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The Trouble with Android is...

RobStemen

Newbie
Dec 7, 2009
47
0
The trouble with Android is not the bugs (I'm not that bothered by them), and it's not the devices (there are so many devices, there's almost something for everybody). It's the fact that Android is just not mainstream. When the iPhone came out, Appee had a history of being user-friendly, sexy easy to use interface. When Android came out with the G1, one of the first open-source phones, hardly anybody knew what "open-source" meant. And you know what they say. You don't get a second first impression, and Android's first impression was a "geek's only" zone. Thus we see thousands of cool apps being developed for iPhone and we think "Where's the Android love?" and the Android love is lost in the iPhone's mainstream.
 
One of the main reasons I _don't_ want an iPhone is its perceived "sexiness"! The iPhone is the popular jock kid who is elected class president, but not because he actually know what he's doing, but because he's popular.

You are lamenting that Android isn't perceived as "sexy", but would you really want it to be sexy for the wrong reason? The iPhone's popularity is a hollow one. It's trendy and cool, like Paris Hilton is trendy & cool.
 
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mjschmidt said:
It's trendy and cool, like Paris Hilton is trendy & cool.

True, Paris Hilton does have a lot in common with android handsets... they both are partly made of silicone, for example (horrible joke? Maybe. True? Most definitely).

Anyway, on topic, I think Android will start to become more mainstream in time. The Moto Droid is a good example of this, there's quite a bit of people who are not geeks, but have heard of or own it.
 
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Anyway, on topic, I think Android will start to become more mainstream in time. The Moto Droid is a good example of this, there's quite a bit of people who are not geeks, but have heard of or own it.
Oh, I completely agree, and I await the day it does. I was just making a simple observation inspired by seeing the commercial that told me about the Walmart iPhone app and was like "That'd be cool to have"
 
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AOL was mainstream. It was so easy to just type in the AOL keyword for 'Ford' 'GE' etc. It had lots of nice graphics and everything looked professional. The internet at that time looked like ugly gray crap.

AOL once had 30 million subscribers. Nobody uses AOL anymore.

People were able to adapt to the web and made it mainstream. AOL was not able to adapt to people and that's why it failed. It put everyone into a box and assumed that one size fits all.
 
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the iphone is upper mid class. it's the blonde girl that is pretty, talented, and nice enough to be a cheerleader, but not smart enough to be on the honor role or beautiful enough to be prom queen. she's easy to talk to, but not about anything important. she's fun to hang with, but there's always so many people talking to her that it defeats the point of even trying to get to know her.

is this ultra *** yet....

sure, she's popular, and with good reason, but that new girl just has a little something extra. she's not as easy to talk to, but mostly because she's smarter than you are. she's not quite as pretty, but she has a lot more depth. she's very confident, and she should be because she's already head of the class and she showed half way through the semester. she has more to offer than anyone else and all she needs is someone to help her break out of her shell.

pfff i'm done. i'm ashamed of myself.
 
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the iphone is upper mid class. it's the blonde girl that is pretty, talented, and nice enough to be a cheerleader, but not smart enough to be on the honor role or beautiful enough to be prom queen. she's easy to talk to, but not about anything important. she's fun to hang with, but there's always so many people talking to her that it defeats the point of even trying to get to know her.

is this ultra *** yet....

sure, she's popular, and with good reason, but that new girl just has a little something extra. she's not as easy to talk to, but mostly because she's smarter than you are. she's not quite as pretty, but she has a lot more depth. she's very confident, and she should be because she's already head of the class and she showed half way through the semester. she has more to offer than anyone else and all she needs is someone to help her break out of her shell.

pfff i'm done. i'm ashamed of myself.

Haha love this! Just wait, her glasses fall off one day, hair comes down, and everyone sees she's the most perfect girl ever born..
 
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What all you Apple lovers forget when referring to the popularity of the iPhone when it came out is the fact that Apple already had a captive customer base via the iPod's!!! Nothing sexy about it, just plain and simple brand loyalty and Geee, I "gotta have it" bull...

