distinguish these things. Maybe in 2.3?
4) Menu -> Settings -> Sound -> Volume -> Use incoming call volume for notifications.
5) Ewww. I wonder if that is a Samsung thing or an Android thing.
A) The HTC desire has this, so I guess it's a Samsung omission
B) Don't know what Kies is, so can't comment...
C) ...and I guess Samsung customer support isn't great. I'm glad I bought the HTC instead. The swipe keyboard thing on the Galaxy S is quite nice though.
FB Contacts
You can link facebook to your contacts and get the images... at least on AT&T's Galaxy S variant (Captivate). Bring up the menu in your contacts app and select "Get Friends", add your facebook account and it will download your facebook contacts and link them where the names are the same. You can manually link the ones where there are differences (e.g I have a contact named "Angie" on my phone but she's "Angela" on facebook) and if you only want the linked contacts to display in the list then turn off facebook in the display options.
Simples. And really quite effective.
The captivate has a dedicate search button too.
Not perfect but better than selling my soul to Stevie-baby
I have an HTC Hero and my data/contacts/etc is all in the Google cloud. Do not, whatever you do, click that link at the top of your Gmail inbox that invites you to change from a googlemail to a gmail email address. Unless, of course you want to reset your phone or root it to delete a system file.
That one had me cursing HTC, Google, T-mobile's (no) help desk ('talk to HTC, we can't help you') and the stupidity that made me change my email addy without doing research first. Took two days but I eventually fixed it.
I've been hit with the eternal downloading app as well. More than a few times. Only removing the battery and sim card seems to solve it.
Also - lack of connectivity. Make a call, see the number dial, no connection, ring tone or anything. Again, solution is battery/sim card removal.
As for the update situation: I get a messsage telling me to update the phone but back everything up first. But you can't back everything up because the only thing you can do is apply the update or ignore it. And on 1.5 there's no option to manually update the software.
Had a sync problem too - couldn't get any emails or SMS because of an out of memory error. Cleared all the caches I could find. Eventually discovered that it was the Adobe cache that was to blame. 6mb cache. I had 50mb+ free on the phone but it wouldn't sync because of a poxy 6mb Adobe cache.
But I like the phone. And I'll get the Desire HD when it comes out. It's not perfect but the community is big enough to provide solutions to all the problems (so far) and the phone's mine to do what I want with, so I'm not crippled by the daft jesusphone/itunes restrictions and jobsian gated community. I would, however, not recommend any Android phone to anyone who is capable of getting themselves into trouble but doesn't have the technical know-how to get themselves out of trouble. Use it as it is and you'll have few problems. Start to muck around and you might come a cropper.
Well that went well....
Sorry but I think the mass of techies vs the article votes against the article.... with a few exceptions which basically boil down to "had a problem, sent it back... fine now" which every phone suffers from regardless.
<ramble>
Personally I'm content with my sony erricson w880i and I'm opting out of the whole super smart phone thing until they are a bit cheaper and smaller.... a big touch screen is fine until you want to slip it into your pocket with a pack of cigs on a night out (my other pocket containing keys & cards). Also I'm not sure I'm keen of spending my months disposable income on a phone.
That said I'm no luddite, I have a ipod touch that with a MiFi dongle does music & facebook just fine and should I have 400 quid spare then an Asus 1215N will be the purchase of choice.
Android ? Well an apprioiate device might replace the touch for surfing if a decent 7" ipad type thing comes along (not counting the early chinese things out so far) but that's it. In a phone I look for text, voice & internet.... anything else is a bonus usually done better elsewhere
</ramble>
Ahhh, the W880i
I used to have one of those (recently gave it away to a friend). That was a nice little phone. Small, light, good battery, nice music player, and you *could* download apps for it (such as games etc.) However, I'm now paying the same a month to Voda as I was when I had that phone, and I now have the HTC Desire (Without paying for the handset). You just have to be prepared to do a little bitching and bargaining with the carrier to get the best deal.
That's numberwang!
"Sorry but I think the mass of techies vs the article votes against the article"
Yeah, I really like the way the "techies" have totally showed how wrong the article is to, allegedly, rely on anecdotal data by regaling us with anecdotes.
Only their anecdotes are better, and opener.
Re: Ahhh, the W880i
>> You just have to be prepared to do a little bitching and bargaining with the carrier to get the best deal.
I have avoided this after having many contract issues by going with Sim Only and buying my phone myself.
