why do you choose android?

[RavenSword]

What is it about android that speaks to you as opposed to, say, iOS or windows phone? Is it rooting? Customization? Keyboards? Widgets?

I know for me personally I like the keyboard options and audio playback widgets. And I like the way apps can interact with each other.

But since I don't root, ROM, or flash, I wonder if I'm getting the most out of my experience with android and might be better served somewhere else.

 

[Paul627g]

I think you hit on many of the common reasons people like Android. They like freedom of customization. Those who are more in tune with the techy side of OS's and smartphones today also appreciate the fact that Android is open source and it invites developers to utilize this open source platform to create and expand Android and the user end experience to levels not found on other platforms like iOS or Windows.

Rooting and custom ROMs are still cool but I think are slowly losing interest to many as the stock Android experience is now offering more of the custom experience that many used to seek by rooting and custom ROMs. It took some time but I think Google finally looked at what was offered by the custom ROM developers and have slowly incorporated that into stock Android today. We can now disable apps, hide the bloat within the stock and 3rd party launchers and the OEM based UI's/skins now offer so much customization beyond vanilla Android.

Last and probably the most " on the bubble " discussion of Android is the amount of options available. By that I mean the flood of phones/tablets available. Sure it can be overwhelming but there is so much options out there from device sizes, to displays, memories and carrier "branded" options that you will find something fits your taste and usage better over other platforms and their fewer options available.

 

[RavenSword]

I think you hit on many of the common reasons people like Android. They like freedom of customization. Those who are more in tune with the techy side of OS's and smartphones today also appreciate the fact that Android is open source and it invites developers to utilize this open source platform to create and expand Android and the user end experience to levels not found on other platforms like iOS or Windows.

Rooting and custom ROMs are still cool but I think are slowly losing interest to many as the stock Android experience is now offering more of the custom experience that many used to seek by rooting and custom ROMs. It took some time but I think Google finally looked at what was offered by the custom ROM developers and have slowly incorporated that into stock Android today. We can now disable apps, hide the bloat within the stock and 3rd party launchers and the OEM based UI's/skins now offer so much customization beyond vanilla Android.

Last and probably the most " on the bubble " discussion of Android is the amount of options available. By that I mean the flood of phones/tablets available. Sure it can be overwhelming but there is so much options out there from device sizes, to displays, memories and carrier "branded" options that you will find something fits your taste and usage better over other platforms and their fewer options available.

Yeah. I just never had interest in rooting or roming because I just wanted to use the phone and enjoy it. And I'd be nervous messing around in the phone like that.

 

[Haalcyon]

I like the flexibility to customize my device. I like being able to choose a different launcher, keyboard, font, number of home-screens, different handsets, widgets, live wallpaper, granularity of settings, etc., etc. Android offers so much flexibility that I personally think you may be missing out if you own an Android handset and choose not to bend it to your will.

Sony XTZ

 

[RavenSword]

I like the flexibility to customize my device. I like being able to choose a different launcher, keyboard, font, number of home-screens, different handsets, widgets, live wallpaper, granularity of settings, etc., etc. Android offers so much flexibility that I personally think you may be missing out if you own an Android handset and choose not to bend it to your will.

Sony XTZ

Bend it to your will as in rooting it? Or just the built in customizations?

 

[Google_Superuser]

Google offers a more robust set of cloud services. I use all of them which means I might as well use the OS that's designed to work with that. As a bonus I get a more customizable phone with more imaginative concepts. Example: I just started using Aviate Launcher. It completely changes my home screen based on where I am automatically. Nothing like that really exists on other phones. Additionally I have the best hardware to choose from. I really like my S4 GPE with it's 5 in screen and iphone would just be too small.

 

[roadkizzle]

With me, it's primarily the customization... but not visual customization because I really don't care much about what my wallpaper or icons look like and for the life of me I can't figure out why themes look better than stock.

The customization I do is in regards to making the device function efficiently for my needs. I hate how the iPhone forces you to change how you use your phone to fit their idea of what is good.

I love having my weekly calendar at a glance as a widget. I can get to anything necessary on my phone through a single swipe with SwipePad, Swype may not be the quickest method of typing, but it is the most fun and efficient I feel. I use either Dolphin or Boat browsers because I'm consistently juggling at least three open tabs.

I have a direct dial shortcut to my wife so I am always just two taps from getting ahold of her. She's really the only person I talk to on the phone.

Apart from the customization, I rely upon having access to my file explorer and being able to download and access any file type and not just the types Apple feels I should be able to work with.

I also hate holding thin slabs of metal and glass with sharp edges for long periods of time, and Android has a selection of extremely well made ergonomic phones, with the Moto X being the best in this regard, but the HTC One still fits in a human hand much better than the iPhone's do even though it is harder to use due to its size and controls seemingly designed with no regards to human factors.

 

[roadkizzle]

Oh, I should also mention, I have no urge to root and rom my Moto X, just as I didn't with my Xperia TL.

I eventually rooted and rom'ed my Atrix and did it right off the bat with my Galaxy S2, but I could never find any roms that were as stable as the stock ones, and the main reason I wanted to with the Atrix was because I always heard how fun it was and I wanted ICS so I figured why not.
I just really dislike Samsungs design decisions so I had to root my S2 right away and get rid of their crap, fix the horrible look of the screen, and enable the NFC chip they disabled for some reason.