I'd really like to know how all you Apple/AT&T supporters feel now, seeing how the AT&T CEO announced that it really isn't a problem to fix all your dropped calls and lackluster signal because they intend on "LIMITING" your data access. They plan to limit that which you already pay for, will change their business model and plans to reflect the new LIMITED data access. This on a phone which thrives and functions on data access... Hmmmmm.

This will certainly help your iPhone experience I'm sure.


Apple is not the best, and the $ generated by subscriber is actually higher on Sprint, which subsequently has the better priced plans. Followed by Verizon THEN Apple. This $ is the money generated per user on purchases for their phones, not the plans themselves.

With all their hoopla about they are the best, with the most app's etc. Apple suffers from picking the wrong jockey to drive it's horse(AT&T). I'm sure now they will be really thinking about that Verizon version of the iPhone...

Apple has always had a closed, circle the wagons mentality with respect to their hardware... All the way back to the Apple IIe. This will doom them again, and again, because they have learned nothing from their past. Android promises to be the next Microsoft with respect to what Gates did to Apple because it is an open platform and anyone can hop on board.

It will certainly be interesting to watch it all play out and certainly the consumers (you and I) will benefit.
 
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This thread cracks me up. A lot of people are just reitterating the ops point. Some people like to fly under the radar and not use the "popular" phone. However, I think it will be funny to see what a lot of these people do when android overtakes the iphone os and is the "popular" choice. For a long time the uncommon choice was a mac, but in the ipod/phone segment, apple has taken over the most common devices category.

The reality is that the iPhone is a Great product. The Droid(as an example) is a great product. One is a little easier to use and more polished. The other is far more customizable and does different things that the iphone can't. The reality is that it comes back down to the age old "different strokes for different folks." My wife and I are getting new phones. I'm getting her an iPhone, and I'm hopefully getting an Android phone(if they ever come out on AT&T).

I know that my wife will be able to easily use an iPhone out of the box and she'd love it because she would never know what she was missing. If I got her an android phone, I would have to help her with a lot of things.

Again, this doesn't have to be one thing vs the other. The iPhone pressure will continue to make Android better, and the Android pressure will continue to make the iPhone better. It's a win win for the consumer...US.
 
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i think when android gets some cooler handsets things will start to take off, it needs some celebrity endorsement. at the moment it's just for tech heads. the key to iphones sucess however, is seamless integration between hardware and software and i cant see how android phones can ever really compete in that respect.


not that it really needs to be said, but android has already "taken off"! the first estimate for the droid was 600,000 by years end. now it's 1,000,000!!!! it's not as huge as the iphone, but a mill isn't chump change. the biggest reason that the #s aren't even larger is that you have so many android devices to choose from on different carriers. there are 2 iphones, and they are essentially the same. i wish that they didn't come out with 2 droids at the same freakin time. oh well .... i love the update, by the way. my droid is much smoother.
 
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i think when android gets some cooler handsets things will start to take off, it needs some celebrity endorsement. at the moment it's just for tech heads. the key to iphones sucess however, is seamless integration between hardware and software and i cant see how android phones can ever really compete in that respect.


also, the celeb endorsement thing .... i'm sure you've seen the commercials. there's like 10 big name celebs in a row passing a google phone. "if you wanna be me, be me" lame ass hippy song, but seriously. they have a few commercials with big names passing the phone.
 
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I don't see what "The Trouble with the Android is...". I think it's a matter of different strokes for different folks.

I love my phone. I love having complete control over it. I love what developers are doing with it. I love being able to scale the internal storage without having to buy a new device (which theoretically you could do with the iPhone, but you'd definitely void your warranty).

I've seen threads where a guy is using his G1 to control robotics - of course he's probably one of those old school Linux users who can read binary like it's English and makes jokes in C programming language. I read an article about defense contractors starting to develop on Android to streamline communications in the field to streamline functionality between units and even robotic hardware.

