As a rule I don't barge into somebody's house whom I don't know and then insult them. So I will apologize in advance because I am new to Android and new to this website and have many questions. Actually I will dis ask my main question and then give a little background information for those of you who wish to read further and Comment.
I currently have a sprint LG volt running KitKat 4.4.2. I have read everything there is about this device about Android 5.1 lollipop and updating. Still, my device claims that everything is up to date and I don't wish at this time to start getting into the hacking mode and updating that way. Even the Sprint site for the support page for this phone it doesn't dress the update but dances around the topic and does not clearly state whether or not this update will be available for this device. Is there any other way I can find out if this update is available for my phone and if so how to get it.
Now for the rest of the story. We are dealing here with three entities Google the creator of the operating system, LG the creator of the device, and sprint the carrier who ultimately decides what gets updated and how. I would like to get somebody from each of these companies and make them eat one of these phones. I don't know why it's so hard for them to just say whether or not they will release the update for this phone.
But maybe we need to look at the big picture here, it does seem consistent with the entire Google / Android philosophy. Google itself seems to have lost its way a few years ago. The search engine simply does not display relevant results when it used to be scaringly accurate. The web interfaces for apps like Gmail, well to say unintuitive would be an understatement. That word is used when there are minor things, subjective things that don't seem right. But in Google's case it just seems that either people aren't thinking or are intentionally making things difficult. So it's really no surprise that the Android operating system is no different. There are many cool features and they have evolved pretty well since the early days. For the most part the apps and widgets work well. But there is simply no continuity no consistency. For example, there may be an app that has a toolbar or menu bar with certain icons that perform certain functions. But open a different app and it may have similar toolbars and similar icons but they perform completely different functions and they operate in a completely different manner. Usually when that happens there's a reason for it, there's a reason why in one case the icon is simply tap when in the other it has to be held. But from what I've seen so far there's no logical reason for either method or to be different between apps.
I don't think that Android is meant to be the cheaper alternative to iOS. I think it's supposed to be a true competitor. But Apple, on the other hand, is proprietary to the extreme. Their rationale for this is to provide a reliable experience and consistent experience but the result if they want to micromanage things that don't actually need this level of control. Still however the consistency however stifling is preferable. In the 19 eighties and nineties we saw the Mac vs PC wars. And the arguments were the same. Mac was a proprietary system that developed its own hardware and software and the PC well not technically open source did release its hardware schematics so any company could not only build a PC computer but customize OEM versions of Windows. This led to a very unstable and unreliable Windows installations requiring extensive troubleshooting and reinstalled often. That's computers evolved PCs did become more standardized and Windows installations became more stable but usually after several updates or version changes. On the other hand Mac computers went through their troubles of instability and unreliable operating systems and applications. But it just seems that regardless of who it is just went to get something right they go and change it. Android has many different parts like iOS does like any operating system does. There's the core operating system and then there are apps features that are built in that come with the OS. It seems to me it wouldn't be that difficult just I have a few people to check for continuity and make sure that certain things remain the same across all apps widgets and features. I don't know maybe this just isn't important.
Perhaps what I find most troublesome is that I am a big supporter of open source. I'm a web developer and started out using Microsoft technology. But later I learned PHP, MySQL, and content management systems like WordPress in forum software. Sure at first this technology was unstable especially when trying to scale. But it's really grown and it's really good. A lot of people has been a lot of time and money making these products better. From servers like Apache and Linux to open source applications that used to be difficult for developers to install and manage but now are fairly simple and reliable. But I'm not seeing this with Android. There's not that much difference between the older phone I have this running version 2 and the one I have now that's running version 4. Sure the phone is a lot better there are more features but I have not seen it really evolve. I'm also simply baffled that this phone that cost $80 is not much different from one that caused over $500. So anyway I will stop there and continue to explore this phone and search the web to find out how things are supposed to work. What I said I am new to this and if anybody feels they want to set me straight on anything I'm all ears. There are many things that I do like and that seemed to work well. It's just exhausting climbing up the learning curve only to slide back down again.
