A Robotic Future
Over the years I have owned and used just about every major mobile phone operating systemvarious versions of Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, and Windows Phone. I started out on candybar phones back with a succession of Nokias (including the fabled 6310i that I refuse to sell), and the incredible Sony Ericsson K800, that still has perhaps the best camera I've ever seen in a mobile phone.
My other half has a Blackberry Curve. Five years ago it was a half-way decent phoneI know, because I had one toobut the world has moved on, and Blackberry hasn't. After soldiering on with it for the last year “out of contract”, she finally realised while at a music festival last week how poor her phone was, compared to those of friends. While they shared wonderful photos of the music festival, she fought to take or send anything at allbut kept telling herself that she still had battery life while their phones died late in the afternoon.
Something snapped in her yesterday. Over the last few months Google had disabled any of their legacy Blackberry apps and servicespreventing her from synchronising contacts, or calendar events. We tend to live by Google Calendar at home, so it became a deal breaker. Late last night we sat on the couch together with the laptop, and started looking at mobile phones.
The decision ended up being fairly straightforward; Windows Phone would have been a contender, if Google had not disabled Exchange ActiveSync last week. Having no ActiveSync option renders most new non-Android mobile devices useless if you're hoping to integrate email, contacts and calendars with your Google account. If not for that, we would probably both have switched to Windows Phone, because (for the cost) it is so much faster than it's competitors. iOS would also have been a contender, if Apple didn't charge so much for their hardware, and if the mobile phone networks didn't charge so much for iPhone SIM contracts. Doing like for like comparisons, iPhones cost about a third more than Android Phones. Blackberry was immediately discounted, because nobody expects them to still be around in 12 months time, let alone over the 2 years of a phone contract. They have done nothing in the last couple of years since releasing their new phones (which were supposed to save the company) which is a huge shame. We were left looking at Android on the basis of cost, and compatibility with everything we use. Android phones cost less to buy, and the contracts are significantly less than iOS phones, often for superior hardwarenot that hardware was really a consideration. The only real decision with Android was which handset to buywe ended up going for the Samsung Galaxy S4, purely because it's fairly new, you're not paying through the nose for the “latest, greatest”, and I've been fairly happy with the S3 over the last year or so. If money had not been a factor, the HTC M8 would have won easily.
The phone is supposed to arrive in the post on Monday, after which I expect I'll be showing her how to disable the Samsung crapware on it, and make it infinitely more useable than it will arrive out of the boxthis invariably means the following; Install the Nova launcher to get rid of any trace of TouchWiz Install the Google keyboard to get rid of the Samsung keyboard Switch on all the power saving options, and disable Google+ auto backupsFollowing all of that, I will sit back and raise my eyebrows at my other half who often proclaims that she has no need for a smart phone, and won't be installing any apps on itI bet within a week she will have Google Keep, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, WhatsApp, BBM, Evernote, Google Drive, DropBox, and all manner of Sudoku games.