It's a pretty phone when it works. The AT&T tech at the service center said that it was the luck of the draw with this phone -- you just keep trying until you get a good one. Based on what I've read on forums, I'd suggest that your success is the anomoly. Or rather, that you got a good one out the gate, which must happen to some people. Although, good thinking on flashing it with the European version. A friend did the same with his Galaxy tablet and got much better performance.
Incidentally, the GPS update did nothing for our phones. They persisted in showing position as about six blocks to the northwest, or six blocks to the southeast, randomly. We learned early on to download the gps tester in the store to check whether the phone would pick up satellites before leaving the premises. And we'd just keep going through boxes until we found one that would lock on. Are you sure your GPS actually works? Have you tested it? Or is your phone getting position from cell towers?
Daughter has a bionic and wife has a rhyme now, through Verizon, and are a lot happier. I dumped my personal cell entirely, going with company issued droid X.
...but I have to say, my laptop and both my work PCs still run XP, and they work fine, validating your point. And my only Windows 7 PC was upgraded for the single purpose of supporting more than 4 GB of ram (for a particular application that needed it).
But in the case of Android, we're still on the steep end of the curve. Later when Android becomes more of a commodity item, we'll be less concerned about updates. Very specifically, when we bought our first Galaxy S, it was running 2.1 with 2.2 promised "any day now". That particular update was important for Flash support, and I don't care what iOS fanbois have been taught to believe, there's still one heck of a lot of Flash content on the intertubes, and a lot of things don't work if your browser doesn't have that support. (This issue will go away but it was important at the time.)
I *do* agree that it's important not to be trapped in upgrade-itis, where no matter what version you're currently running, you're always straining to reach that next incremental update. We'll leave that behavior to the iOS fans.
I've thought quite a bit about this, and I've come to the conclusion that it's not necessarily that Apple provides a better device, but that Apple's paradigm is attractive to a certain kind of customer. One who feels more comfortable relinquishing decisions to a personality cult. For instance, I was recently told by an Apple fan that the iPhone doesn't need a replaceable battery because Apple batteries are made so much better than any other phone battery, (complete fantasy) and besides he's planning to replace it in a year anyway, so the battery only really has to last that long. As an Apple fan, I suspect you're nodding your head at that.
But you have to realize that there are people out there who buy stuff and expect it to LAST. Who continue to use their devices until they break and can not be fixed. And these people see you and your friends standing out in the rain waiting for the Apple store to open on the first day of an incrementally better product, and they think you're crazy.
And *that's* why iOS device owners have ALWAYS ranked their satisfaction higher than Droid users (if that's even true -- I'd have to check). The simple truth is that Apple tends to attract personality types who best fit into Apple's consumer paradigm, and their entire business model is exquisitely crafted to keep you there and keep you spending. There really is no mystery here.
> This is like complaining that your Vista PC is one major version behind, when it is still getting updates and is still useful.
...except that, the moment the next major release came out, I could upgrade my Vista PC to that new release. (And wanted to, as soon as humanly possible, in this particular case.) With a phone (assuming there's some reason I can't or won't root it) I am pretty much at the mercy of the vendor.
The problem I have is with the line "Note that the Galaxy S runs the same hardware as the Nexus S, which is already receiving the Android 4.0 update." It seems that not porting it to the S is a marketing decision rather than a technical one.
The problem is, the S has soured us so completely to anything Samsung that I'd rather take out my own appendix than buy an S2. And if I tried to convince my daughter (who went through 13 months of replacement hell with her S) to get an S2 *she'd* take out my appendix. With a garden trowel.
Perhaps, but how do you then explain lining up in the rain to replace a perfectly good device with a new device that only really (when you get right down to it) exhibits a new behavior?
I think it's a values kind of thing. I'm a long time open source user, will always consider the free solution (but aware of the ramifications) and incidentally, on the occasion I go through Starbucks drive-thru my order is "your largest regular coffee". My primary irritation is being stuck behind someone ordering a venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with three and a half virgin tears and grated Unicorn horn. That guy holds up the entire line. And he always wants them to check "in the back" for those trendy breakfast wraps they're always out of.
But I agree with the implied point: If Apple decided tomorrow to eliminate free apps, Apple users would just accept it. They're already used to paying boutique prices.
