iOS to Android and back to iOS - the grass isn't necessarily greener

[kittychew]

I've been going through my news feeds and seeing a constant stream of stories where people shout from the mountain top that they are moving from iOS to Android. It's as if they are born again christians or they've realized that they've spent their whole life living in the Matrix. I was motivated to tell my story. I've seen tons of stories of people moving from one OS to another for all sorts of reasons, all of which normally amount to "the grass is greener". My story of leaving iOS for Android and then coming back to iOS is similar, but has a different ending. I could put in all of the usual caveats and disclaimers that I'm not a fanboy or that every OS has positives and negatives, but I'm not. I'm riddled with biases and I don't think the two OS' are equally reasonable choices, after having used them both this year.

In the beginning, there was the HTC Incredible. My first smartphone, on Verizon, which was running one of the 2.x versions of Android. I really liked my Incredible and I'm glad that I had it. Android back then was buggier than it is today. There were a daily random reboots and odd behavior, but I was new to the smartphone world and I loved it.

The Incredible suffered from an accident while being operated by a toddler (my bad). I then had a brief flirtation with blackberry, since I needed a phone and we had a spare bb. It was... blackberry. Which isn't to say that it was great for phone and email and texting, just not very much else.

In 2011, I obtained my first iPhone and I was very happy with the experience. At this point, I should state that, while I originally used my smartphones for phone, email, texting, calendaring and web browsing, I had not had a great app experience. I won't go into how much iOS changed that as an infinite number of words have been written on that subject. What I never realized before the iPhone was the day to day integration of my camera and my music and video into my life.

In January of this year, my wife's iPhone met an untimely end. I gave my wife mine and decided to buy the much ballyhooed Samsung Galaxy S3 off of a friend at work who was moving accounts to another carrier. It was a simple solution that avoided using an upgrade. I was initially drawn to the S3 by the screen size and the idea of going back to Android. Android was seriously improved with the 4.x series of the OS and I was impressed by the strides taken to improve it. At first I had some fun customizing the phone and enjoyed the larger screen, but the bugs started crawling out of Android and this device almost immediately.

First I noticed that the phone does spontaneously reboot, which is something you will see people talk about in the forums but will be swatted down by some fanatical person who says it's impossible and their device "never does that".... right. This wasn't a daily occurrence and sometimes I would only notice it after it was coming back on, but it did reboot. Then I noticed some of the buggy behavior with very simple functions like phone and internet. The S3 comes with a boat load of settings that allow you to customize the device in innumerable ways. So, each time I found an odd behavior I would have to sort it out by figuring out the settings or googling the behavior. It's nice to have so many features and it's nice to be able to customize the device, but I was left with the impression that it's mostly flash and not substance. In fact, physically, the device is not very attractive (and I'm not talking about the plastic) or robustly made. While the screen isn't bad, I noticed that the low light in certain videos led to me watching a black screen with audio.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the GPS failure on the S3. What GPS failure? The one that is impacting thousands of S3 users (check the forums), but is not making the news because neither Samsung or any of the carriers will acknowledge it exists. In summary, the GPS doesn't work on some devices after a period of time having the device. There are literally hundreds of "fixes". They include flashing ROMs, uninstalling and reinstalling the GPS and Maps and many many other approaches. The only one that worked for me, only for a short time before failing again, was to take a screwdriver and loosen and retighten the screws in the device. This leads me to believe that this is some engineering failure on the part of Samsung. Samsung is known for poorly engineered antennae, so why would GPS be different?

This was really where I started to lose faith with Android and this "Flagship" device. Why am I spending hours and hours of my life figuring out the complexity of the software and figuring out how to fix a device that was less than a year old? Why am I finding major issues with the device that are not publicly dealt with from the manufacturer or the provider? This is probably the point where I should insert that I work in software development, so I'm not some chump who can't figure out how to toggle a setting properly, or flash a ROM, if need be.

In the end, I decided it was time to put this Android idea out to pasture and bite the bullet. I re-upped my contract and bought a new iPhone. It's been a bit over a week now and I can't believe how much better the experience is on iOS. Coming back from Android simply reinforces the fluidity and the functionality that is way beyond anything that Android offers. I know that, in the interest of maintaining readers and seeming to be open minded and democratic, there are many paid reviewers who give Android and Android devices slack in their reviews. They push certain features (like cameras, widgets or screen size) as reasons for choosing Android over iOS. It's all nonsense. Look who advertises on these sites (some of the sites themselves are just advertisements - do you think these folks buy these devices themselves?).

In my real life and actual 4 month usage of Android (on one of their "flagship") phones, my experience was horrible. If that level of bad engineering and horrible software design was incorporated into an iOS device, Apple stock would be $50 a share and every story on every news site would be about the horrific Apple fail. My point here is simple, do yourself a favor and stay with iOS. It may be "stale" or "incremental" and "small", but it works much better than Android and Android devices.

Let the gnashing of teeth and tearing of flesh begin...