In this case a bargain at 80 quid. As an added bonus I also avoid calls to try and sell me another 12-24 month contract, I get a (slightly) better deal with the minutes/calls and can switch provides at the drop of a hat (though I've been with O2 for ages now).
Nice article iPhan
but...
you need to live with it. Apple do one latest phone. It had magical issues that were hardware... that were then dismissed as software and a patch would be out to fix it... later to be dismissed again with a free case and "all phones are like that anyway". Yeach right Stevey... you can fool the iPhans all of the time... but you can never fool the rest of us, none of the time. :o))
With the amazing looking handsets out now and up and coming... even this 'magical' iPhone 4 looks a little backward against most things HTC to name just one. So I understand that you need to make yourself feel better.
But it isn't reality. Android is fine... and so is Windows 7. ;o)
I am dedicated to android
for ideological reasons. But I have to admit, it is one of the buggiest OSes I've ever seen.
I blame the convoluted economics where the Google programs it, but the handset maker sells it to you, and has to support it, but would rather sell you a new one.
I'd love to just walk down to Best Buy, buy and unbranded phone from whomever is the best manufacturer, hook it up to any network, then download support updates from said manufacturer until EOL. Then smart money would reward good design and support.
Unfortunately these things are throw-away nowadays, and they don't give a sh*t about you once you are in a contract, and you can't really buy one off the shelf ever since the Nexus One failed.
I smell a shill...
Cards on the table; I am currently on my second Android handset - my first being the HTC Magic which after an unfortunate accident with a toilet bowl (think IT Crowd) was replaced with an HTC Legend. My wife, who is one of the least technically literate people I have ever encountered, also has an HTC Legend.
Several of my friends also own Android handsets ranging from the HTC Hero to the Samsung Galaxy S. Almost without exception, everyone I know who is approaching the end of their current contract is looking to upgrade to an Android based device - the only exception being one lone friend who wants to stick with BlackBerry but merely wants to update the handset.
I encountered the 'stuck download' issue once on my HTC Magic, but the issue cleared within the space of an hour; no firmware reset or mucking about with the cache settings.
I have never encountered issues with my Google account; I even use a Google Applications for Domains account so it's not on gmail.com, gmail.co.uk or googlemail.co.uk domains. And yes, I've signed up with Google Checkout and purchased applications from the Market without issue.
This article is possibly one of the worst I have ever read on El Reg; full of supposition and heresay with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. Fine, critise Android for its faults (and yes, it does have a few; proxy internet access being the main culprit), but at least base them on FACT.
Really?
Quick poll of myself and 3 other friends (including my wife who after seeing my new android phone just had to get one) who have android phones and non of them seem to have had these issues.
I will admit that sure my Galaxy S has some problems. The GPS isn't great and sometimes it can be slow to boot, but I keep a lot of media on my phone most of the time as I find it great for watching things on the train to and from work and a lot of that is the media scanner running on boot.
But speaking with my sister, her brother and their friends who all have Iphones they also have niggling issues, not that they like to advertise it. But after a few beers they have admitted they too have the occasional issue with their IPhones.
Just goes to show that no technology is perfect. Android is a perfectly viable alternative to an IPhone and in some aspects better IMO, in some aspects not as good. Overall I prefer Android, but thats partly from annoyance to Igeeks who have for years been IBashing me about how good their apple products were and how much better they were it automatically makes me not want one as I would have to shoot myself if I became like that about anything.
Though this article does read a bit like it was read by a Apple fanboy.
So, the author's Samsung Galaxy S has problems
If the quality of the firmware is anything like that on my original Samsung Galaxy i7500 (Cupcake-only abandonware only a few months after purchase), I'm not surprised.
I've been playing with a G1 of late, with HTC issue 1.6 and various Cyanogen versions. Android doesn't have to be flakey.
To the nah sayers of this article
No I don't have nor do I wish to own an iPhone, I am listing my personal experience with this as there appear to be many nah sayers about this article. I would like an Android one myself but am stuck carrying a work non smart mobile 24/7.
Wife has a HTC wildfire and I remember the market place failing to download problems only too well. It happened 2 days after getting the phone, for the first 2 days I downloaded plenty of free apps then the problem happened. Doing all the work arounds with clearing data (google, google talk etc) as per many forums discussing this issue didn't help at all.