I did not say "all you have to do" is change vendor. It's not something one does lightly, but under extreme circumstances may be one's only option. After our sixth (!) Galaxy S failure in less than a year, we had had enough. The 2.2 update debacle simply added motivation to switch vendors.
My family does not switch out devices on a whim. We tend to research our purchases thoroughly beforehand, buy a little better than what we need, tend to favor devices and appliances that can be upgraded if necessary, and then keep those devices for a very long time, repairing them as necessary. My home computer, for instance, was purchased in 2000. I think I've replaced everything at some point, as it wore out or failed, except the floppy and the case. My monitor is a 19" glass tube from the late nineties that's just now starting to go wonky. (I might be able to fix it.)
We've had very few bad experiences -- the two I can think of this century were the Sony Grand Wega fiasco, which led to a class action lawsuit for which we received a settlement and a new TV, and the Samsung Galaxy S fiasco which has caused us to cross Samsung off our list.
It bugs the living hell out of me, the device replacement (not "upgrade" if you get a new device) mentality of which the Apple fanbois are the worst offenders. It also bugged the hell outta me that neither the vendor nor the service provider could make the Galaxy work reliably. We tried everything. For instance, on the off chance that the local wireless store got a pallet of phones that was dropped, (sounds plausible, and would explain a lot) we tried replacing it the final time from a service center on the other side of town. That one lasted a little over four months before the compass failed, and then a few days later the screen went wonky. It was just a crap phone and there's not much help for that.
...and so it's too late for us, the rumor that 4.0 will be available on the phone. The lack of timely updates was an issue, but it was not the only issue. And I'd rather gouge out my eyes than buy a Galaxy S II.
In the early days of Unix/network admin, you were one to three people to handle a whole company, and made heavy use of contract employment to fill in the gaps.
If you think it's going to be a hard sell, don't try to sell a complete management infrastructure. Start with justifying the following: (1) a lead alpha admin with some management (and interpersonal) skills. He or she won't come cheap, but will be essential. (2) an admin trainee, perhaps a lateral from some other department (an engineering technician looking to move up, for instance). The trainee will be able to handle non-emergencies so the admin can go on vacation (or get a decent night's sleep). (3) a night operator to do backups, nighttime upgrades and handle junior-level emergencies. This is more essential than you'd think. If you spend all your admin's time doing upgrades and backups, (s)he will be less likely to be available when your staff is in office.
Later you can pick up a network admin and split duties between system and network, and if the job grows big enough, a specialist who handles desktop and peripherals like printers, scanners, plotters and so forth.
What I described above is a bit too specialized, but with a small group of people you do what you can with what you have. In a pinch the system guy can handle network, the network guy should know how to reboot a box, the PC specialist should know how to do backups, and so forth.
Grow as needed. Once you reach 6 to 8 people (if you ever get that far), you'll have to start thinking about an IT manager.
As early adopters of the Galaxy S, my family lived the pain for a year and finally dumped them, paid the penalty, and changed carriers. Not only was the build quality terrible (some were dead in their box, others were delivered with bad gyros and nonfunctional gps -- I mean completely nonfunctional, not the haphazard functionality they had when they were working) but Samsung seemed grimly determined to avoid upgrades at all cost, apparently expecting users to do the iPhone thing and buy a new device yearly in order to get a new software capability contained within the incrementally newer OS.
And... ok fine. If that's the way they want to do business, there's no stopping them. But we don't have to buy their stuff.
Indications are, they're managing their tablet products the same way. Stylishly designed, but don't buy one expecting the next version of Android to ever be available. If it is, bonus. It's better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.
But better yet, buy from a vendor with a better reputation for updates.
Mind you, there will be a time when timely updates will be less important, but Android is still on the steep end of the curve, and issues are still being worked out. (I got an answer to my bug report a couple weeks ago -- proxy settings on a network-by-network basis is available as of version 3, which will probably never make it to my phone. Sigh.) In another year or two when Android becomes less of a new technology and more of a commodity item, updates may decrease in importance. But for now, it's update or lose a customer. The Android crowd isn't the same as the iOS crowd. If we don't get what we want, we don't camp outside the store to be the first to get the next device from the same vendor. We change vendors.
In all fairness, the original rumor appears false. See other articles -- Apple appears to be gearing up for the next monitor upgrade for OSX machines, not TVs as such. I'm looking forward to more photo opportunities of bright-faced religiously enthusiastic fanbois camping outside the Apple store to be one of the first to own whatever it will be called, and millions of last-year's monitors available for salvage.
