Anyone else getting fed up?

jamo said:

I'm ok with research, as you can tell from the fact that I use this and other forums, but we shouldn't HAVE to in order to find quality apps. I wouldn't, for instance, recommend that anyone buy a Droid X without dl'ing LauncherPro. So, you buy the phone, then I have to explain to them why they need it. It's not intuitive or effective, it's annoying.

And then Market excuse is wearing then; we were making the same excuses a year ago and it's still the same Market with the same low-quality apps.

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AppBrain is one of the recommended apps in the market and once you have it you can see the most popular for today, week, monthand all time.

jamo said:

The fact that there are so many home replacement apps is a testament to how bad the carriers have screwed up Android. I use LauncherPro and love it, but I can't imagine having to use the stock launcher that came with the X, it's detestable. You can't really be saying that the Android Market has a huge amount of quality apps, can you? I just find that hard to believe, we'll have to agree to disagree there, which is fine.

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Well, until my post, you didnt think Android had HQ games.lol You was wrong about the games and you are wrong about the apps too. No offense.

I agree you have to search to find them sometimes.

Seems that the issue is with Verizon locking down the phone - Android without the lock down will do all the things you want.

jamo said:

I'm not really hating on my X, but I feel like it's being really limited by Android's shortcomings. I'm not rooted because I still don't see the advantages (I rooted my original Droid), but I am running the leaked build of 2.2 (not the one from last night). My point is, you shouldn't have to root your phone to have a good experience. I know that my X should be faster than an old iPod Touch, but it's not. I lag at the unlock screen and when searching. As far as widgets are concerned, I'm not convinced they're that useful. I have weather and news, but I've realized that I just click on the widget and open them anyway. We still don't have proxy server access, which my 4-year old iPod has, and the Market's set up makes it unusable and unappealing to any developers. Why develop a good game for the platform if it's not going to crack into the top 10 over 4 different ROM apps. Honestly, the most popular game on Android is the Angry Birds beta, how sad is that? So, Droid X is a great piece of hardware, but it's being dragged down by it's software, just like every Android phone that isn't the Nexus One.

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hova15 said:

First off, thanks for the reply,


Why should I have to download a third party app to get the GOOGLE email to work on the GOOGLE phone. Come on you're better than this.

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Because this phone is a smartphone and the biggest advantage of a smartphone is the ability to install/ replace apps with better functionality than the ones you get out of the box.

Go back to the Icrap world and don't come back you cry baby.

I am new to Android from black berry and I really think Motorola and Verizon should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this phones as early as they did. With that said I have slowly starting to learn about launchers and other ways to make this phone my own and I have been much more happy.

jamo said:

I'm going to try to restrain myself from going on a rant

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...

jamo said:

sorry about the rant

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__________

haha, no but srsly, i think they did release this a bit too early. Just wait until Froyo is out, and if you have complaints then; exchange it.

To the OP: Are you here just to vent or to actually get some answers? Your answer to every suggestion seems to be 'but....this 'but.....that'. I'm still baffled as to what you expect.

I've been able to easily and I mean easily find all the apps I wanted in the Market by simply typing their names or doing a keyword search. There are lots and lots of very good sites dedicated to the top Android apps: Appbrain comes to mind. Or simply doing a Google or forum search is enough to find a treasure trove of great info. I don't see what the problem is. The Market search works great. You're not going to find the same caliber of games yet, that's simply out of the question. But apps, there very good ones if you do a little research.

And it's not like there aren't any decent games. There are some, but it's no secret they were never a priority for Android because it was considered a 'nobody' just less than a year ago. Now that it's becoming very popular, they will come.

Throughout this whole thread, it seems you're here to ask why Android isn't like the iPhone? It's not and hopefully never will be. The day that happens, I will be jumping ship. You have to conform to it. It will become easier and more feature rich with time and yes, I'll agree it's not perfect by any means, but it does not have to be like IOS to succeed.

