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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"?
Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.
Windows Phones (at least the Lumias).
No, seriously. Blackberry OS 10.3 is pretty damn solid. I don't have any issues with system stuff crashing on my Q10.
I do have some apps crash, but that's the app developer's problem. Not much the OS vendor can do about that.
I initially got a Blackberry because I wanted a hardware keyboard, and couldn't find an Android with a good one. However, after using the Q10 for a while, I would hate to go back to Android even with a good keyboard - I really, really like the Hub and the way gestures work.
Blackberry's voice assistant isn't as flexible as Google's or Apple's, so that might be an issue for you. It works well within what it's designed to do, though.
Apps can be an issue. Usually for anything I want an app for there's one or two apps, probably paid, versus thirty free ones in the Google Play store. I can access the Amazon Appstore for Android (comes with the OS) and sideload Snap, which lets me use the Google Play store, but the phone lacks some Android services so a good chunk of apps don't work. The Android runtime's pretty solid, so the apps that don't need Play Services work well.
What does "just works" even mean? Do you want it to be able to reliably make phone calls without having to worry about software failing? Get a non-smart phone.
If you want a "reliable" smart phone that doesn't need reset or suffer stupid ass software failures, get one of those $50 Samsung android smart phones. They are pretty reliable because they can't do much to begin with.
If you want a top of the line, super-newest-version, can-serve-as-my-PC smart phone, you are going to have issues, just like every other computer doing complicated tasks does.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Yes.. Blaming the user for shitty software...
Iphone is pretty well gardened up.. doubt the apps are causing the shitness
Is this a joke? Paid corporate fodder?
You spew some anecdotal crap about iOS becoming less stable over time and then an almost rhetorical question about an alternative "fully featured smartphone that just works". The iPhone and Apple eco-system is the fully featured system that just works. If you're having a bad time now, don't even bother with Android -- just give up and get yourself and your wife some flip phones because the problem is the user not the OS or device.
Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.
I vote for stupid stuff. My Droid M works fine for two or three days after reboot but gradually gets slower and slower until the touch screen no longer responds.
But I don't play games, and the only games on the device are the bloatware installed by the carrier. I suspect that the device's entire problem is related to bloat.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Millions of slashdot arguments flared up in Rage at that statement :) After all, Micro$oft security problems was well established on /. to be the fault of the OS - and not what the user did....
I've never had any issues with my Galaxy S5 - but then again, I shut apps off and discard them instead of installing stuff.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
We're talking about stability here. If I compare the Apple devices I have used (iPhone 3G up to 5s) to the Android devices (various tables, and a Samsung phone we bought to replace my mother-in-law's iPhone 4), Apple still comes out ahead. I've had some hardware issues on the Apple devices, most notably the AntennaGate issue (noticable but hardly a real issue) as well as WiFi dying on an iPhone 4s (pretty uch bricking it, and just after warranty expired, of course). I have had hardware issues on Android stuff as well, mainly home buttons breaking and a battery dying because it got undercharged... the battery was replaced easily enough, but the new battery will break just the same if I leave the tablet off the charger for too long.
Software wise, iPhones have been rock solid for me, a few minor issues asides. I have not had any major issues like I experienced on the Android devices, such as the browser getting hijacked somehow (with only a couple of regular apps installed), and one Samsung phone that at some point will just reboot every few minutes, with the only fix being a factory reset.
Apple stuff still "just works". Unless it does not do out of the box what you want it to do, then chances are that you're stuffed if you picked iOS. iOS is a walled garden, but sitting here in my comfort zone I can't even see the wall, much less feel it or be bothered by it. Never even considered jailbreaking my phone. I don't like Apple or their business practices all that much, and I wish they'd open up their OS a little, but there is no way I'll switch to Android anytime soon after the decidedly poor experiences I have had with Android. But that is just personal, I know plenty of people who switched from Apple to Android and haven't looked back. Some others have returned to Apple. So perhaps it is mostly a matter of taste after all.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Actually, I'm pretty happy with the iPhone6: it just works. I'm on T-mobile, and I doubt I've had to restart it to get it to work more than 3 times since I got it in September 2014. My wife has had the same experience -- she can't recall ever having to restart it to get it to work.
Your wife's iPhone needs to be looked at. Your 5S is streaming even higher res video to another device on a WiFi network (it couldn't be the home network - nah, impossible) yet here you are, putting a trend line on something with two data points. Yeah. That's how it's done.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
In my experience many problems can be attributed to networking. Most wireless routers have crap support for device discovery. I have some WNDR3700 routers are they were constantly requiring reboots. The only solution was to install a basic OpenWRT firmware - then they were great.
So when a device can not connect to another, or freezes when communicating over the network - check your wireless network. Many problems that are realized on portable devices can actually be tracked back to other devices entirely.
You laugh, but old school rotary phones could still call for emergency help if the power went out, they didn't hang, they didn't get viruses, they didn't get firmware "upgrades" that stopped them from working properly or at all, they didn't run out of their own batteries in the middle of a long call...
