Living with Android Lollipop/Windows Phone

At the end of 2013 I decided that my Samsung Galaxy S3’s battery life just wasn’t acceptable. On standby it would manage 16 hours, but any actual usage would flatten the battery within hours. On a typical “light use” day I would get 12 hours from it, and it certainly wasn’t a phone that I could leave the house with in the evening without a lengthy charge.

Due to these reasons I wanted to try out a Windows Phone from Nokia. I bought a second hand Nokia Lumia 610, running WP7.8.

 

I trialled this phone over the Christmas holidays, and I liked it but opening apps often took way too long (about a minute in some cases).

Reluctantly, I put my SIM back into the Galaxy S3 after my initial trial period, but I still wasn’t happy with it.

A few weeks later I decided to buy a second hand Nokia Lumia 620, as it had more RAM and ran WP8, which should iron out some of the problems that I’d experienced with the Lumia 610.

The Nokia Lumia 620 was a breath of fresh air – The battery would last several days if the phone wasn’t used much, and I could definitely get a full day from it through normal use. The interface was (and is) fast and nippy, with little lag. My Galaxy S3 used to lag a lot, and this was Samsung’s flagship back then.

I used my Lumia 620 for six months. Some apps just don’t work very well, and some websites just don’t load correctly, but I stuck with it until I got itchy fingers for a new phone.

Nokia/Microsoft were enjoying a surprise increase in sales throughout 2014 due to the popularity of the Nokia Lumia 520, but at the time this was the lowest priced handset and it was a downgrade from the Lumia 620, so I thought that I’d follow the herd and get myself a Motorola Moto G.

 

The Moto G was a fantastic phone. The screen was great, the camera wasn’t, but the battery life was fantastic compared to both the Lumia 620 and the Galaxy S3.

I happily used the Moto G until February this year until it upgraded to Android Lollipop.

There are fans of Lollipop, but I found that my user interface had suddenly needed additional swipes and double taps to perform simple functions. I hated it/

 

I was tied in heavily to the Google ecosystem, and found migrating back from Windows Phone last year to be incredibly difficult, but I hated Lollipop so much I thought that I would never go back to Android.

So I moved all of my contacts (unsuccessfully) from Google to Outlook. I lost quite a lot of contact information through this process: Outlook doesn’t recognise many of Google’s contact fields, so things like middle names are ignored, or lengthy contact names are presumed to be middle names which mean that business names end up being merged with each other – This is not acceptable. Whilst I think that I have sorted out most of my contacts now, there is some information that it lost and remains in my Google contacts, never to be synced.

 

Once again, I found myself back with Windows Phone (8.1). I even bought a Microsoft Lumia 535 so that I could use a much bigger screen than the 620.

Five months on and I’m considering trying to get to grips with Android again. I’m not being indecisive, it’s just that I keep finding usability problems with WP, which make me think that the operating system still isn’t good enough for day-to-day use.

Yesterday I discovered the biggest problem yet.

Microsoft keep pushing Windows Phone’s business credentials, but I’ve discovered a massive issue: Using the MS Outlook email client (so it should work!) I wanted to attach a MS Word document to an email that I was replying to: You can’t.

You can attach photos, but not files! What use is this?

A quick web search didn’t find too many people complaining about this. I’m assuming that there are still so few people using WP that this major problem has not really hit too many business users. However the fact remains that Microsoft’s solution is to locate the file using the MS Office app or a file manager, tap and hold the file and select “share”. You can then select email. This then attaches the file to a blank email.

Adding a file to a reply is not possible. Multiple attachments are also not possible.

 

This was so annoying, I even thought about buying a cheap Blackberry!

 

I composed myself and went through the laborious and inefficient process of attaching the file and writing a new email.

 

Last night I thought that I’d try out my Moto G again. I went through the apps and only the bare minimum are installed, yet I still struggle to have enough free memory for app updates, meaning that I spend far too much time “maintaining” my phone.

Fiddling with the Moto G made me realise that there are some things that I have been missing: I miss Google Maps (HERE Maps are ok, but nowhere near as good). The Facebook app is years ahead of Windows Phone’s basic offering. The eBay app actually works. I can access Google Play Music and store all of my music for free. I can edit my website (Mobile-networks-uk.weebly.com), as well as sync my favourite websites.