Simply put, if you want it to behave like an iPhone, you bought the wrong device.

ndfan4u said:

Go back to the Icrap world and don't come back you cry baby.

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And the winner of the most childish response goes to you.


There are benefits to both Android and iPhone. I have a Droid X, I love it, but I would go for an iPhone if it came on Verizon. I too own an iPod Touch and I do love the user experience.

I miss the games. The Android platform has too few in quantity, even fewer in quality. 5 bucks on Android gets you a 1 dollar game on the iPhone.

I'm surprised to hear so many of you guys play games on your phone and consider it an important feature. Where do you all find the time?

I've had this phone for about a week now and I love the ability to customize it however you want. I never had a problem with it being slow.

However I have to disagree with you that the many apps for lauder us not because of the poor stock launchers but for users to design their phone to their exact liking and that is the beauty of android!

As for the proxy thing I never even heard of a proxy based wifi connection before. I use university wifi with my personal login information just fine.

Also LOVEthat I can sync my university email to android because the university migrated its servers to google

Dear OP,

I really didn't want to reply to this; however, I am not sure you have read your own posts and did what your Droid X functions very well with: Google this stuff. Let me google that for you .

I just would like you to know that I measure my X against my friends and co-workers all the time. I wouldn't trade my X for an Iphone 4 if you paid me and put it on Verizon.

Is Blur laggy? Yes. Is that Androids fault? No. Are you familiar with Linux? There are thousands of versions of Linux and some come with crapware. Welcome to customization. Also, I get e-mails from exchange servers and gmail fine. Do I have to wait on the push? Yes. You do with any phone my dear. Just adjust settings at the cost of battery to make it happen quicker!

Lets bring this away from the phone department and into a more familiar situation:

Cars. When you buy your car, do you decide on the way the dashboard is laid out or why it doesn't accelerate or brake as fast as your last one? Will you ever find one that feels the same? Looks the same? Uses gas the same? Seats the same? Breaks down the same? Not unless you buy the same. That means the same year, and probably one off of the same manufacturing line. No one is screaming at Toyota that their Tundra doesn't self charge like a Prius.

And to take this one step further, do people who drive a Prius cry that it isn't as appealing as a Camry? Doesn't feel as masculine as a Tundra? No. Why? They bought this car for it's advantages. It's advantages are better gas mileage, a few tech toys, and comfort. If you want to turn the ladies heads, buy a sports car. If you want to save money, buy a Prius. If you want to haul lumber, buy a truck. If you want to go off-road, shop accordingly.

My point is, you can't please everyone. There is going to be a you in every crowd. Iphone is successful because it works. You can't change how it works, you can't change how it looks, but it functions.

An Android phone is like buying a sports car you expect to modify and add some chrome too, or lower, or cut into a convertible at some point. It works out of the box. Does it work flawlessly? Depends on the brand and what you consider flawless; however, if you chop the top off, you can be cooler in certain weather and sparkle in all of the chrome you want. You can bring the experience you need for your device to you. Is it work? Yes. But the manufacturing market, unfortunately, isn't Burger King. You don't get it "Your way, right away". If you want it your way, you have to pull off your own tomatoes with Android, but it's possible. With the Iphone, it isn't, but it already works.

Does the Iphone that "works" work flawlessly? No. It is the Prius of smartphones. You can't customize it to make it look more appealing, you cant change the way it does much of anything, and you can't add a can of NOS and kick some random v-tech in to make it drag race. It simply gets the job done with a few nice included options, none you can change even by manufacturer request. It needs those regenerating brake pads to keep it working, so you won't stop on a dime. It needs all of those flashy electronics laid out exactly how they are, so you can monitor it for repair. The UI is set in stone. If you bought one of those, you accepted that you would never drag race or go to car shows. You accepted that you just want to go to work and drop the kids at school. Nothing is wrong with that, if that's what you want.

Personally, I wanted the sports car with all of the options and a can of paint to boot. I want to put spiffy decals on it, race it down the drag strip, look cooler in the summer time with my top down, and paint it some sparkling color with some rims on it. I will add apps, root to my hearts desire, and customize the UI until it feels just right when I plop down in that bucket seat to take my kids to school, buy groceries, or burn some chump at a red light.