For once, I'm 100% in agreement with Khyber. Smartphones in a world with modern laptops, tablets, headsets and feature phones just look like a mediocre compromise to me. About the only thing they seem to be better at than any of the numerous other devices available is letting someone check Facebook every 10 seconds without actually having to take anything out of a pocket. At least until someone updates something remotely for them and breaks that functionality, anyway...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In other words you don't know what you are talking about with regards to the merits of different smartphone OSs.
at least we can make phone calls on our dumb 'feature' phones while you guys reboot...
my old flip phone goes 7-10 days between charges (and that's a fair amount of use, not just sitting in a purse for a week)... charges from near nothing to full in 15 minutes... 'boots' in under 3 seconds (probably faster if it weren't for the carrier's animation at poweron)... has no ads... is smaller.... is more durable... is immune to 'butt dialing'... has real buttons... costs less.. both hardware and service plan.... doesn't bother me with notifications from a bazillion apps.... doesn't get slower every 3-6 months with every software update (more like.. 'what software updates?')... can't get viruses or trojans....
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.
McDonald's has always been the superior cuisine. Why else do you think it has more global market share than any other restaurant chain?
Yes.. Blaming the user for shitty software...
"Fool me once, shame you on you. Fool me 1,387,406 times, shame on me."
It's not like the fact that nearly all apps are shit is a big secret.
You're not kidding about iPhones (or rather iOS) becoming less stable.
I've got an iMac, Macbook Air, iPad Mini 2 and iPhone 6 Plus, all in daily use, and it was a godsend to me when Yosemite and iOS 8 introduced handoff and full AirDrop support. Except... it only works randomly. One minute the iPhone can see everything but nothing can see it. Then it can only see the iPad but now the iMac can see the iPhone.
I regularly need to transfer screenshots from my iPhone to my Mac and I used AirDrop for about a week, but then it stopped working and hasn't worked since.
When it first stopped working, I started using Cloud Share and uploading all the screenshots to the cloud so I could then download them on the Mac... but there's always one file missing. No matter how many screenshots I transfer, if n>1 then only n-1 turn up on the Mac.
Honestly over the past couple of months I've lost confidence in Apple. There's no point adding these great features if they don't actually work. And in my experience, Apple features that don't work never get fixed. New features seem to be more about marketing than actual usability.
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)
My smartphone fits in my pocket or purse a lot easier than my video camera.
My smartphone has GPS to help me when I get lost walking around downtown. It's hard to get back on track if you've taken a few wrong turns with just a sheet of directions. Ditto with shortcuts when I'm cycling.
You can't call 9-1-1 away from home if you don't have some sort of mobile phone - and obviously most car accidents, as well as a lot of other bad things, happen outside the home.
I can listen to the radio and my own music collection without having to drag around a separate device devoted to that - just headphones.
I don't need a watch with my smartphone. Or a calendar. Or a pen and paper for notes.
When someone sends me a text or an email, there's no "he said - she said" disputes over what was said. Try doing that with your home phone.
I don't have to drag a book along if I think I might have to wait a while somewhere.
When someone absolutely has to get hold of me no matter what, they can. Can't say that with a land line.
Example: A (rather old) neighbor had fallen and broken his hip in a nearby parking lot during a heavy snow storm. He lay there for 2 hours before someone who had decided to take the same shortcut to the store came across him. If he had replaced his land line with a cheaper mobile device, he could have phoned for help immediately. It's just luck that he didn't have to spend the night outside.
There are so many reasons to swap the land line for a smartphone - which explains why 40% of the population has one wireless phone service.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Dude, your wife's iPhone is broken. Go take it to an Apple store and get it fixed you tool.
Android was a Blackberry clone until Google saw the original iPhone and knew they had to copy the UI or be instantly obsolete. The UI thread doesn't get priority and Android as a result will never, ever stop having lag issues. The garbage collection also causes microstuttering. The OS also has the worst update system ever conceived. The technology is old and decrepit and doesn't deserve the popularity it has.
I don't have any issues with my iphone6. okay I have one issue. at work and only at work I have to turn off and then turn on the wifi to get it to connect. At home, at a dozen other places no problems. but at work i have issues.
Then again it could be an app thing. there could be one app that is crashing her phone. I know if I am at work and I try to use a wifi only app it can crash the app. but if I turn off and on the wifi it works fine. But only with my works Access Point. Any where else I don't have that issue.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I've not had any issues on my iPhone 6 Plus either. iOS 8.3 solved a lot of nagging issues, it nearly perfect now.
Microsoft or not, it is the fault of the OS if it wasn't designed to sandbox everything. I have to reboot my Galaxy every few days. I do indeed blame the OS, and no doubt the hardware isn't so robust either.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You assert you're going to be factual, and then you say an absurd thing like "twice the specs."
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.
A little less blame on the owner, and a little more blame on the carrier? How much genuine crap comes pre-installed on a carrier subsidized phone? I'm talking about genuine worthless crap, that does and gives nothing of value to the end customer, the owner who pays for the phone.