But, the Moto G is now so slow after the Lollipop update. All of the many notifications and settings now take several taps and swipes to access or clear. The camera is pathetic and once again I am faced by the prospect of Android fragmentation. A quick look at current prices for similar handsets and the really awful Samsung Galaxy Young 2, Ace 2 and Pocket Neo are all about £60, with the next price bracket around £100 for the Motorola handsets.

Microsoft have pulled a blinder by selling Lumia handsets at such a low price. You know that a cheap Lumia will perform really, really well and will actually work.

 

Faced with this choice, I am currently sticking with my Lumia 535. It works.

It has some drawbacks, but both Android and WP have drawbacks, meaning that I still need a PC to do some of my work. For me, WP is the simpler, cleaner and more efficient of the two operating systems. Top end Android devices still have their problems, so paying several hundred pounds for one doesn’t make the world a better place.

What all this has helped me to realise is that smartphones are supposedly taking over from computers, but how many websites still only really work properly on a PC browser? Smartphones have come a long way from the first Symbian smartphones that I was using nearly ten years ago, but they still don’t work as well as we believe they do.

We have become too reliant on our smartphones. We think that they do everything, but in fact they have apps and features which make us work more and actually lead to a loss in productivity.

Basic functionality should be at the top of any smartphone OS, and it’s clear that not one single OS covers all of the basics, so we are left to choose something that we feel familiar and comfortable with, rather than something which does exactly what we want.

For anyone feeling unfulfilled by their current OS, I’d recommend trying something new – It won’t be perfect, but you might like the change.

Android and Samsung Sales Slow Worldwide

Android smartphone sales are slowing across the world. CNet, amongst other sources has stated that Samsung’s profits are steadily falling and are the latest company to state that all is not well.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is not selling as well as Samsung had expected – which is worrying as this handset promised (and in many ways fulfilled those promises) to be a true upgrade and a superior rival to the other top-end flagship phones out there.

Why has the Galaxy S6 been selling so badly? It’s a great looking handset, and the features are second to none. I’m positive that the lack of removable battery isn’t the main problem that is holding potential customers back.

Samsung have possibly made an error by releasing the S6 and S6 Edge around the same time. Yes, the S6 Edge does cost more, but it’s also much more of a talking point and looks good.

Consumers are a fickle bunch: If you had a plain old S6, but your mate had the S6 Edge would you feel like you both have an equally great phone? Probably not.

 

Of course, demand as always outstripped supply, leading to customers waiting for weeks to pick up their pre-ordered handsets which lead to a backlog.

This never bodes well for future sales, as people quickly lose interest after the hype.

 

This supply and demand isn’t just Samsung’s problem, though – Worldwide uptake of Android phones has slowed, and is still slowing.

 

Is this a worrying sign of things to come? Maybe not, but surely the world is starting to reach a saturation point, and countries such as China are hankering after the iPhone as much, if not more than Android.

This slow down was to be expected. Marginal improvements in the flagship handsets year after year can only interest people so much.

Just have a read of the reviews for some of the more mid-priced and modest Android handsets – people are content with them and are certainly happy with them when their expensive flagship device gives up the ghost, forcing them to buy a cheaper phone to see out their expensive phone contract.

People have tried Android and love it, but when you can pick up a half decent phone with your shopping, why do you need a top end device? Moreover, why would you need to upgrade every single year?

People are holding on to their phones for longer, unless they absolutely have to have the very latest technology.

Most handset contracts are now 24 months, and this will always affect the number of customers available to upgrade. Even the networks are recommending their SIM only packages to tide customers over to the next big handset release.

 

I’ve said it before, and I will repeat it again: Android also is too fragmented as an operating system. As soon as a new version of Android is announced, everything begins to be become obsolete. It is just possible that many customers feel cheated when their top end phone arrives with the newest version of Android on board, only for it to be superseded weeks or months later because a newer version of the OS is released and their manufacturer takes many months to push out an update.

Smartphones by their very nature are crammed full of the latest technology, but the improvements in technology are only skin deep for the majority of customers: If your phone does everything that you expect it to, do you really need a faster processor?