The only real reason I use launchers right now are to get a vertical scrolling app drawer again because I hate having to sort through 6 pages of apps to find the one I need at any given point of time. I would love to use other launchers but due to my usage patterns great concepts like Splay, Action, Aviate, and others.

I don't need to root my phone to have great customization options and make my phone work for me and not the other way around.

 

[Phil Wales]

Ok I'm coming to this from a difficult position I currently own a iMac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, iPod touch and I use a mac for work. But I'm not a fanboy . I've used Macs all my professional life some 24 years or so, but only in 2010 did I have an apple product personally, since then I've built quite a collection!

But the new iPhones leave my dead, I wish they would stop messing about with finger print scanners, and 64bit chips and give the consumer what we're asking for! So I held out for the iPhone 5 was underwhelmed, held for the iPhone 5s, but had already made my mind up that I would probably go Android unless the new iPhone came out with something spectacular..... It didn't.

So what do I like about android, well widgets.. I love them, fancy clocks yep they're great, hell even a weather widget, I'll take that too! So I've ordered a Z1, will install nova launcher, and probably swype keyboard and give that a try, these will by my first 2 installs....from there who knows, apparently camera 360 will work with the QX10 lens so will get that too.

The move has been pretty painless, I already used gmail and google is my search engine of choice, will use chrome on the phone as my browser, and maybe on on iMac and ditch safari. I've synced ical with google calendar and sent all my music up to the cloud along with all my contacts. So just waiting for the phone. Must say you guys are making it pretty painless with this excellent site and really useful help, tips and ideas.

Sorry guys quick question, what's the app that gives you the side loading app try thing, the one you pull from the side of the screen and shows your top 10 apps etc?

Thanks in advance

 

[RavenSword]

Anyone else feel like they need to baby their phones, though? Like, on android I feel I need to constantly worry that some random app is doing something stupid and sucking down battery and data.

I don't want to manage my phone, I want it to work for me, not the other way around.

 

[Google_Superuser]

I wouldn't worry so much about those kind of things unless your battery is dying in a few hours or you are hitting your data cap. The problem is Android gives a lot of information and charts and graphs on data and battery life so it tends to make you want to micromanage everything.

 

[Paul627g]

Anyone else feel like they need to baby their phones, though? Like, on android I feel I need to constantly worry that some random app is doing something stupid and sucking down battery and data.

I don't want to manage my phone, I want it to work for me, not the other way around.

No I can't say I've ever felt like I had to babysit my phone. I don't install many 3rd party apps and my device always seems to treat me well.

I think any device, any platform if you install more and more stuff and have tons going on in the background you will feel the need to watch over things or see what all its doing. That is exactly where the trouble comes in just like a computer, more garbage more trouble.



Sent from my HTCONE using AC Forums mobile app

 

[Oofa]

I like Android simply because there are so many phones to choose from. I use iPhone and BlackBerry along with Android but they limit me to a few phones to choose from. Android has many choices that the others do not have. There is nothing about the system itself that I'm crazy about since it seems to be shaky and not quite as stable as iOS. Yes, there are a lot of apps for Android but it seems that way too many of them are pretty badly developed and it looks like just anyone and their mother can put an app out there for Android.

 

[Haalcyon]

Bend it to your will as in rooting it? Or just the built in customizations?

...just the built in customizations.

Sony XTZ

 

[John Doe40]

Mainly customizations (especially visual ones) and the freedom of running many apps which Apple or MS would never approve. I like having choices even if I may not use some of them. Too bad Microsoft does not believe in giving any choice to their customers...

 

[roadkizzle]

Anyone else feel like they need to baby their phones, though? Like, on android I feel I need to constantly worry that some random app is doing something stupid and sucking down battery and data.

I don't want to manage my phone, I want it to work for me, not the other way around.

I really don't worry about it. I try to keep an eye out for the first couple of weeks just to make sure nothing's wrong with the phone but then I just forget about it.

The detailed information Android provides is great because it gives tools to diagnose when issues are occurring, but users normally actually cause more harm than benefit when trying to micro manage the phone for battery or performance reasons.

The best advice is just to get a benchmark of how the phone performs and then only check into it if things really go out of control.

I really think you are kidding yourself if you think that iPhone and the other smartphone OS's don't go out of control and run down the batteries. I have many friends and coworkers who are having regular troubles with their iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S batteries.

 

[dakeb]

Phil Wales: Multi window, it's built into android. You enable it through settings/display. I don't use it because the little tab gets in the way.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[roadkizzle]

Phil Wales: Multi window, it's built into android. You enable it through settings/display. I don't use it because the little tab gets in the way.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

Actually, that's only built in by Samsung and not a general Android setting.

In truth, for me that would be the only positive thing the Galaxy S4 would have going for it.

But, I find there are enough floating apps around in the Play Store that mitigate the loss for me.

 

[Aaronhunt]

we choose android because it have better feature. The android phone have
expandable storage, it have built in navigation, it have more hardware choices, it have no restriction on the application you install, it have high end android phone tend to impliment hardware first, it have customizable home screen, it have perfect interaction with google application, it have more choices for default application for web brousing, emails etc, android phone do multitasking in better way, android do interaction with social networking and other online services

 

[Haalcyon]

we choose android because it have better feature. The android phone have
expandable storage, it have built in navigation, it have more hardware choices, it have no restriction on the application you install, it have high end android phone tend to impliment hardware first, it have customizable home screen, it have perfect interaction with google application, it have more choices for default application for web brousing, emails etc, android phone do multitasking in better way, android do interaction with social networking and other online services

Basically. It have....


S IV