G+_John Mink Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Ok, so on a previous AAA show we had a comment about why do we upgrade every 2 years. I agree that VZW started the push long before smartphones with those flip-phones, and it's been their business model ever since. But in the smart phone era, I want to ask the commenter..what are you doing to your devices? Everything I own always feels painfully slow within a year of owning it. By the time year 2 came around all my devices are so laggy & slow that they're tripping over them-self just to show the home-screen, much less actually do things. I've had: Original Droid (sadly, this is dead. Can't get any signs of life. RIP) Droid 3 Galaxy Camera Transformer Prime (TF700T) Moto X The Moto X is only one year old, but it's already starting to get sluggish. Everything else is unusable with stock android as they can't open anything in the 4 seconds before the app times out and crashes. If I do get "lucky" and launch an app it would crash as soon as I try to do anything anyway. Eventually, a few minutes of apps crashing will cause a reboot...and I tend to just give up at this point. I've tried custom roms, which help a bit...but it's still ~3 seconds to open the list of apps from the desktop. Every. Single. Time. And that's with a static background with no widgets. And even if it was super fast, my Droid 3 would still be on Gingerbread (2.3.4) without rooting. App support just isn't here anymore for Gingerbread! So, I'd love to know how anyone finds a 2 year old smartphone usable! Is it not as slow for them (what's their trick) or do they not care (how)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Roy Hembree Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 My Droid got miserable as it approached two years, and my Thunderbolt was worse. My Galaxy S4 is still a crackerjack, though, with no signs of slow down. I'm likely to keep it for a third year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Marlon Thompson Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 I think most "normal" people upgrade on a 2 year and more cycle, I got good mileage out of my original Galaxy S (cyanogen mod built on 4.0 did the trick) it was my son's backup phone until Christmas last year where it finally gave up. The S3 also worked fine for a year and a half for me and only started giving trouble after a software update from Samsung (hmmm conspiracy theory?). I then got the Nexus 5 which my son now has (see a pattern) and it could easily go for 2 years and more, despite the battery life I still rate it as one of the best nexus phones ever. I no longer root and rom as I find the devices are lasting longer and the only thing keeping me from staying with the Nexus 6 for 2 years is y itchy trigger finger when it comes to new phones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Whelp, maybe the Moto X will be the phone to break the pattern. Course, there's always the battery-life concern... but that's a whole bother question! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jerry Ham Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 As another owner of an original Droid and then the cursed Droid 3, I agree with Doug Miller about it being slow from the day it shipped (not to mention Moto's failed promise to deliver 4.0 to it). I've since had the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and Nexus 6 - yep, my wife and I are on the non-subsidized yearly upgrade cycle - but we have kids who get the 1 year old phone (currently they have the Nexus 5) and use it for 1 year. So all of the phones DO get two years of use, but I only use it for one year. Once the kids start paying for their own they can have "new" phones... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Daniel Charles Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 I thought that there had been a previous discussion on the show about how the flash memory slows everything down as it degrades. From my experience, my old Nexus S 4G is currently used as a white noise machine and whenever I try to do anything else with it I find it slow and frustrating. My current M7 is still kicking but I've noticed some lag recently. I'm hoping the Lollipop upgrade will breathe some new life into it, but we'll see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Daniel Charles yes. I believe the problem was that Android wasn't collecting garbage in the background correctly so that eventually it hit the point where all the flash was labeled as full, so when you tried to write it would need to search for cleared flash before actually writing....though I can't remember when this was fixed. But if this is a universal problem, then it just makes me question even more who can use a phone for more than 2 years and not feel like they need a new one?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Marlon Thompson Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 John Mink it was changed in kit kat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Oh wow, that recently? Thanks Marlon Thompson! And since Kit Kat is still less than 2 years old, I still don't know how one would find a 2 year old device usable! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joseph Cappellino Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 I haven't had issues of phones lasting the two years (aside from my itchy trigger finger, just like Marlon Thompson). My OG Droid lasted me 2-1/2 years as I waited for the GNex on Verizon. That lasted me about 1-1/2 years before I ran to the Note 2. That only lasted about 6 months before I decided I needed the S4 Dev Ed. I dropped that for the N5 to switch to T-Mobile. And, since the N6 is a little too big for me, I'm sticking with my cracked N5 for a while longer. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Daniel Charles Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 After a little digging the lag on my M7 is likely due to the storage getting filled up. Time to delete some pictures, they're all backed up anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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