For many people, a decent screen is a must-have feature, but even the lower quality screens are perfectly adequate for watching videos on now, and once you’re used to your phone’s screen you don’t think about it any more.

 

I love feature phones. The main reason being that these phones were, pretty much, all different. You could choose a phone by picking features which mattered to you: A decent camera, connectivity options, screen size/resolution, design, form factor, etc. all came into play.

Nowadays you choose your operating system and take it from there. Pick a screen size, cost, memory options and processor speed, camera and that’s about it.

Two years ago Samsung started to provide too much choice by producing an incredible number of handsets which were all very slight incremental upgrades over each other. You could pick up a phone in this range for as little as £50. Spend £10 more and you could get a phone that was slightly better. Add another £10, and get an every so slightly better phone, and so on.

 

The manufacturers have effectively created a situation where most people will be happy with their handsets. Add to that the budget cuts by the Government and people are less likely to want to fork out for a newer phone which is only a minor upgrade.

Does this happen with other smartphones? Blackberry users seem happy with their phones for years. iOS fanbois will want the latest iThing, but many people just want an iPhone. Windows Phone users are now almost all upgraded to WP8.1, with the promise of an upgrade to WP10 for all of these handsets.

Is it any wonder why Android sales are starting to slow?

Vectone Attempts to Claw Back Customers

Vectone Mobile UK must surely be annoying most of their customers today: Not only did they experience a network outage that lasted for several days over the weekend, their "offer" of 3GB of data is being tweeted like crazy on their @VectoneMobileUK Twitter feed.
Here are a couple of examples:
"All #Vectone customers please note. Please go bonkers this July & use our 3GB internet for all your social media updates!"
"Tweet. Chat. Upload. Stalk. With our 3GB free data, you just can’t stop! Text 3GB to 345 to activate it now!"


The worst tweet I saw stated "We understand, you’ve been missing out on communication lately. Hope you’re catching up on all those stories from friends and family!"


Honestly, you've got to ask yourself, if you are a Vectone (or Delight Mobile) customer - "Is this what I'm willing to accept from my network?'


Of course, I suspect that many customers will be requesting their PAC codes, especially since Vectone's £10/month bundle offers unlimited data: 3GB of free data to add to your already unlimited data package is a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Cheapest Ever 4G Smartphone! Well done @EE

EE have announced the UK's cheapest yet 4G smartphone - It's called the Rook and costs £49, but only £39 for existing EE customers.
Not even the 2nd generation Moto E is this cheap (to be honest, it's a bit overpriced and not widely available).
 
EE customers will have to top up by at least £10 to buy the Rook, but at under £50, this is a total bargain.
 
EE own brand handsets have always been pretty good value. I think that they learned a lot from their acquisistion of Orange with their line up of own brand smartphones such as the Orange San Fransisco.
Vodafone have also been retailing their own branded smartphones for years now, but the earlier handsets did not get good reviews at all, and whilst I think that Vodafone are now selling some much improved handsets, they aren't as reasonbly priced as EE's.
 
The Rook from EE comes (thankfully!) with Android 5.1 Lollipop on board, and has a 1GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 8GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and a 5MP camera. It will accept microSD cards up to 32GB in size. The 4" display will be acceptable (and more pocketable than many of the latest handsets).
The 1500mAh battery seems a bit on the small side, but I'm guessing that this is not a device to be watching movies on.
 
At under £50, this phone is targetted at EE's PAYG customers, and to be honest I am very, very pleased to see that EE are providing such a reasonably priced 4G device at this price point - As the UK networks continue to roll out 4G and charge customers a premium for this service, many areas of the country are still suffering from poor coverage, with patchy 2G and 3G still very prevalent.
 
I hope that the other networks take note of what EE are offering with this handset - Ok, EE's prices are not the cheapest available, but it's about time that all networks realised that 4G should be widely available to all customers, not just those who are willing and able to pay extra for the use of this part of their networks.
 
Well done to EE for retailing such a keenly-priced 4G phone!

Vectone Offer Olive Branch to Customers

Vectone have offered 3GB of free data to customers who have experienced intermittent signal problems over the last couple of days.