But anyway. I think you got close to the overriding reasons for Apple to build what is currently "apple tv" into an actual tv, which are twofold: (1) it's easier to lock down video sources (compared to a separate Apple device), specifically to make it more inconvenient to display content from non-Apple products, and (2) it locks customers further into the yearly appliance replacement paradigm. To upgrade your Apple TV, you buy a whole 'nother TV. And life is wonderful.
As others have pointed out in responses to the base article, the cloud storage requirement and bizarre half-apple approach to SD cards (and a few other things) makes it inappropriate for many enterprise applications, which had been pretty much Microsoft's only market for previous Windows phones.
I did a lot of reading on it, watched demonstrations, and spent a half hour with one in the Verizon store when it seemed possible that my company would standardize on it. (They didn't.) I think I have an idea how it works, and being a user of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 (company phones, again) I have to say that 7 is much better. But to say it's better than, say, Android or iOS you have to accept the paradigm Windows Phone 7 uses, and it's not for me. I like having more control over my environment than that. For every platform there will be someone who likes it, and that's fine. Personally, you'll get my Droid X when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Besides, Phone 7 is going away in a few months anyway, when Windows 8 comes out.
Agreed. It's a millstone they wear willingly, and is the reason they only succeed on one platform. (Not counting Xbox, which is a different, specialized thing.)
It's more of a racial thing than an individual thing. Some individuals will inevitably be caught between rock and hard place when the habitable area moves.
Lessee, from TFA.... science science science... political debate... science questions... science again a few times... ideology and rhetoric... Science, science science.... Conservation voters -uh oh, warning sign- and there it is: Climate Change. Only took eight paragraphs to get to the author's real issue. Ok, at least we know where he's coming from.
On first part, agree completely. On second part, maybe, or maybe it'd be a three corner race, iOS, Android, WebOS. I still don't see how Windows fits in, though.
....and before someone jumps in with "well, if you have Windows on your desktop, you'll want Windows on your mobile devices too, for interoperability reasons." To which I respond: Yes yes, I've heard that argument, it's so nineties. Nobody seriously believes that anymore.
Didn't Isaac Asimov propose something like this thirty or forty years ago? I have a vague memory that there was a "year day" and "century day" that wasn't a day of the week.
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Better point.
It's a pretty phone when it works. The AT&T tech at the service center said that it was the luck of the draw with this phone -- you just keep trying until you get a good one. Based on what I've read on forums, I'd suggest that your success is the anomoly. Or rather, that you got a good one out the gate, which must happen to some people. Although, good thinking on flashing it with the European version. A friend did the same with his Galaxy tablet and got much better performance.
Incidentally, the GPS update did nothing for our phones. They persisted in showing position as about six blocks to the northwest, or six blocks to the southeast, randomly. We learned early on to download the gps tester in the store to check whether the phone would pick up satellites before leaving the premises. And we'd just keep going through boxes until we found one that would lock on. Are you sure your GPS actually works? Have you tested it? Or is your phone getting position from cell towers?
Daughter has a bionic and wife has a rhyme now, through Verizon, and are a lot happier. I dumped my personal cell entirely, going with company issued droid X.
Continuing on this thread:
But in the case of Android, we're still on the steep end of the curve. Later when Android becomes more of a commodity item, we'll be less concerned about updates. Very specifically, when we bought our first Galaxy S, it was running 2.1 with 2.2 promised "any day now". That particular update was important for Flash support, and I don't care what iOS fanbois have been taught to believe, there's still one heck of a lot of Flash content on the intertubes, and a lot of things don't work if your browser doesn't have that support. (This issue will go away but it was important at the time.)
I *do* agree that it's important not to be trapped in upgrade-itis, where no matter what version you're currently running, you're always straining to reach that next incremental update. We'll leave that behavior to the iOS fans.
I've thought quite a bit about this, and I've come to the conclusion that it's not necessarily that Apple provides a better device, but that Apple's paradigm is attractive to a certain kind of customer. One who feels more comfortable relinquishing decisions to a personality cult. For instance, I was recently told by an Apple fan that the iPhone doesn't need a replaceable battery because Apple batteries are made so much better than any other phone battery, (complete fantasy) and besides he's planning to replace it in a year anyway, so the battery only really has to last that long. As an Apple fan, I suspect you're nodding your head at that.
