Why after trying for months I’m leaving Android behind to go back to iPhone
I tried. I really did. Back in November I started to grow tired of the constant increase in charges and taxes. While I know these taxes aren’t limited to AT&T they did seem to be applying them unfairly compared to other companions, not applying the charges to the account and instead to each line and service. While it is legal by the local governments, it’s very annoying non the less.
So I shopped around, mostly interested in the phones and data plans and knowing that I wanted Android. I settled on Sprint and the HTC Hero. It got decent reviews and was scheduled for an update in the near future.
This promise was the first chink in the Android armor. The fact that Google has no control over when and if manufacturers and carriers update their phones. HTC was supposedly working on an update to the Hero. Months passed and phones with newer versions of Android came out and the Hero suffered from bugs and slow antiquated software.
Then finally, after nearly six months of waiting, the Hero was updated. While I was thrilled to read the announcement that the update was ready, other than links from tech blogs there was no news from Sprint or HTC. It was almost as if they didn’t want Hero owners to know their was an update, and maybe with good reason. When I finally got to the site the download took 5 hours for just over 230 MB of data. Then the update and sync software failed to install properly twice and the update to the phone failed three times. After nearly a day of frustration my Hero was finally running android 2.1, even though Google had just announced that 2.2 was going to be out this summer.
I started playing with the update and was happy with it, at first. I was a bit upset that I had to start from the beginning setting up the phone. With that aside I started to notice odd little stutters. The keyboard was even less reactive. The apps took longer to open and launch. Battery life was better but it seamed to come with a slower and less responsive phone.
The other part of my decision came from the fact that I had just gotten an iPad and was longing for my phone to work as well. Everything happen so quickly and effortlessly. While I knew what the next iteration of the iPhone was going to have I didn’t long for it until I got what Android had to offer. While I consider myself a geek, I just don’t like trading so many options and sub par hardware and software for usability.
I like my phone to just work and Android never felt like it did. Maybe more powerful phones feel better but I just never feel like I can rely on it. While I’m sure not all Android phones feel as bad, I’m not feeling as adventurous about the OS and am tired of trying to make it feel more like an iPhone.
And with that, that’s what I’m doing. I’m getting the iPhone 4. I know I’ll have to go back to AT&T but I’m one of the people that will benefit from their recent price changes. I hardly use cell provided Internet since I’m mostly in wifi range. Oddly, I’ll be saving almost $40 a month going back and have an amazing phone that I’m almost drooling over. The feeling of holding a solid phone in my hands again will be amazing.