The idea that appeals to me is it's an OS that's really been around a while, and there are plenty of people out there that will make it better, even when the manufacturers/providers want to lock it down a bit. It's the small scale Linux distro that we used to brag about (or dream about) that doesn't bog down systems like Windows does, where the distros for PC's are now huge and bloated unless you compile them yourself from scratch - which is quite tedious.

I've read about the strengths of the iPhone, the only one that bugs me is, "There's an app for that", which honestly, how many of the 80,000+ apps are unique? That's definitely not a selling point for me. Neither is having to use iTunes (which I loathe - I like moving and organizing files myself). I'm not saying it's a bad product (it's actually quite a phenominal product), but like someone else pointed out, it's not the one-sized-fits-all I want. I like the options I have where I don't need to "jailbreak" to be able to install apps from external sources (which you can do easily on any android phone with or without root).

Android is definitely going mainstream, will people use it like the majority of people who lurk and post in tech forums? Probably not, will the work of the tech forums improve the OTA releases? Absolutely - They already have.
 
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Well I for one, have never liked the iPhone. To me it was always a gimmick, and coming from WinMo, Which is still by far better than the iPhone, I was actually disgusted they called the iPhone a smart phone. Now Android can learn a bit from WinMo, Like some of the things I miss from my WinMo phones are the ability to copy and paste anything, I could copy a text or email and post it on a forum, or copy an article from word and send it in an email, or copy something from my browser, and send it in a text message, or save it as a file. It did require a learning curve, but the functionality was second to none. I do believe android will come through with more updates to fix these things, I certainly hope so. They are off to a more than solid start, they just gotta keep the ball rolling and they will be the Mobile OS of choice in No time.
 
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not that it really needs to be said, but android has already "taken off"! the first estimate for the droid was 600,000 by years end. now it's 1,000,000!!!! it's not as huge as the iphone, but a mill isn't chump change. the biggest reason that the #s aren't even larger is that you have so many android devices to choose from on different carriers. there are 2 iphones, and they are essentially the same. i wish that they didn't come out with 2 droids at the same freakin time. oh well .... i love the update, by the way. my droid is much smoother.


mass appeal = appealing to the masses. not just nerds, tech heads and iphone haters.

The average consumer is interested in phones not operating systems.
 
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In my opinion the Android phone is gaining speed... and with the recent Verizon 'pick up' of Android, things just shifted into a higher gear...

Have you seen the thread in this forum of the graphic designer selling the little Android logo stickers??

I am a firefighter. 48 years young, I am "old school." I am by no means a 'geek' or 'nerdy' type.. I am a rough neck who wears a cowboy hat and goes hog hunting and rides a 50 horsepower John Deere tractor.. AND I love this Android phone.. and the people I come into contact with are saying "wow" when I 'do stuff' with it.. I bet I end up "selling" quite a few of these over the next year or so.. :)

You know where the 'mistake' was made with respect to this phone/op system and it's growth? The name: ANDROID... ?? This was a marketing mistake. The name is TOO "sci-fi" -ish.. This obstacle will be overcome I believe, but that name is responsible for some slower growth...

FC
 
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The trouble with Android is not the bugs (I'm not that bothered by them), and it's not the devices (there are so many devices, there's almost something for everybody). It's the fact that Android is just not mainstream. When the iPhone came out, Appee had a history of being user-friendly, sexy easy to use interface.
...and Google doesn't have any sort of history? I'll agree that Google isn't perceived the same way as Apple.

Android really just needs time to grow and mature and it's already doing that as we speak. I do agree that it won't be as mainstream as the iPhone but that's because the majority of the masses will prefer a device that's more appliance than Android.

What I don't get about many Android/Droid versus iPhone threads is the mentality that Android needs to overcome the iPhone. There's plenty of room in the marketplace for different options since not everyone wants the same thing. I mean, we don't all drive the same type of car, do we?

As others have stated, I fail to see the "problem" here.
 
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mass appeal = appealing to the masses. not just nerds, tech heads and iphone haters.

The average consumer is interested in phones not operating systems.