 

[Just_Me_D]

Welcome back...

 

[cornettbr]

You have a valid point. The s3 I also had a ton of problems with so I took it back got an iPhone 5. Then traded that for a note 2 had zero problems. Not exaggerating it was and is an amazing phone. So why am I on another iPhone 5 you ask. Boredom and no google wallet access. That is to say this phone doesn't have it's issues mainly touchscreen sensitivity IMO and no simultaneous data and calls. That's really my biggest gripes besides not having many ringtone options without purchasing.

 

[mountainman]

Steve Jobs said it best ... This is ___t

 

[androidluvr2]

Thanks for a very well written post that makes alot of valid points.

Android was seriously improved with the 4.x series of the OS and I was impressed by the strides taken to improve it.

My first Android device was the GNex, which shipped with Ice Cream Sandwich. I can't imagine using the earlier versions of Android - they had too many bugs and were too laggy.

First I noticed that the phone does spontaneously reboot, which is something you will see people talk about in the forums but will be swatted down by some fanatical person who says it's impossible and their device "never does that".... right.

I don't think that is a fair characterization of what goes on on Android Central. People complain all the time about their devices and get lots of support. You always will find someone who will say something ridiculous like, my phone doesn't do it so therefore you phone must not do it either, but I don't think those people are in the majority. Most people will try to help the person solve their problem.

Also, I think there is a HUGE difference between how iMore is moderated vs. how AC is moderated. Much more what I call aggressive posting is allowed on AC. Personally, I prefer allowing people to speak freely. You always have the option of putting someone on ignore or just scrolling past their posts. The moderators will delete spam and things they deem bigoted, which they have their own subjective standards about so you can argue with that, but they let threads go off topic and they allow people to strongly voice their opinions and I prefer that style to how this forum is run. All in all, though, every time I needed help on AC, I received it - quickly. If someone told me the problem was all in my head, I ignored them.

As for reboots, many times it is a poorly coded app causing the problem. The problem is figuring out what app it is. The fastest solution is to back-up your device and then factory reset. Restore your pictures and contacts and then restore your apps 1 by 1 until you find the culprit.

The apps on the playstore and amazon appstore aren't as reliable as the apps on the iTunes store because Google and Amazon don't exert as much control over the developers. It is much more of a caveat emptor experience buying an android app. However, android users can much more easily get access to apps that do things the carriers don't like, for instance, provide free wifi tether and the ability to mask that from the carrier on unrooted devices.

The S3 comes with a boat load of settings that allow you to customize the device in innumerable ways. So, each time I found an odd behavior I would have to sort it out by figuring out the settings or googling the behavior.

yes the ability to customize features does mean more work and more knowledge are required. But you can use these devices out of the box, too, if you don't want to customize.

Samsung is known for poorly engineered antennae, so why would GPS be different?

I can attest to radio/antennae problems with my GNex. I hope that HTC can hang in there to provide competitive pressure on Samsung to improve their radios/antennae on their Android devices.

They push certain features (like cameras, widgets or screen size) as reasons for choosing Android over iOS. It's all nonsense.

It's not all nonsense. Some people really like those features. I am one of them. Do I like the crap radio/antennae? No, but really, these customization features are enough for me to put up with Android's downsides. It is just different strokes for different folks.

it works much better than Android and Android devices.

I think this is a fair statement. However, some people will accept Android's downsides even though what you say is true because customization is that important to them. Their device is a vehicle of personal expression for them. Apple could have the best of both worlds if they would allow more customization.

 

[mulasien]

My experience is pretty much a mirror of the OP. Went from an iPhone 3G to a Galaxy S2. I fell in love with the customization and widgets of Android. Even got myself an Android tablet as well (ASUS TF300). And like the OP, I slowly but surely started to get tired of the little issues that popped up, like poor battery life due to runaway apps, app compatibility issues with different devices, and generally less stability. The S2 on AT&T suffered from a well documented 'sleep of death' issues following an update last December that would randomly not allow the phone to wake up from a sleep state, forcing a battery pull to reboot it. It took Samsung and AT&T a full 5 months to finally release another update to fix the previous update the essentially *broke* the phone.

Yeah, iOS is lacking on customization, and I'm not 100% a fan of the 'walled garden' approach. I also don't like how apps cannot talk to each other (like on Android) and share info between apps. But I get a trade off of a rock solid OS that doesn't give me a fraction of the issues I had with Android. I work in IT and like tinkering with stuff, but one can only 'tinker' with a device for the sole purpose of making it 'just work' before it starts to get really old. That, and all iOS apps work with it (no more "this app is not compatible with your device" BS), and it actually gets updated (unlike non-Nexus Android devices). I really hope that iOS 7 can start working on shoring up those weaknesses.

To be fair, the TF300 tablet wasn't nearly as bad as my phone (it's pretty nice and gets updated regularly), but by this point I had become too big a fan of iOS and got me an iPad as well.

