Basically what the title asks. What smartphones do you guys have and how much do you hate them?
The reason I ask is because I've always been a bit grumpy towards smartphones because they never seem to work for very long. Software updates corrupt things and there is not always a way to get it back to what it was. There is no easy way to backup an entire phone and reload it again. With a PC you can make an image of the hard drive and restore from that image and have a PC that is 100% like it was when you left it. No such thing exists for smartphones. There is backup software from the manufacturers but they do not backup everything and do not restore it like a hard drive image would. There are so many different backup apps and they all backup different things. So if you try to use different apps together then they conflict with each other when you try to restore your data and by then it is too late.
There doesn't seem to be any easy way to completely wipe a smartphone and start fresh. To "restore" an android phone you first have to go online and search for a rom for your specific model/carrier and hope that the website you download it from is legitimate and that the rom itself isn't corrupted in some way. From there you have to flash the rom with odin which more often than not throws an error and leaves you in a boot loop scratching your head. If you are lucky enough to get through the flashing stage you will then have to format your internal storage because flashing the phone doesn't wipe the files just the OS. If you have an external SD card you have to take that out and format it seperately. Even after doing this you do not have a 100% clean phone because I always find little reminents of my old data hanging around in strange places and apps.
Apple is much further ahead in this sense because clicking the restore button wipes the phone completely clean in one step.
The repair-ability of smartphones and reliability is also another big problem for me. I realize that the average lifespan of a phone is not that long but they should still last better than they do. I also understand that many people are vicious towards their devices and they will eventually break just like anything but good repair parts are far and few between. If I order a screen on ebay, amazon, from the states, canada, or china, it very seldom works like the original. With PC's you can always get new parts that are actually made my the manufacturer. Also the lifespan of a PC can be extended well past the "average". For someone who browses the internet, watches youtube, does a little word processing, and plays freecell, they will not have a problem doing that on a 10 year old + machine. With smartphones you are lucky to get a reliable two years out of them.
As you can probably tell there is a very salty person who has been having bad experiences with their smartphones writing this. So back to the original question. What smartphones do you guys use and what are you experiences with them. Also, what are your opinions on the mentioned subjects?
I have owned:
Samsung Galaxy Rugby
- very durable
- rubbish microphone
- rubbish battery life
- rubbish storage (256meg)
- rubbish processing power
Samsung Galaxy S2
- very comfortable to handle and use
- fairly durable although the charge port was replaced 4+ times
- not bad battery life even in the cold
- not bad reception
- good storage and decent processor
- eventually crapped out and mobile data stopped working
Samsung Galaxy S4 (from China..)
- good battery
- nothing but troubles with the software
- camera is not even as good as the S2
- is now randomly crashing with black screen requiring battery reset
As you can see the S2 has been by far my favorite and most reliable phone.
What have your experiences been?
The reason I ask is because I've always been a bit grumpy towards smartphones because they never seem to work for very long. Software updates corrupt things and there is not always a way to get it back to what it was. There is no easy way to backup an entire phone and reload it again. With a PC you can make an image of the hard drive and restore from that image and have a PC that is 100% like it was when you left it. No such thing exists for smartphones. There is backup software from the manufacturers but they do not backup everything and do not restore it like a hard drive image would. There are so many different backup apps and they all backup different things. So if you try to use different apps together then they conflict with each other when you try to restore your data and by then it is too late.
There doesn't seem to be any easy way to completely wipe a smartphone and start fresh. To "restore" an android phone you first have to go online and search for a rom for your specific model/carrier and hope that the website you download it from is legitimate and that the rom itself isn't corrupted in some way. From there you have to flash the rom with odin which more often than not throws an error and leaves you in a boot loop scratching your head. If you are lucky enough to get through the flashing stage you will then have to format your internal storage because flashing the phone doesn't wipe the files just the OS. If you have an external SD card you have to take that out and format it seperately. Even after doing this you do not have a 100% clean phone because I always find little reminents of my old data hanging around in strange places and apps.
Apple is much further ahead in this sense because clicking the restore button wipes the phone completely clean in one step.
The repair-ability of smartphones and reliability is also another big problem for me. I realize that the average lifespan of a phone is not that long but they should still last better than they do. I also understand that many people are vicious towards their devices and they will eventually break just like anything but good repair parts are far and few between. If I order a screen on ebay, amazon, from the states, canada, or china, it very seldom works like the original. With PC's you can always get new parts that are actually made my the manufacturer. Also the lifespan of a PC can be extended well past the "average". For someone who browses the internet, watches youtube, does a little word processing, and plays freecell, they will not have a problem doing that on a 10 year old + machine. With smartphones you are lucky to get a reliable two years out of them.
As you can probably tell there is a very salty person who has been having bad experiences with their smartphones writing this. So back to the original question. What smartphones do you guys use and what are you experiences with them. Also, what are your opinions on the mentioned subjects?
I have owned:
Samsung Galaxy Rugby
- very durable
- rubbish microphone
- rubbish battery life
- rubbish storage (256meg)
- rubbish processing power
Samsung Galaxy S2
- very comfortable to handle and use
- fairly durable although the charge port was replaced 4+ times
- not bad battery life even in the cold
- not bad reception
- good storage and decent processor
- eventually crapped out and mobile data stopped working
Samsung Galaxy S4 (from China..)
- good battery
- nothing but troubles with the software
- camera is not even as good as the S2
- is now randomly crashing with black screen requiring battery reset
As you can see the S2 has been by far my favorite and most reliable phone.
What have your experiences been?
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