This seems quite fair, given that O2 has had a fair few problems recently and not compensated customers in a very proactive way.

Does this make it right? Well according to their Facebook page, there seem to be a lot of very frustrated customers who have experienced many more than two days of zero service. In many of these cases there seem to be a lot of customers who have experienced the not-so-great customer service (or lack of it) from Vectone.

Will I be taking Vectone up on their offer of 3GB of data? Not a chance. The EE network where I live and work is virtually unusable for calls, let alone data.
What annoys me is that the email that I received from them has the tagline: "For our customers, we care".
Now, I know that there are many people who love Vectone's £10 a month unlimited everything bundle, but their customer service has always left a lot to be desired.
I don't use Vectone or Delight Mobile any more for this exact problem - My number stopped accepting calls and they did nothing to help me, and it took them three whole weeks to reply to my original email. I didn't get an apology, credit, or a viable solution.
These customer reviews mirror much of what is being said on Vectone's Facebook page.

Maybe some people will hang in there for unlimited everything for £10 a month - It is after all an incredibly good deal, and easily the best value out there at the moment. But how much are you willing to pay for a service which is so poor?
If it was free, you could accept a few issues and maybe use the SIM as a backup or for data only, but for many people £10 a month is plenty to pay for your monthly mobile usage, and you don't expect there to be serious outages, except maybe a local issue on very rare occasions.

Many people want lots of data these days, but poor Vectone (and Delight Mobile) customers must be realising that being able to make and receive phone calls is vitally important, too.
The more people ditch their landlines in favour of their mobiles mean that network operators must do more to prevent problems like this from ever occurring.
Ok, Vectone say that they were upgrading their system to "ensure a better service for the future", but that doesn't mean that you can ignore your customers when you accidentally switch off the lights. It also helps if you acknowledge the problem, and not pretend that it was an intermittent problem that lasted "a couple of days".
Good customer care can save companies when they do make mistakes, and it looks like Vectone didn't do enough on this occasion.

Of course, many Vectone customers will be using the £10 unlimited everything bundle - 3GB of free data for them is a slap in the face, and I'm sure that they would much prefer a free bundle, which might even stop customers from requesting their PAC code and leaving.

My PAYG and bundle evaluation website http://mobile-networks-uk.weebly.com/ does list both Vectone and the sister company Delight Mobile as being good value; but aren't you willing to pay more for reliability and good customer service?

Samsung Abandons Older Flagships

@SamsungUK has announced via Twitter that their former flagships, the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 (both from 2012) will not be updated to android Lollipop.

This is not unexpected, but it is disappointing.

Only a year ago, Samsung announced that they would in fact be providing an update to the Samsung Galaxy S3 to bring it in line with Google’s most up to date version of the popular operating system.

It’s only a few short months ago that I still had my Galaxy S3 sitting in a desk drawer, before I decided to sell it online. I did consider holding onto it, with an update to Lollipop pending, but I was happy with my Motorola Moto G – which has far superior battery life and is already up to date.

 

From a bargain hunter’s point of view, the Galaxy S3 is still a great phone three years since it represented the pinnacle of Samsung’s smartphone line-up. It is still relatively up to date and packs some good hardware. Three years down the line and it is still much more future-proof than the Galaxy S2 was even two years after its launch.

Is a second hand Galaxy S3 or Galaxy Note 2 still a good buy? The S3 definitely still is: You could pick a decent one up second hand for about £100 (some retailers are still selling the Galaxy S3 Mini which is priced maybe £20 cheaper, if you shop around).

The S3 features a removable/replaceable battery, which means that even in the unlikely event that the second hand handset that you buy still packs the original battery, you can buy a brand new replacement and get the best battery life from your phone.

The Galaxy Note 2 is not quite so good a deal second hand – We are now in the age of the phablet, and there is now a lot of choice around at varying price points. You could get something better for the price.

 

It’s annoying that handset manufacturers drop support for older devices like this. It’s obvious that they do this to encourage customers to spend money on the latest tech, but owning a slightly older device shouldn’t leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth when manufacturers try to force you to buy the latest flagship, especially as the Galaxy S3 was still being sold by some retailers last year.