I currently have a sprint LG volt running KitKat 4.4.2. I have read everything there is about this device about Android 5.1 lollipop and updating. Still, my device claims that everything is up to date and I don't wish at this time to start getting into the hacking mode and updating that way. Even the Sprint site for the support page for this phone it doesn't dress the update but dances around the topic and does not clearly state whether or not this update will be available for this device. Is there any other way I can find out if this update is available for my phone and if so how to get it.
Now for the rest of the story. We are dealing here with three entities Google the creator of the operating system, LG the creator of the device, and sprint the carrier who ultimately decides what gets updated and how. I would like to get somebody from each of these companies and make them eat one of these phones. I don't know why it's so hard for them to just say whether or not they will release the update for this phone.
But maybe we need to look at the big picture here, it does seem consistent with the entire Google / Android philosophy. Google itself seems to have lost its way a few years ago. The search engine simply does not display relevant results when it used to be scaringly accurate. The web interfaces for apps like Gmail, well to say unintuitive would be an understatement. That word is used when there are minor things, subjective things that don't seem right. But in Google's case it just seems that either people aren't thinking or are intentionally making things difficult. So it's really no surprise that the Android operating system is no different. There are many cool features and they have evolved pretty well since the early days. For the most part the apps and widgets work well. But there is simply no continuity no consistency. For example, there may be an app that has a toolbar or menu bar with certain icons that perform certain functions. But open a different app and it may have similar toolbars and similar icons but they perform completely different functions and they operate in a completely different manner. Usually when that happens there's a reason for it, there's a reason why in one case the icon is simply tap when in the other it has to be held. But from what I've seen so far there's no logical reason for either method or to be different between apps.
I don't think that Android is meant to be the cheaper alternative to iOS. I think it's supposed to be a true competitor. But Apple, on the other hand, is proprietary to the extreme. Their rationale for this is to provide a reliable experience and consistent experience but the result if they want to micromanage things that don't actually need this level of control. Still however the consistency however stifling is preferable. In the 19 eighties and nineties we saw the Mac vs PC wars. And the arguments were the same. Mac was a proprietary system that developed its own hardware and software and the PC well not technically open source did release its hardware schematics so any company could not only build a PC computer but customize OEM versions of Windows. This led to a very unstable and unreliable Windows installations requiring extensive troubleshooting and reinstalled often. That's computers evolved PCs did become more standardized and Windows installations became more stable but usually after several updates or version changes. On the other hand Mac computers went through their troubles of instability and unreliable operating systems and applications. But it just seems that regardless of who it is just went to get something right they go and change it. Android has many different parts like iOS does like any operating system does. There's the core operating system and then there are apps features that are built in that come with the OS. It seems to me it wouldn't be that difficult just I have a few people to check for continuity and make sure that certain things remain the same across all apps widgets and features. I don't know maybe this just isn't important.
Perhaps what I find most troublesome is that I am a big supporter of open source. I'm a web developer and started out using Microsoft technology. But later I learned PHP, MySQL, and content management systems like WordPress in forum software. Sure at first this technology was unstable especially when trying to scale. But it's really grown and it's really good. A lot of people has been a lot of time and money making these products better. From servers like Apache and Linux to open source applications that used to be difficult for developers to install and manage but now are fairly simple and reliable. But I'm not seeing this with Android. There's not that much difference between the older phone I have this running version 2 and the one I have now that's running version 4. Sure the phone is a lot better there are more features but I have not seen it really evolve. I'm also simply baffled that this phone that cost $80 is not much different from one that caused over $500. So anyway I will stop there and continue to explore this phone and search the web to find out how things are supposed to work. What I said I am new to this and if anybody feels they want to set me straight on anything I'm all ears. There are many things that I do like and that seemed to work well. It's just exhausting climbing up the learning curve only to slide back down again.
