Jaded Android User Requesting Input

[bostoneagle104]

Looking for some input from the experts.

I have been an iPhone user since January 2012 (4s, now 5) and I'm considering the Nexus 5. I made the jump to iOS after rather poor experiences with the HTC EVO Shift and the Samsung Galaxy S2 (Epic Touch). I experienced frequent app crashes, soft resets and lag.

I realize Android has matured quite a bit over the last 2 years, but can anyone speak to the 3 issues I mention above? Have they been put to rest for the most part by the last few Android releases and upgraded hardware.

The Nexus 5 is very tempting, but given my past Android experience, I'm very leery. Thanks everyone!

 

[qnet]

Android has improved a great deal. I have a Moto X as my primary phone and it very smooth, probably the best Android experience to date IMO. Most phones that run 4.2.2 or later are pretty lag free. I still get the occasional app crash but not nearly as much as older versions and it's very rare, just about as rare as my Ipad, but it still happens sometime.

The experience will definitely be better than the last Android phones you used.

 

[charlee08]

I've owned a Nexus 4 for about 9 months and have experienced none of those problems.

The Nexus 4 is still arguably the smoothest phone available even though it's almost a year old.

The Nexus 5 should be the fastest android device available now that it's being released.

You shouldn't have any of those problems out of a Nexus device.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[angry english]

With the introduction of jellybean the lag disappeared and it became very smooth, the nexus 4 I had never had reboots, and only occasionally an app would crash, I'd blame the app more than the OS, for me IOS 7 took a lot from Android jellybean, for me it's no comparison, at one time IOS was king of the mobile OS but in my opinion jellybean is head and shoulders above it now and will only advance more with Kitkat, the other issue that Android had was fragmentation but kitkat looks like it's going to eradicate that also

Posted via Android Central App

 

[zkSharks]

Given the two phones your Android experience is based off of, I don't blame you for wanting to be fully informed before potentially returning to Android. Having said that, this is undoubtedly the best time to return to Android. No release is perfect, but the advances to the platform that we've seen after 4.0 have been monumental. I can say with relative certainty that if you pick up a Nexus 5, you won't be spending your time dealing with poor performance, app incompatibility or crashing, and soft resets.

Let me put it this way: up until around 4.1, I could easily pick a few highlights of the platform and Google's services to illustrate where the ecosystem is going and why it's such an exciting time to be using it. It's now much harder to do so, simply because there are too many things to go through. The upcoming improvements to Hangouts should make for a fantastic communication experience (calls, Hangouts, SMS, MMS, location sharing, and so forth all integrated). The new launcher with 4.4 and the Google Now hotwording ("OK Google") will be nice for sure. Those are just two off the top of my head.

 

[hodan]

You realize the iPhone 5s was routinely having "blue screens of death"?

Android is WAY past having the lagging and crashing issues, unless you run intensive programs on older hardware.

Fire up an HTC One and you'll see just how slow your iPhone 4s/5 is. Likely the Nexus 5 will exceed even the One in speed/smoothness.

 

[bostoneagle104]

Thanks everyone! You've helped to put my fears to rest.

Last question and it's feature related. Does Android support lock screen notifications, and if so, can lock screen notifications for emails be limited to certain contacts? Random question, I know, but it is one of the iOS features I find to be very useful.

Thanks again.

 

[zkSharks]

Thanks everyone! You've helped to put my fears to rest.

Last question and it's feature related. Does Android support lock screen notifications, and if so, can lock screen notifications for emails be limited to certain contacts? Random question, I know, but it is one of the iOS features I find to be very useful.

Thanks again.

You can access the notification shade and quick-settings if you don't have lockscreen security enabled. With security options enabled, you won't have access to them. However, in both cases, you can still add homescreen widgets to the lockscreen, such as your email inbox. You can also replace the lockscreen entirely with a third-party lockscreen replacement.

The most well-known solution for lockscreen notifications is DashClock by Roman Nurik.

 

[bostoneagle104]

Great! Thanks.

 

[mattjopete]

I have the Epic Touch, and while I never really had issues until recently (running an Alpha build of 4.2.2) My Nexus 7 was flawless after the 4.3 update.

 

[tech_head]

My Galaxy Galaxy S4 is great.
I doubt you will see any issues with a Nexus 5.
The phone is a beast.