Resetting the phone to factory, configuring the phone from brand new again would allow one of two apps to download, then the problem would occur, rince and repeat, it was heavily reproducible. It all proved that there was an issue in the cloud with my account and google marketplace.
I finally got it to work by converting the googlemail account to a gmail one and resetting the phone one more time, its now been a couple of months since then and no sign of this horrible bug.
@MobiFan - simple search (which I had to do when I had this problem) so the sources
search terms: android market place download hang
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android%20Market/thread?tid=52a229dd53c17551&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=71b498c23af08300&hl=en&start=80
http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=57333ad3f9a8d554&hl=en
Think before you post
Reader to fill in gaps in poor article??
Excuse me???? You mean its not the job of the AUTHOR of the article to provide sources, its up to the reader?
Next time I write a report I'll just put "Hey search google, dudes" rather than providing a proper list of references.
Painful so far...
I bought an Orange ZTE Blade aka San Fransico earlier this week and getting that up and running has been very painful (partly due to Orange and their SIM activation process failing abysmally) but a lot due to generic messages from Andriod that do not mean anything to a dumb user. "Sim card will not let you connect to that network" , finally got it connected and then received "Call Ended" every time I tried to dial out.....
Now I can not get past "validating phone number" when I try to open GMAIL !
Why does Market place keep giving me "A network error has occurred. Retry or cancel" when connected via my home broadband ?
Is there any real support ?
Is the editor having a day off?
How did this one slip through the net? I have a Nexus One at present, although will shortly be getting the Desire HD when it comes out. Yes, you get occasional problems, but I also had those issues with my iPhone 3G, that I ditched in favour of Android.
Granted, I did have to do a factory reset when I upgraded to FroYo as the stock browser stopped working - but everything works fine now, and as a previous comment said, all my stuff was backed up in the cloud, so I got it all back straight away.
I think Android's great - and I'm looking forward to HTCSense.com adding to the user experience.
Quick Fix
In-case nobody who reads this was aware - you can also force checkin to update (checks for new carrier-delivered firmware first, then compares installed apps to market apps and displays updates, instead of waiting for it automatically - good if you just restored a load of apps from backup and need to update them)
just dial *#*#2432546#*#* into android dialer
(the numbers spell checkin) and it will notify you it has completed
also i have experienced the not downloading issue however only sometimes- it seems to be when the phone is constantly flicking between 2G/3G or wifi/3g, bordering on the signal, since a source-change pauses the download, doing it repeatedly might cause a fsckup, or androids process manager to kill the download app due to low mem ( a big problem on my G1 running cyanogen6/android2.2)
Incredible...
I actually registered an account for the sole purpose of commenting on the poor quality of this article. I've been visiting this website for years and this is probably one of the weakest stories that I've read.
You missed...
The Droid (UK Milestone) power switch dying and becoming very hard to press, and when you take it into Verizon, they spritz it with some canned air and go "all fixed!"
I had to root the phone so I could install a software power-off icon. When I get the time, I'll go back and insist on a new phone, I've still got 8 mos of warranty.
I haven't had any of the other issues, though. Perhaps that's because I'm on 2.2?
Utter rubbish
Not had any of the problems mentioned, my phone is a doddle to use, the user manual never even made it out of the box.
Would I recommend my phone to anyone over an iPhone? Damned right I would... no need to install software to use it, no need to sign up to activate it, no need to jailbreak it to run apps not downloaded from the market. Best of all? It cost me £99 to buy... how much for an iPhone? You can say the spec on an iPhone is better, true it is, but, at £600 a go, it damn well should be. But, is it really 6 times better? ummmm.. no. You keep your iPhone, I'll keep my £500, thanks.
Took ages!
Setting up my Android phone is a snap. In contrast, it took me AGES to set up my wife's iPhone, almost a whole night! I was so tired afterwards; fortunately, there's a nap for that :-o
desire
My mate has a Desire and I catch him resetting it quite often. He doesn't say anything knowing I'll mock him for it, but he doesn't always manage to hide the flaws in his ever so perfect phone quite well enough.
Wow
Reading these comments makes me think that Fandroids are really give Mac fanbois a run for their money these days in the whiney defense stakes.
I'd like an iphone 4 ..
.. but I occassionally need to make phone calls
they're supposed to just work, something Apple has achieved with the iPhone.