A+ for you! Why do you think verizon has been so succesful with selling there dumbphones? Teenage girls don't look past the xterior...I for one chose the droid for its internal hardware and android OS. UGLIEST electronic I've ever owned but like the old saying says its the inside that counts. I also like android because it is open source and it seams very open to customizing something like iphone will never have stock.
 
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I understand that the iphone is a great phone,but my problem is that every one and their momma has one..
Ive always wanted something a bit different,whether its a car,or haircut. or phone,or whatever.

Since the Iphone came out most the people i knew or saw buying them mostly wanted it cause it was "cool" to have one. Not because of the features or anything like that but just because everyone else had one. I even had several people tell me that...
I now see it as the douche bag phone... Its kinda like ed hardy... ooohhhh look at me i wear ed hardy,im so cool. Check out my fohawk,i dont have the balls to go all the way... lol

I love my android and would never trade it for an iphone based on features or coolness or any other reason... Fact is its a call dropper, and Apple has you by the balls and they make it a pain to use your music collection on anything other than an ipod or iphone.

I much prefer the ease of storing all my files on an external hard drive,and doing whatever i want with them.

Aside from my ranting,i do believe the iphone is a good product,and they've done a fantastic job at marketing the phone but its just not for me.
 
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Mac is "sexier" than Windows, but Windows is more mainstream than Mac. Ultimately, it is the number of available apps that determines which platform -- iPhone or Android -- will dominate the smartphone market. It is the reason why Windows trumps Mac and Linux and why PlayStation 2 trumps Xbox and GameCube. Windows and PS2 have more apps than competing products that are technologically superior.

That is also the only reason why I am somewhat reluctant to choose an Android phone over an iPhone. iPhone simply has so many more apps. It also seems that Android won't be catching up anything soon. If anything, Android is projected to fall even further behind.

Right now, Android has about 20,000 apps, and iPhone has 100,000. So Android is about 80,000 behind iPhone. By the end of 2010, Android is projected to have 150,000 apps, and Apple will have 300,000, which means Android will be 150,000 apps behind. Android will be twice as far behind as it is now.

Unless Google actively takes a role in encouraging developers to make apps for Android and to port apps from iPhone to Android, I don't see how Android will overtake iPhone.

(And the only thing that's holding me back from getting an iPhone is because it is tied to AT&T. If Apple announces that iPhone is no longer exclusive to AT&T and is available through any service provider with compatible network, I will immediately forget about Android and buy an iPhone.)
 
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Mac is "sexier" than Windows, but Windows is more mainstream than Mac. Ultimately, it is the number of available apps that determines which platform -- iPhone or Android -- will dominate the smartphone market. It is the reason why Windows trumps Mac and Linux and why PlayStation 2 trumps Xbox and GameCube. Windows and PS2 have more apps than competing products that are technologically superior.

That is also the only reason why I am somewhat reluctant to choose an Android phone over an iPhone. iPhone simply has so many more apps. It also seems that Android won't be catching up anything soon. If anything, Android is projected to fall even further behind.

Right now, Android has about 20,000 apps, and iPhone has 100,000. So Android is about 80,000 behind iPhone. By the end of 2010, Android is projected to have 150,000 apps, and Apple will have 300,000, which means Android will be 150,000 apps behind. Android will be twice as far behind as it is now.

Unless Google actively takes a role in encouraging developers to make apps for Android and to port apps from iPhone to Android, I don't see how Android will overtake iPhone.

(And the only thing that's holding me back from getting an iPhone is because it is tied to AT&T. If Apple announces that iPhone is no longer exclusive to AT&T and is available through any service provider with compatible network, I will immediately forget about Android and buy an iPhone.)
True that the iphone will have seemingly exponential growth with the app store, but will it really? How many apps can one platform have? After all, they don't run in the background as of now, they cost an arm and a leg, they aren't cross platform etc etc. There is only one Time Warner. There is only one Chipotle, and there is only one Walmart. The big businesses pushing for growth are going to enter any app market they can, so long as it's easy to develop for. That's what made the iphone such a huge success in part. Take that same logic, and apply it to Android, where even more devices running the same software exist and the big players can and will only follow suit.
 
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