Ive spent the last six months jumping between Android phones. The Galaxy Nexus. The HTC One X. Even went back to my old Droid X for a weekend because I was curious if Id missed something. I haven't found one that doesn't make me want to throw it across the room by the end of the day.
And this frustrates me because Android is supposed to be the open alternative. The choice platform. The thing that's not locked down by Apple. But somewhere between the Honeycomb disaster, Ice Cream Sandwich's half-baked implementation, and the way every manufacturer seems determined to shove their own skin on top of it, Android feels less like freedom and more like chaos.
Here's the thing: the Nexus phones are supposed to be pure Android, right? Clean, untouched by manufacturer bloat. That's the pitch. So I picked up the Galaxy Nexus a few months back thinking I'd finally found the answer. And at first, it was nice. The 4.65-inch screen was gorgeous. Fast processor. Google's own vision for Android without any garbage from Samsung.
But then I tried to do actual work on it.
Opening ten apps throughout a day? Fine. But the moment youre actually using your phone as a device instead of just poking at it to check email, things fall apart. Battery dies in eight hours with moderate use. The screen's gorgeous until you go outside and suddenly you're staring at a mirror. And multitasking is a joke. iOS does this so much better and I hate admitting that because, frankly, Im tired of Apple's walled garden. But when you press the home button and then come back, everything's still there doing what it was doing. On Android, I come back and the thing has reloaded half my apps because there's not enough RAM and the memory management is terrible.
The Galaxy Nexus is supposed to be the best Android experience.
Then I tried the HTC One X. HTC's Sense skin on top of Ice Cream Sandwich is actually not terrible—at least they're trying to make Android pleasant to use instead of just slapping their logo everywhere. But now I've got this whole extra layer between me and the OS, apps are running slower because they're fighting with Sense, and it feels bloated. Which defeats the entire purpose of preferring Android in the first place.
What kills me is that Android has real advantages. The notification system is objectively better than iOS. The widgets are genuinely useful. I can actually set a default app for things instead of being forced to use Safari whether I like it or not. The customization options exist if you really want them.
But none of that matters when your phone stutters opening the camera app. When you miss phone calls because notifications decide not to pop up properly. When your email app randomly crashes.
Meanwhile, my friend with an iPhone 4S just keeps using his phone without thinking about it. Sure, it's slower. Sure, I wouldn't want one. But it works. Every single time, it works.
I think the problem is that Google has this problem where they're trying to make Android good for nerds and good for normal people at the same time. And what you end up with is something that's not quite good enough for either group. The customization freaks can root and flash custom ROMs, sure, but how many regular people are actually doing that? And the regular people are just stuck with whatever mess their phone comes with.
Android's been shipping since 2008. It's had four years to get its act together. iOS is somehow, inexplicably, still the better phone OS in 2012. That shouldn't be true. And yet here we are.
Maybe when the next Nexus comes around this fall, things will be better. Maybe Ice Cream Sandwich will actually stabilize. Maybe the manufacturers will stop trying to differentiate with terrible skins and actually let Android be good.
But I'm not holding my breath. For now, I'm sticking with my aging iPhone because at least it doesn't make me angry every third time I use it.