While it reads like an Apple fanboi piece, it would be useful to get some perspective. Such as the antenna problems. The WiFi compatibility issues. The wonky proximity sensor. The infamous shortage-of-supplies-to-create-demand-hysteria (plus limits on how many a person can buy). Potential battery issues. The rear camera's prone to lifelessness, and when it does work the white balance can be way off with indoor lighting. Easy-to-break glass parts.
Sure, Apple has a working App Store, but on the other hand no doubt Android has a working antenna. Which is more useful in a *phone*? :-) Lack of objectivity, guys, hence the graveyard sign. This piece would have read a *lot* better if the rose-tinted Apple comparisons were omitted and left for the commentards to pick up on.
title
I'm fairly new to Andriod, and have hit a few niggles - why do I need a gmail account, for instance, when my main email address is a Google Apps account - the Gmail app works nicely with it.. Wireless won't reconnect to my AP when I get home, and I'm also still trying to find a decent VoIP client that works as seamlessly and invisibly as the one built into my previous N95. I'm hoping that the forthcoming update (if SE ever release it) will help a little.
Otherwise .. I'm very happy with it..
Carrier bag
This is what happens when you let the carriers mess with stuff, as ably demonstrated by the epic love poem to fail that was Windows Mobile as a phone OS.
The carriers aren't coding shops, and they don't know how to to do software QA properly. When there are problems, nobody blames the carriers or the developers of whatever third party crap or custom ROMs they've shoehorned into their device. They blame the OS vendor.
But this is the heady world of tech, so of course a subset of Android users are frothing at the mouth zero sum fixated zealots for the particular bit of tech they have chosen, and death to the unbelievers. To them, there simply aren't problems at all. It amazes me that Google of all people have managed to tap into this rich vein of idiocy. GNU/Linux I can understand, especially once you add the GNU part back on (for illustration purposes only, hows HURD going ?).
But Google ? How the blue fuck did that happen ?
Cause: User Error
I dunno what is different across the pond, but it sounds like it must suck to live in the UK. I've had two Droids myself and never seen any of these problems. My wife recently got an R2D2 and it took her all of 15 minutes to set everything up and sync her contacts and Yahoo email account. This was her first smartphone or touchscreen device, but the only difficulty she had was accidentally pressing the back button when typing.
I read the Reg specifically because it tends to avoid the mass marketing/media FUD of American news sources, so it is very disappointing to see such flamebait posted without at least a /sarcasm tag.
Not android
The failing download problem is a galaxy s specific problem. It has nothing to do with android but of their implementation. It also has an easy fix. Take your SD card out and put it back in again.
I would also like to say that this article is a bunch of one sided exagerated rubbish. I haven't experienced any of these faults and I am not a lucky one, I am a typical user. All phones have bugs here are there, it is nothing new with android at all.
Coat because that's what you'll need if you can't write a better article than this.
I'm going to agree with the article.
Its all perfectly true. Two weeks of unadualterated hell and rubbish advice all trying to get my wife's HTC Desire working.
If it was just her, she'd have sent it back to the shop and at one point, I was almost at the same place too.
The damned thing is just like trying to run homebrew Linux and there's a reason why the peguin shaggers haven't taken over the world... this stuff is just not slick enough to be mass marketable to non-techies, but thats not how they sell it.
Sure I'd not buy an i-anything just on principle, but equally, I'd not buy another one of these either. Maybe unlike Nokia they will get their shit together in a few years, but i doubt it somehow.
the download problem is very real
Google market download issue is very real. As it was said, it strikes randomly. However, sometimes it is really stupid lusers fault. On my Nexus one, I had issue with download app from market twice. Once, I had to restart my phone (power off then power on), a common issue been reported to google. So far, no one knows why yet. However, I do have a feeling it had something to do with my network connection at the time (possible a weak connection = bad download).
The other time I had problem was my own stupid fault, I didn't check my email that notified me the Google market couldn't charge my credit card for the reason my google checkout account had problem at the time of setup, and without getting the money from me, the paid version of app won't let me download for sure. It was recommended to double check your google checkout account at the time you set it up.
To be fair for Google, apple store has its download issue too.
Lol
Someone doesn't like Android it seems.
Why write an article about it thought? We don't care.
Abort / Retry / Fail
Thanks El Reg for making my day
Sent from my Non Ironic iPhone
Only one problem but a big one
HTC Desire - love it, but HTC Sync does not work with my new laptop which is running Office 2010 64-bit. HTC know about the problem but can't tell me if/when it will be fixed.
HTC if you are reading this...
This topic is closed for new posts.