Are there setbacks to owning a sports car? Yes, plenty. Sometimes it uses more gas, you tend to drive them harder so they may break down more, they require a bit of maintenance a grocery getter won't, and I had to pull my own tomatoes off to make it taste just right.

So, now that I am done with my horrific analogies; it is pretty simple here.

If you want your phone to do things it isn't designed to do on day one, like log into a proxy, find a fix for it. There are fixes. Sure the iphone can do that out of the box, but the things it cant do, you are ultimately screwed in that department. The option is there. Use it. Worst case, I have some networking knowledge. If you need to get into your network that bad, our phones do have MAC addresses, and network admins can allow them without proxy on most of today's equipment fairly easily. If you don't need it to do your job, then thank Android for you never getting caught using the stumble app to browse porn on the job. Don't keep complaining your phone can't do things that it clearly can. Fix your problem. It's that old saying we all hate "You can't have your cake and eat it too!", or in this case your Froyo. Your phone is capable of doing everything slated, just make it happen sweetheart.

As for lag, it may be very true that you have an app messing with you. This includes the lock screen. There are apps that make it worse. Such as the emergency dialer app that puts a widget on your lock screen, that thing and blur are nasty together. Blur sucks, but that's a different topic. It isn't meant for someone with specific needs, it's meant to be there to work. It does work. It just doesn't work how us nerds want it to. So we remove it or work around it.

Gaming? There are plenty of games. Are there cool games like those that Pop Cap or others provide for the iphone? Not yet! It will come around. Android has blown up in just under a year. It's just a baby boomer, and developers want to see that its worth the investment. Just like most companies used 56k until they knew deep down that broadband was worth the investment. There are good games on the market. Angry Birds certainly does not lag on my phone. It has once, but that could also be attributed to two things : It is an app in the beta stage and did not cost you one red cent; and you are running an unofficial OS that may have an issue beyond the developer's control that will be fixed in the final release. Only time will tell.

Then last but not least, the market. Does the market suck? It does, but not for the reasons you listed. It sucks more because of when I search for games, I see 1,000 apps of puzzles or jpeg slideshows of some random amateur porn star. That needs to be handled, but I have faith it will be in due time. As far as finding the right apps.....so what if there isn't a top 10 or something to throw them at you? Is that how you decide you want everything? Even buying things on the Playstation Network, in a software store for my pc, on Xbox Live, or any piece of technology; require a fraction of research. For instance you may need an app to let you edit a specific file type not available in the top downloaded app. Is that going to be on a banner advertising this in the app store? I can see it now; "Download Elite Doc Viewer 9.1.3c. This application is bad ass! It does everything you need it do. I must warn you though! It force closes when you sneeze and it doesn't really open document files in your native language. It has cool wallpaper and some neat looking buttons though." More people are ignorant than intelligent, and if you want something, you have a smart phone! Google it! Halo is a top game, I don't like Halo. Twilight was a top grossing film. Unfortunately, I am not a teenaged girl and I would not enjoy it.

It doesn't hurt me to browse the phandroid game reviews, or some other fan sites. It gives me something to read about. The videos give me some insurance that I might actually enjoy a game. If I don't enjoy it, I have 24 hours to tell them by uninstalling it. I believe that is an excellent start to a GREAT market. There are some free games and apps that have served me greatly with minor flaws. The android community is EXCELLENT. We help each other out and get things done. The kinks take time to work out. You said you are tired of hearing that? How long did you use an Iphone? The apple market was horrid at one point. It has now, had time to grow. At it's one year point, it was not showered with apps, and never was showered with all of the customizations available to our Android devices. Let's measure those e-peens a bit later. Say, at least version 3.0? I mean, that's when the Iphone era truly blossomed, after all.