But you have to realize that there are people out there who buy stuff and expect it to LAST. Who continue to use their devices until they break and can not be fixed. And these people see you and your friends standing out in the rain waiting for the Apple store to open on the first day of an incrementally better product, and they think you're crazy.
And *that's* why iOS device owners have ALWAYS ranked their satisfaction higher than Droid users (if that's even true -- I'd have to check). The simple truth is that Apple tends to attract personality types who best fit into Apple's consumer paradigm, and their entire business model is exquisitely crafted to keep you there and keep you spending. There really is no mystery here.
> This is like complaining that your Vista PC is one major version behind, when it is still getting updates and is still useful.
The problem I have is with the line "Note that the Galaxy S runs the same hardware as the Nexus S, which is already receiving the Android 4.0 update." It seems that not porting it to the S is a marketing decision rather than a technical one.
The problem is, the S has soured us so completely to anything Samsung that I'd rather take out my own appendix than buy an S2. And if I tried to convince my daughter (who went through 13 months of replacement hell with her S) to get an S2 *she'd* take out my appendix. With a garden trowel.
Perhaps, but how do you then explain lining up in the rain to replace a perfectly good device with a new device that only really (when you get right down to it) exhibits a new behavior?
I think it's a values kind of thing. I'm a long time open source user, will always consider the free solution (but aware of the ramifications) and incidentally, on the occasion I go through Starbucks drive-thru my order is "your largest regular coffee". My primary irritation is being stuck behind someone ordering a venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with three and a half virgin tears and grated Unicorn horn. That guy holds up the entire line. And he always wants them to check "in the back" for those trendy breakfast wraps they're always out of.
But I agree with the implied point: If Apple decided tomorrow to eliminate free apps, Apple users would just accept it. They're already used to paying boutique prices.
I did not say "all you have to do" is change vendor. It's not something one does lightly, but under extreme circumstances may be one's only option. After our sixth (!) Galaxy S failure in less than a year, we had had enough. The 2.2 update debacle simply added motivation to switch vendors.
My family does not switch out devices on a whim. We tend to research our purchases thoroughly beforehand, buy a little better than what we need, tend to favor devices and appliances that can be upgraded if necessary, and then keep those devices for a very long time, repairing them as necessary. My home computer, for instance, was purchased in 2000. I think I've replaced everything at some point, as it wore out or failed, except the floppy and the case. My monitor is a 19" glass tube from the late nineties that's just now starting to go wonky. (I might be able to fix it.)
We've had very few bad experiences -- the two I can think of this century were the Sony Grand Wega fiasco, which led to a class action lawsuit for which we received a settlement and a new TV, and the Samsung Galaxy S fiasco which has caused us to cross Samsung off our list.
It bugs the living hell out of me, the device replacement (not "upgrade" if you get a new device) mentality of which the Apple fanbois are the worst offenders. It also bugged the hell outta me that neither the vendor nor the service provider could make the Galaxy work reliably. We tried everything. For instance, on the off chance that the local wireless store got a pallet of phones that was dropped, (sounds plausible, and would explain a lot) we tried replacing it the final time from a service center on the other side of town. That one lasted a little over four months before the compass failed, and then a few days later the screen went wonky. It was just a crap phone and there's not much help for that.
In the early days of Unix/network admin, you were one to three people to handle a whole company, and made heavy use of contract employment to fill in the gaps.
If you think it's going to be a hard sell, don't try to sell a complete management infrastructure. Start with justifying the following: (1) a lead alpha admin with some management (and interpersonal) skills. He or she won't come cheap, but will be essential. (2) an admin trainee, perhaps a lateral from some other department (an engineering technician looking to move up, for instance). The trainee will be able to handle non-emergencies so the admin can go on vacation (or get a decent night's sleep). (3) a night operator to do backups, nighttime upgrades and handle junior-level emergencies. This is more essential than you'd think. If you spend all your admin's time doing upgrades and backups, (s)he will be less likely to be available when your staff is in office.
Later you can pick up a network admin and split duties between system and network, and if the job grows big enough, a specialist who handles desktop and peripherals like printers, scanners, plotters and so forth.
What I described above is a bit too specialized, but with a small group of people you do what you can with what you have. In a pinch the system guy can handle network, the network guy should know how to reboot a box, the PC specialist should know how to do backups, and so forth.
