Smartphones again, can there be one that doesn't have a Major Suckage Point? Pretty please?

Seems like a good place to resume from where I left off just that little while ago.

The LG turned out to be crap with flaky hardware. There were plenty enough comments around the Interwebs for me to know that it wasn't me, it was them. I'm avoiding that company in the future.

Replaced it with a Samsung Droid Charge, that never saw an upgrade past Android 2.3. And that didn't hit until earlier this year. Oh Android fragmentation, how I loathe thee. Especially after reading today about a serious attack vector that is only patched as of 4.3.

Verizon will never update this thing to 4.3. It can't even run the Cyanogenmod ROM which would get me to 4.3. This is because of proprietary bullshit with the radios that no Android dev has been able to reverse engineer. All this closed source nonsense in my open source is like the fly in the soup. Except that you can't pick it out.

If only there was a phone OS that didn't have a Major Suckage Point.

Android - fragmentation, closed source surprises in a platform that's touted as "open", Google's insisting I need to have a G+ account to write app reviews (no, don't have one, don't want one, won't make one), absolutely shitty customer service from some vendors like HTC (you can read tons about the grief people go through who have tried to get a repair / replacement for faulty hardware). I'm wanting to say laggy glitchy performance, but this isn't true on all Android interfaces, and is supposed to be resolved by Jelly Bean. That gets me back to fragmentation.....

iPhone - a walled garden, weird syncing madness you *have* to do with iTunes, falling behind the innovation and hardware power curves, Apples insistence that they know the absolute best thing for users and just swallow it even if you disagree, blaming users for hardware issues (you're holding it wrong), fighting users who want to root their phone (sorry, it's *my* hardware that *I* purchased, I won't have a vendor telling me what I can and cannot install on it).

Windows - another walled garden, less functionality with more restrictions, ugliness & bah Microsoft

All smartphone OS's - tying you into one ecosystem whether you like it or not (Google /Apple / Microsoft account). The desktop is trying to go that route (e.g. needing an Apple Store account to download software for your OSX machine), but it's still not as much heartache to avoid.

I've not included the potential Ubuntu phone, but Canonical is the Apple of the open source world. They also have that "we know what is best for you" mentality. More than that I can't say as I don't know much about the experience of Ubuntu on a phone.


My personal solution is going to be to replace my current phone (only 1.5 years old) with a newer Android that can run stock Android, no vendor or carrier addon crap. Even if Google doesn't roll out updates to my hardware in a timely fashion, I can throw Cyanogen or another ROM on it because it will be built on standards. At that point, I may not be 100% happy with Android, I'll still be tied into the Google ecosystem, but at least I'll have the phone that sucks the least*.





* ... for me. YMMV, get the phone that's right for you, etc etc. Phandroids, iFans and Microsofties all amuse me.