The phone is regarded by the carrier as a tool, with which to keep track of the chattel, or the sheeple. Again and again, the carriers are exposed for their overzealous data collection. And, for the most part, people aren't able to turn these "features" off, unless they are willing to invest some time in research, then risk voiding their so-called warranties.
Yeah, end users are mostly dumb clods, but the carriers are responsible for a lot of the problem.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Fact: Putting the word "fact" before your sentence does not absolve you of the need to back it up with actual evidence.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nope. I find that Cisco Enterprise Wireless Accesspoints are complete crap in regards to phones if your IT department doesn't update their firmware regularly.
Work recently ripped out all the Cisco junk and installed UniFi and all wireless problems, mobile and other went away.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No - in other words, the man knows how to live life without an electronic nanny in his pocket.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Most of the stuff you highlight can be handled by a feature phone, though, except reading books. I use my 6-year-old Android, doesn't seem to crash or need to reboot unless the battery is on empty (and shocking the battery still works pretty well after 6 years - will go 12+ hours between charges). You don't need anything fancy - what you want is something stable.
I'm really struggling with what to get next - the screen on my phone has been cracked for a couple of years now, so I should probably replace it one of these days. But now it's all these damn giant phones that don't fit in my pockets, don't have replaceable batteries - what ever happened to cell phones getting smaller?
When someone sends me a text or an email, there's no "he said - she said" disputes over what was said. Try doing that with your home phone.
If you have that problem often enough to care, you need better friends, not a better phone!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've got the HTC M8 One running Windows, and quite honestly, I don't think I've ever rebooted it
I don't respond to AC's.
I have a Moto Razr Maxx HD, now working on its 3rd year. It's been basically perfect. I reboot it perhaps once every few months, and half of those reboots are due to an OTA OS upgrade.
With it's amazing battery life, and durable, sturdy case, it's a phone that feels like a "partner" that doesn't leave me hanging and even when I'm really putting the screws to it, (EG: on trips) it's "just there" for me.
It is no longer a "flagship" phone, it's not the fastest phone, and it doesn't have the biggest/brightest screen any more, but it's still a very, very good balance for a phone that I probably won't be replacing until it actually dies.
My only honest complaint is that its bluetooth reception seems weak. I use $20 wired headphones as a result.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
My desktop computer's the same way though. Every 2-3 weeks it just needs a reboot to clean house.
My desktop computer doesn't need to be rebooted every 2-3 weeks, and no I don't run linux. Its probably your applications and not your OS that needs the reboot.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.
Blaming applications for screwing up the system is not an acceptable answer in my book. The OS should be capable of gracefully withstanding abuse from user land without freaking out. If it can't it deserves to be called out for its failure.
Your last point would be my question to the Original Poster: do you want a stable phone or a phone with lots of features? If you want an incredibly stable phone then it's easy to find and kill all of the bugs. But which is worse having buggy whizbang feature or not having whizbang feature at all? If I had to choose I would pick buggy whizbang feature. Because the only thing worse than doing something poorly is not being able to do it at all.
I worked with a company as an adviser and they refused to add whizbang because they didn't feel they could do it perfectly. Well... the outcome was that people needed whizbang and they picked buggy and slow over not-at-all. And they in my opinion picked correctly. I can tell someone that I can so that but it'll take 2 days and they might pick me. If I tell someone I can't do it at all they'll definitely pick someone else. So even if I'm slow there is still a chance I'll get the job. The end result was the product died because they refused lower their standards and compete.
This is taking place in the smartphone market. You have to have feature parity. The End. Full Stop. If you can't do what someone else is doing customers will jump ship. Android has taken over the market using this strategy and customers are generally pretty happy with the tradeoffs involved.
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.
He's using his iPhone to power the vacuum cleaner.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
The question was on a "fully featured smartphone", so basic smartphones don't fit the bill. iPhone 4S was fully featured. Mind you, the Nokia N900 had more wizzbang, but iPhone had a good balance.
Both the wife's iPhone 6 and my 5S now take several seconds to *dial a number*, which isn't explained away with the apps I have installed.
8.3 is the exception, not the rule. I'm not looking forward to the next update. What I'm looking for is a phone on which I can be excited about the next update.
I think, the problem, is you're overflowing, the comma buffer.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
My 1-year-old Android only needed a reboot after upgrading to lollipop. I suspect many people have the same experience, so we'll only hear about the ones who have problems - a self-selection process.
When someone sends me a text or an email, there's no "he said - she said" disputes over what was said. Try doing that with your home phone.
If you have that problem often enough to care, you need better friends, not a better phone!
Sorry, no can do. Friends may come and friends may go, but family is forever. Being able to scotch a problem about what was written by saying "Please read what you wrote again" is a lot better than "well, you said ..." There's a reason why we call the game "Broken Telephone." :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The phones are stable. It's the junk you put on them that make them unstable.
If an OS lets the apps make it unstable, then the OS (and phone) is bad. A well configured OS shouldn't allow instability caused by apps.
SJW n. One who posts facts.