Grow as needed. Once you reach 6 to 8 people (if you ever get that far), you'll have to start thinking about an IT manager.
As early adopters of the Galaxy S, my family lived the pain for a year and finally dumped them, paid the penalty, and changed carriers. Not only was the build quality terrible (some were dead in their box, others were delivered with bad gyros and nonfunctional gps -- I mean completely nonfunctional, not the haphazard functionality they had when they were working) but Samsung seemed grimly determined to avoid upgrades at all cost, apparently expecting users to do the iPhone thing and buy a new device yearly in order to get a new software capability contained within the incrementally newer OS.
And... ok fine. If that's the way they want to do business, there's no stopping them. But we don't have to buy their stuff.
Indications are, they're managing their tablet products the same way. Stylishly designed, but don't buy one expecting the next version of Android to ever be available. If it is, bonus. It's better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.
But better yet, buy from a vendor with a better reputation for updates.
Mind you, there will be a time when timely updates will be less important, but Android is still on the steep end of the curve, and issues are still being worked out. (I got an answer to my bug report a couple weeks ago -- proxy settings on a network-by-network basis is available as of version 3, which will probably never make it to my phone. Sigh.) In another year or two when Android becomes less of a new technology and more of a commodity item, updates may decrease in importance. But for now, it's update or lose a customer. The Android crowd isn't the same as the iOS crowd. If we don't get what we want, we don't camp outside the store to be the first to get the next device from the same vendor. We change vendors.
In all fairness, the original rumor appears false. See other articles -- Apple appears to be gearing up for the next monitor upgrade for OSX machines, not TVs as such. I'm looking forward to more photo opportunities of bright-faced religiously enthusiastic fanbois camping outside the Apple store to be one of the first to own whatever it will be called, and millions of last-year's monitors available for salvage.
But anyway. I think you got close to the overriding reasons for Apple to build what is currently "apple tv" into an actual tv, which are twofold: (1) it's easier to lock down video sources (compared to a separate Apple device), specifically to make it more inconvenient to display content from non-Apple products, and (2) it locks customers further into the yearly appliance replacement paradigm. To upgrade your Apple TV, you buy a whole 'nother TV. And life is wonderful.
As others have pointed out in responses to the base article, the cloud storage requirement and bizarre half-apple approach to SD cards (and a few other things) makes it inappropriate for many enterprise applications, which had been pretty much Microsoft's only market for previous Windows phones.
I did a lot of reading on it, watched demonstrations, and spent a half hour with one in the Verizon store when it seemed possible that my company would standardize on it. (They didn't.) I think I have an idea how it works, and being a user of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 (company phones, again) I have to say that 7 is much better. But to say it's better than, say, Android or iOS you have to accept the paradigm Windows Phone 7 uses, and it's not for me. I like having more control over my environment than that. For every platform there will be someone who likes it, and that's fine. Personally, you'll get my Droid X when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Besides, Phone 7 is going away in a few months anyway, when Windows 8 comes out.
Agreed. It's a millstone they wear willingly, and is the reason they only succeed on one platform. (Not counting Xbox, which is a different, specialized thing.)
"stupidity as a political group" Interesting... I think there might be something to that.
It's more of a racial thing than an individual thing. Some individuals will inevitably be caught between rock and hard place when the habitable area moves.
> except that Windows Phone 7 isn't Windows
Well, perhaps not, but I suspect it's a transition to Windows 8, which has a lot of the same style cues.
> Microsoft has been stuck with the Windows Empire mentality for too long---in fact since about 2001.
Really? I would have guessed 1996 or earlier.
Apparently, this guy *is* the team....
Go public and make a bazillion dollars. You're welcome. (I take donations...)
Lessee, from TFA.... science science science... political debate... science questions... science again a few times... ideology and rhetoric... Science, science science.... Conservation voters -uh oh, warning sign- and there it is: Climate Change. Only took eight paragraphs to get to the author's real issue. Ok, at least we know where he's coming from.
On first part, agree completely. On second part, maybe, or maybe it'd be a three corner race, iOS, Android, WebOS. I still don't see how Windows fits in, though.
Didn't Isaac Asimov propose something like this thirty or forty years ago? I have a vague memory that there was a "year day" and "century day" that wasn't a day of the week.