Personally, I chose Android because I can customize it and it has the ability to do everything any other smartphone on the market can do with the occasional twist. I didn't want a device that the manufacturer dictated how I must use it. That is not how I want to spend my money.

The questions you need to ask yourself are, do you want an item you can make work how you want it to work? Or one that works for now for what you do, but next month that feature is removed because it allowed someone to have fun or use it the way they wanted?

For those that deemed this "TLDR" it's simply summarized as:

With an android device as amazing as the X, there is more than one way to skin a cat! With those other products, your cat comes already skinned, we just hope you like it.


Signed,

A Nerd that needs sleep.

PS.
We didn't even discuss carrier commitments vs service! But, for the future, I wish you luck in choosing the proper device to suit your needs. None of us will judge you if you decide something besides what we like, promise. Just please, don't complain so much! Ask for help, and accept it. There are guys on this forum that can make your phone undress your lover for you. (I think..)

And btw,

It seemed like you wanted to prove a point here more than "see if others were having the same experience". <3 <3

While I disagree with many of the OPs points, I can't disagree with the lack of games.

I'm a gamer, it's my hobby so I notice the lack of or abundance of them. Android doesn't have a lot of good games. There are certainly some decent games as noted in this thread, but it's nothing like the glut that iPhone has. I came from that world and it's a part I really miss on my DX. I realize it's still early in the Android lifecycle and more will be coming, but as of today, compared to the iPhone, Android games are few and weak. And iPhone is the platform Android is competing with so it's a fair comparison.

You (anyone, not just the OP) may say you don't care about games on your smartphone and that's a reasonable statement. I suspect you are in the minority of smartphone users and I believe the Apple App Store has proven that. Google doesn't make it easy to discover new games. You can see what's popular in AppBrain, but popular doesn't mean new and of decent quality. I know the App Store failed here by recommending apps which were pushed by the developer instead of being truly good so it's not a fool proof model.

As far as having to add your own stuff to make the phone usable, I consider it part of the platform's strength. You have choice. People lost their minds when Microsoft threw their media players on Windows and make IE the default browser. Well Google isn't making that mistake (though Verizon has) by giving you the choice. With Apple, it's their way or the highway. I chose the highway. Now if Android gets some decent games, the highway will be a lot more fun.

r3dlined said:

I am new to Android from black berry and I really think Motorola and Verizon should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this phones as early as they did.

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HAHAHAHA! The DX is light years more polished than the BB Storm was at release...and the Storm only got marginally better with the few software updates that it got. When I ditched it for the DX, it still was not ready for public consumption!

ylexot said:

HAHAHAHA! The DX is light years more polished than the BB Storm was at release...and the Storm only got marginally better with the few software updates that it got. When I ditched it for the DX, it still was not ready for public consumption!

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I completely disagree my storm 1 was pretty solid as a rock. There is a HUGE difference in both battery life and WiFi from 2.1 to 2.2 both of which are pretty main components of the Droid X. Using multiple Gmail Calendars isn't possible, coping text from e-mail isn't possible stock and even the 2.2 way to copy isn't too great. The keyboard response from 2.1 to 2.2 is night and day on the X.

Even stupid things like going to google.com on the browser and typing in a search, you can't tap on the suggestions that show up it doesn't work.

r3dlined said:

I completely disagree my storm 1 was pretty solid as a rock.

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You had the only one then.

r3dlined said:

There is a HUGE difference in both battery life and WiFi from 2.1 to 2.2 both of which are pretty main components of the Droid X.

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So your saying that upgrades improved it? How shocking! Upgrades on the Storm typically fixed some things, improved some things, and broke some things. Oh, and battery life on the DX with 2.1 equals the battery life on the Storm. So you're saying that it will blow the Storm away on 2.2? SWEET!

r3dlined said:

Using multiple Gmail Calendars isn't possible,

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Yes it is.

r3dlined said:

coping text from e-mail isn't possible stock and even the 2.2 way to copy isn't too great.

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I'll give you that one, but I haven't gone to 2.2 yet, so not sure how the copy/paste implementation is.

r3dlined said:

The keyboard response from 2.1 to 2.2 is night and day on the X.

