| superchunk said: 2) I dont' see what the big deal is on the upgrades. I bought a Nexus. It upgrades when it upgrades. My wife's phone on 2.3 still works fine. Would she like the features I have with Android 4.0? sure, but she doesn't even know they exist and doesn't care. Mainstream people don't keep up on this stuff. Most people who upgrade their iphones do so without any knowlwedge of what's really new. 3) Siri is nice, but almost every feature already exists with commands in Google... and I think it works better personally. However, the 3rd party integration is new to Siri and exists in a relatively better way in Android. An example would be I can say "go to nba.com" and my phone will prompt me which browser I want to use, unless I set a default of course. Problem with Siri or Apple is if they provide a service, say Maps, you get no choice. The only reason it will now offer you info from fandango or others is because of deals Apple has with them. But what if I hate Fandango and want to use Harkins app only as that's the only theater I use? You can't sadly. But with Android I can. Siri's only benefit is it understand natural language better vs direct commands. But I think Android learns your voice better. However, Google has had the voice stuff since day one. 4) you're right with the static icons. They need to update to at least go with WP setup or fully available widgets like Android. I love mah widgets. |
The upgrades are a big deal to me because 2.3 is buggy as hell on my phone and I'm really fucking irritated that the phone, which was top of the line in February of 2011 (bought it launch day) received one half-assed update and then was sent to the scrapheap. That's unacceptable to me. I spend a lot of money every month on my cell phone and I expect better hardware support than that. Actually, I demand better hardware support than that. It's a deal-breaker to me. You half-ass updates, you lose my business, especially when my phone's UI regularly goes unresponsive, crashes apps several times a week, and is less stable than I expect a phone OS to be.
No way can I agree that Google Voice Commands are superior to Siri. Have you used Siri? A few months ago, I put a voice icon front and center on the phone to force myself to learn how to use it. I know a few commands but the rigid structure of the voice prompts are lost on me. I don't want to have to say "Navigate to - blah blah blah" every time or "Note to self - blah blah". It's why voice commands have always sucked. If your service requires user memorization, it's a failure. Anybody should be able to pick up a device and use it. Siri offers that. Google Voice Commands does not. The one upside of the Google service is that you can specify which apps handle certain requests. But that is greatly outweighed by Siri's one-billion-times more user friendly nature.
The sad thing is that I really like a lot of things Google is doing with ICS. I like the phone options. But after my experience with my HTC, Android is going to have to change some of its operating procedures before they get another dime of my money. One thing that is kind of amusing though are the "Apple is copying Google!" comments after this keynote. Yeah, it's not a surprise that a few features are "copied" when Google announces their OS six months before it releases on a phone and nine months before it hits the market in force. (my point is that Google really needs to stop announcing things so far out... It sucks when Sony does it, it sucks when Google does it).
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