Software vs Hardware

[anon(9099462)]

Is it time for Android manufactures to start focusing more on the software side and less on the hardware side of their devices?

Looking at how Google can do quite a bit more with just software than most phone other Android phones can with more hardware, for example camera department, seeing how other manufacturers are starting to add three, four, and even up to five cameras on their devices, should phone manufacturers in general start focusing more on the software side?

Many may argue is easier for Google to do so because of all the data it collects, but you can see how on the software side Google can give you more useful features than Samsung, LG, HTC, and even OnePlus.

The Pixel phone may be the iPhone of Android, but Android allows you to add more features to the phone and still make it more useful, but the thing that other Android manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, and OnePlus keep adding more hardware features to their phones and give in a way less software optimization and useful features on their phones it just seems those manufacturers are trying to win over consumers with more hardware.

Is it okay to say that Google supports their hardware better with the software and therefore the Pixel phone has a better balance between software and hardware?

 

[dov1978]

I wish they'd meet somewhere in the middle. Samsung and Huawei have the best hardware out there just now and both could do with a bit better software especially Huawei. Google are nailing software and new software features but their hardware is seriously lacking. Dare I say it's only Apple who are managing to do both hardware and software REALLY well.

 

[anon(9099462)]

I wish they'd meet somewhere in the middle. Samsung and Huawei have the best hardware out there just now and both could do with a bit better software especially Huawei. Google are nailing software and new software features but their hardware is seriously lacking. Dare I say it's only Apple who are managing to do both hardware and software REALLY well.

Apple does have that well managed but that's because they have their own software and hardware under their control. But I think the fact that they focus so much on security affects them in a way when it comes to adding features, which is why I think it takes them so long to introduce features to iOS that Android has had baked in for some time now.

The fact that Android has so many devices to support makes it difficult to make the software and hardware work together in a smooth and transparent fashion just like the iPhone and iOS do.

I think that on the Android side Google has that handled much better than Samsung or Huawei, those two companies may have better hardware than Google but Google's argument says that the lack of such hardware is compensated with the software and we can clearly see that with the Google Pixel 3. You don't need two cameras to take good pictures, or have portrait mode, or have the blurring effect that all other companies have with two cameras.

If Google ever brings the Pixel phone to all four carriers I'll start using the Pixel phone as my main phone but until that happens I can't move to another Android phone is because of that one reason, I feel like there's no deep connection between the hardware and the software on Android phones.

Samsung for example with the Galaxy Note phones took away what to me was perhaps the best feature the Note line had, Action Memo, where you could write down a phone number and be able to dial the phone number from Action Memo, or write down an address and look up the address in Google. Samsung instead of continue to develop AI for that feature they just took it out of software altogether.

Instead a lot of Android manufacturers started to copy the looks of the iPhone and mimicking some of the features from iOS, but yet Android phone can't last the same amount of time an iPhone can last without having some serious lagging issues, is that Google's fault for not optimizing Android as well, or is it Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc. for not optimizing their devices as good?

Android can be so much better if only the software could really balance out the scale with the hardware. I like how Google is using AI to make the software give a slightly better experience to make up for their "lack of" hardware, but I mean do they really lack that far behind in hardware? All Android phones are using the Snapdragon 845, some phones may have more RAM than others, but would 8GB, 6GB of
RAM as necessary compared to the 4GB of RAM the Pixel 3 has if the software were to be better optimized?

How come the iPhone have almost just about the same performance with less RAM, as a Samsung Galaxy for example? I love Android, because I'm able to do many other things I can only do on a jailbroken iPhone, but the lack of balance between the software and the hardware in Android is what makes me use the iPhone for the moment being.

Perhaps the closest thing to that on the Android side really is the Google Pixel, but unfortunately Verizon is the only carrier that carries the phone, not sure if I can use the new Pixel 3 on Sprint without having any setbacks in data speed. But somehow some way I just feel that the software optimization on Android can still be improved and I think now that Google is on its third generation of its own phone perhaps we may be able to see that on Android in the near future.

 

[lparsons21]

IMO there are a couple reasons that Apple has done so well with their stuff. Because they do the hardware and software there is a consistency between the two sides. Many of the things they do are because they control it all, and do so in a way that makes it attractive to their users and provides fat profits to the company.

The second is that they don’t flail around as much as Google does. Take just messaging as an example. iMessage was brought years ago and a user of the very oldest version can still message to users of every version since. Along the way they added SMS and MMS support so it could do some things with non Apple users. Meanwhile Google has had many texting apps along the way that didn’t catch on and instead of improving, they abandoned and started yet another. Just look at Hangouts. A very good start that could have been improved and expanded, but Google keeps sending mixed signals about who it wants to use it and what it could do in the future.

I came very close this year to switching to Android with either the N9 or S9, but I like being able to make and receive calls and texts on whichever device I have handy using the single phone number I have. Apple does that seamlessly.