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Swype...accept no substitutes.

r3dlined said:

Even stupid things like going to google.com on the browser and typing in a search, you can't tap on the suggestions that show up it doesn't work.

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Works fine on Dolphin HD...it's nice to have options.

ylexot said:

You had the only one then.
So your saying that upgrades improved it? How shocking! Upgrades on the Storm typically fixed some things, improved some things, and broke some things. Oh, and battery life on the DX with 2.1 equals the battery life on the Storm. So you're saying that it will blow the Storm away on 2.2? SWEET!
Yes it is.
I'll give you that one, but I haven't gone to 2.2 yet, so not sure how the copy/paste implementation is.
Swype...accept no substitutes.

Works fine on Dolphin HD...it's nice to have options.

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The email copy in 2.2 is basically going into the menu, selecting copy text, and then trying to drag a single finger over the text to copy. Since you cant zoom in on a gmail email this is pretty tricky to do. Seems like a two finger copy would be the smart way to do it.

On the email side, adding a personal gmail account and a google apps email you cannot use both calendars at the same time. This is confirmed fixed in 2.2 leak that came out.

binary visions said:

I see the exact opposite: I use my iPhone occasionally and think, "really? No widgets at all? I can't even get some kind of centralized notification without flipping through all of my app screens? And I get zero bars in half of my office?"

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Stop holding the phone, that should fix one of your issues... Sorry guys, just had to... haha

r3dlined said:

Coping text from e-mail isn't possible stock and even the 2.2 way to copy isn't too great.

The keyboard response from 2.1 to 2.2 is night and day on the X.

Even stupid things like going to google.com on the browser and typing in a search, you can't tap on the suggestions that show up it doesn't work.

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Doesn't sound like you've owned a Storm or an X. It is much easier to copy text on my X than it was on my storm.

The keyboard is much better on the X, I can actually hit the keys I want to hit because of the screen, the Storm was such a pain with fat fingering cause of the sh!t screen. Plus you can install better keyboards on the X, I never found any for the Storm.

The Google recommended search options is one of the features I love about the X, never had that with my Storm.

Not to mention the fact that almost every time I tried to surf the web with my Storm I had to do a battery pull a couple of times to the point I would just give up.

Did you have a Storm 2?

I'm sending this from my X. I wasn't able to respond to my favorite forums on my Storm.

One last thing, X is so much easier to type than Storm, unless you have an X lol

RichSz said:

I'm a gamer, it's my hobby so I notice the lack of or abundance of them. Android doesn't have a lot of good games. There are certainly some decent games as noted in this thread, but it's nothing like the glut that iPhone has. I came from that world and it's a part I really miss on my DX. I realize it's still early in the Android lifecycle and more will be coming, but as of today, compared to the iPhone, Android games are few and weak. And iPhone is the platform Android is competing with so it's a fair comparison.

You (anyone, not just the OP) may say you don't care about games on your smartphone and that's a reasonable statement. I suspect you are in the minority of smartphone users and I believe the Apple App Store has proven that. Google doesn't make it easy to discover new games. You can see what's popular in AppBrain, but popular doesn't mean new and of decent quality. I know the App Store failed here by recommending apps which were pushed by the developer instead of being truly good so it's not a fool proof model.

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I'm a game and I think its silly to play games on a phone, its just not fun. The only games ill play on a phone are card or puzzle games. If I want to play a game ill grab a PS3, PC, PSP, or DS. I agree that its a big market, I just don't see why. Can anyone point me in a direction to change my mind?

I'll play certain games if I have a slider keyboard, like RPG and stuff, even with touchscreen if it is well-made. Just not FPS or anything along that line.

I don't understand it if you're too lazy to download Launcher Pro or have a 'we shouldn't need to' attitude.

I would understand it if you're complaining about fragmentation caused by the 'skinning' of phones or in general, late update (why aren't all phones using 2.2 when it was released months ago...).