Ok, there are plenty of handsets still running Android KitKat, and there are loads of retailers still selling KitKat devices which are very unlikely to ever be updated. This is particularly problematic for people who buy budget Android devices: You can pretty much guarantee that these will never see an update, especially if they are locked to a network, as the network’s own software might conflict with a “new” operating system.

 

Where Samsung have gone wrong (and they are not alone in this), is that they are failing to provide continued support for their ex-flagship devices. If you buy a £50 phone, you don’t mind so much if you get a good couple of years’ use from it. It will still probably work and look ok, if you have taken care of it, but for £50 it’s acceptable to think that you will be stranded with an older version of the operating system.

When you buy a flagship device, you expect the best quality from the handset – And that should also include the best support from the manufacturer.

It is not ok for manufacturers to say that they will not support their older flagship devices. Yes, there has to be a cut-off at some point, and three years in the tech world is a long time, but when manufacturers add features and chipsets that can handle updates, they should continue to provide this support, especially when customers may have bought these devices – brand new – as little as one year ago.

I’m not saying that every manufacturer or handset should be updated for as long as possible, but flagship devices now cost upwards of £600, and the hardware that they contain has features that is yet to be realised within the market – These handsets are definitely not redundant after two years.

Manufacturers shouldn’t say that this will hurt sales – There are enough mugs in the UK who want the very latest flagship, even though they have owned their flagship device for less than a year and are willing to shell out hundreds to buy out their own contract.

 

In some ways, it’s the fault of the network operators – They sell the latest devices and accept pre-orders for phones well before they are available. Many customers want something that they can’t have, yet almost all handset contracts are now 24 months. Anyone on one of these contracts will know what it feels like to want something different after a year. Your flagship device becomes “old” after the next flagship is released, and it becomes “very old” after the next flagship device hits the shelves.

- These ex-flagship devices should not become “old”! They still have better technology than most other handsets available, and the manufacturers should be willing to provide ongoing support.

 

This is mainly an Android problem.

iOS is very much hardware-dependent, and a five year old iPhone is pretty outdated (and most likely worn out anyway).

Nokia/Microsoft almost went down this route with Windows Phone 7: These phones reached v7.8, but were not to be upgraded to WP8 – Now all Windows Phone 8.1 devices are to receive an update to Windows 10, which is excellent news for customers.

Google keep on releasing yet another version of Android. From a security point of view, you really do need the latest version to be as secure as you can be on your mobile device. If Google just let things be for a while, the world would have enough time to catch up and we wouldn’t get this fragmentation and manufacturers wouldn’t feel the need to abandon older flagship devices.

 

What really irks me is the way in which manufacturers announce their latest flagship handsets, and state that they will run the latest version of the OS.

When these flagship devices are eventually made available, the OS is already out of date, but some promise that an update will be rolled out eventually. In many cases, this is up to a year later – when yet another version of the OS is already on the horizon.

 

This is one of the main reasons that I have largely given up on the Android operating system. I can’t stand the fragmentation and the false hope that my device will ever receive an update.

If I pay a lot of money for something that is supposed to represent great quality, I want it to last, and that includes the software.

New Week

What a week to begin a new blog! It's almost like the industry decided to go on their summer holidays and leave me with nothing to comment on.

Hopefully this next week will be more dynamic. It's a sad state of affairs when the most exciting news for bargain mobile users is the launch of Post Office Mobile - I'd never expect "The Post Office" and exciting to fit into the same sentence, but on this occasion they have created a new MVNO on the EE network whose monthly bundles really are very, very good value, depending on what you need.
Their £5/month bundle is exceptional value, and the best currently available at the moment.
£5 gets you 250 minutes, 3000 texts and 500MB of data - Most networks would charge you at least £10 a month for this package, yet this isn't even a SIM only contract.
Some other MVNOs come close to this, but don't match the data, minutes and/or texts, so to discover a new MVNO that does offer such great value is quite a result.

The next few weeks should also be interesting, with the UK launch of FreedomPop and Three's #makeitright promotion. The UK PAYG market is shaping up to be interesting at last, and I'm here to analyse it.