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Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days?
janimal writes: The iPhone used to be the smartphone that "just works." Ever since the 4S days, this has been true less and less with each generation. My wife's iPhone 6 needs to be restarted several times per week for things like internet search or making calls to work. An older 5S I'm using also doesn't consistently stream to Apple TV, doesn't display song names correctly on Apple TV and third party peripherals. In short, as features increase, the iPhone's stability is decreasing. In your opinion, which smartphone brand these days is taking up the slack and delivering a fully featured smartphone that "just works"?
Agreed, the last time I restarted my 928 was because it ran out of Battery. Before the 8.2(denim) update I had some cell-radio failures every once in a while that required a restart to resolve, and camera freak-outs with failure to reinitialize auto exposure, but since the update it has "just worked" all the time, every time, Apps may crash but the system stays up, all feature work as advertised, and it's tough as nails too. I may be moving to an Icon soon, I certainly WILL NOT be getting an Android or iOS device. I admit to occasionally wishing there was the embarrassment of app support those platforms have, but then I realize I have all the time wasters I need and most of the productivity stuff I need and I don't have to deal with all the other bullshit.
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Why is an OS in 2015 allowing applications to make the whole UI unusable?
They don't, generally. They make a very solid effort for that not to happen.
Its conceivable that the kernel or watchdog is misbehaving, but more likely competition and increasing complexity has lead to:
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
I've had my 5S for close to a year now and it has never actually crashed. It's rebooted for OS updates and for a few dozen dead batteries but that's about it. I *have* had to reboot it maybe a dozen times in all due to lagging performance though when it hadn't been rebooted in weeks. My desktop computer's the same way though. Every 2-3 weeks it just needs a reboot to clean house.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If Windows Phone has anything going for it, it's stellar speed and stability. My Lumia 930 and my wife's Lumia 830 are rock solid and fast - always. If the majority of your time is spent on the basics -- phone, text, email, web, facebook, netflix, games etc - it's the best platform out there.
That said, the OP's question of "Fully Featured" and "Just Works" are pretty tough to reconcile. Most iPhones I have used or see are less stable than the Lumias -- but they can do more, through their app catalog and integration across Apple's vertical ecosystem. [Insert favorite Android model here] is going to be more capable than anything else out there, but it's been a long time since I've seen an Android distribution that didn't lose control of background tasks and require a fair amount of overhead to keep the thing functional. Windows Phones are definitely more stable and consistent over time, but they don't today have the long tail of apps that Android has or the guarantee that everyone is going to support them that Apple has.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
It has all that but it's not exposed to the average end user. You take it to Apple and say my phones not working right.
Galaxy Note 2 been going strong for about 3 years, I don't recall it ever crashing, I think I may have rebooted it a couple of times for obscure reasons - big OS update and me messing with phone. I've never noticed any slowdowns or quirkiness after time. Used lots to browse web and play games and use map apps.
Some people are jinxed I swear.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
As a long time Apple fanboy (my computers are all Macs, and I've had every iPhone ever made except for the 3G and the 6 Plus)... iOS has definitely lost any claim it had to being the king of stability. I had far fewer problems with my Moto X than I've had with the iPhone 6 I have now. It's been so bad that I'm seriously contemplating ditching this phone and getting a new Moto X. I wanted to get back into the Apple ecosystem for some convenience features, but it wears on me having to reboot the phone every day when it decides it can no longer reach the Internet. Apple has changed their focus away from software development and it very much shows. I'm still happy enough with OSX, but it's going to take a *lot* of convincing after this most recent iPhone experience to get me to come back to iOS.
Part of that is because Windows Phone allows very few background processes to run. For example try running a VoIP app like Zoiper and you will see real quick that it's not allowed to run in the background. Even apps from Microsoft like Lync don't work most of the time when you return to the start screen or some other app.
Windows Phone. Stable and gives better performance than any Android phone with twice the specs.
I can confirm. Microsoft gave me a free Windows phone. It now has Android CyanogenMod on it and it is super smooth.
Your post seems to indicate that you're turning your whole phone off & on to solve the problem. There's an easier, faster way- just cycle the wireless on & off. Procedure for those that may not yet know:
-At any iPhone screen, do a "swipe up" gesture. (Put your finger on the home button, and drag a line to the middle of the phone)
-At that pull-up menu, there are buttons to turn off & on wireless, bluetooth, etc.
And ya, what everyone else is saying. The phones are stable. It's the junk you put on them that make them unstable.