 

[mulasien]

In other news, Google Now JUST came to iOS this morning. Aw heck yeah! That was the most attractive feature on Android 4.1+, and now it's on iOS!

 

[sting7k]

My Android experience was also very similar to that of kittychew and mulasien.

After a while you notice all the little things that just are not polished. They start to pile up and get more and more annoying.

 

[WindingBerry]

I have owned ice cream devices, windows 7 mobile devices, blackberry devices, etc. and iOS is by far the smoothest, most functional, most reliable and productive mobile os I have used. iOS apps are more polished so to speak in my opinion. I have not tried the z10 but the blackberry and the iPhone are my favorite phones simply due to their reliability and functionality. Of all the customizing available to android none of it really helps me get things done. Without exaggeration I an honestly say everyone I know with an android device has problems of all types. Just my two cents but for both personal use and business my iPhone does 99% of what I need it to do. Office plus is an amazing app which handles documents and spreadsheets with no problems and most all features available. The photos taken with an iPhone cannot be matched by any phone I have ever owned. Social integration in iOS is more than sufficient for my needs. I could go on and on but I think I've made my point as well as I'm going to.

 

[dc9super80]

Re: I'M BACK!!!

Serious question. Other than being involved in the Apple ecosystem, why exactly do you guys prefer the iPhone. I am a bit different in that I tried everything and rode the "hate Apple" bandwagon". Had a Pre, Droid 2, Incredible, until I finally bought an iPhone. I am truly a WebOS guy and the iPHone to me was the smoothest, most coherent device I ever used. It simple works. The apps are great. According to others it is stale, but I beg to differ, I find its elegant simplicity refreshing, and though a UI refresh would be welcomed, I don?t have any major complaints about the platform. I gain way more than I lose using it. Since then, I bought an iPad and a MacBook Air. Safe to say, I am comfortable and will continue being interested in new phones, I do like tech after all, but I have no intention of changing platforms. I even changed over to iCloud for Email. I only envy other platforms screen size at times.

So, you folks that were originally with Apple, but went to another platform but returned... Why?

 

[FlashFlare11]

Re: I'M BACK!!!

I find that the allure of Android-based devices is certainly found more in the hardware than anything else. Personally, I feel that the Android OEMs are incredibly concerned about getting the latest and greatest hardware into its customers' hands that the software experience is kind of lacking. Even though many OEMs (like Samsung) put a lot of time into developing their own custom UIs and features, many of them don't cover up the general (in my opinion, unappealing) feel of Android.

Apple is different, and this is what I like about the company. It doesn't care about the hardware; it's all about the experience. You'll never see Apple using cutting hardware in its products because iOS is refined so meticulously to provide the best possible experience to its users.

 

[Richard Nieves]

Re: I'M BACK!!!

Serious question. Other than being involved in the Apple ecosystem, why exactly do you guys prefer the iPhone. I am a bit different in that I tried everything and rode the "hate Apple" bandwagon". Had a Pre, Droid 2, Incredible, until I finally bought an iPhone. I am truly a WebOS guy and the iPHone to me was the smoothest, most coherent device I ever used. It simple works. The apps are great. According to others it is stale, but I beg to differ, I find its elegant simplicity refreshing, and though a UI refresh would be welcomed, I don?t have any major complaints about the platform. I gain way more than I lose using it. Since then, I bought an iPad and a MacBook Air. Safe to say, I am comfortable and will continue being interested in new phones, I do like tech after all, but I have no intention of changing platforms. I even changed over to iCloud for Email. I only envy other platforms screen size at times.

So, you folks that were originally with Apple, but went to another platform but returned... Why?

First off welcome fellow previous webos user! While this may be my first iPhone, its not my first iOS device. I had an iPod touch from late 2008 to early 2010. I got it before smartphones were really big since the iPhone had only been on AT&T. When I finally got a pre in June 2009, I loved it and the operating system. It was elegant, intuitive and innovative. It also used sleek design elements and skeuomorphism which is a hot point for apple right now. (The use of realistic designs for digital items). The only problem was the pre did not have the apps I wanted yet so I kept my iPod touch until early 2010. When palm had all those announcements about how they were going to be adding this and that and 3-d games and all that, I thought it was a good time to get rid of my iPod touch and solely rely on my phone, after all, what's the point of having a smartphone if you still have to carry around a PDA (essentially what the iPod touch is anyway). By the end of the year I felt like I could not be productive enough on the pre. The battery was horrendous and It was very leggy at times so I ended up re-purchasing the latest iPod touch. The following year after the pre 3 was announced but didn't appear to be coming to sprint, I gave up on the pre and switched to windows phone when my contract expired. I chose windows phone because it had (and still does have) the best synergy of ALL mobile platforms. As a previous webos user you cannot deny the awesomeness that was synergy. It seamlessly synced with services to unify mail, calendar, contacts and messaging, however it took it a step further. Linked in, twitter, Facebook and windows live we're all deeply integrated into the people app which wasn't just a stagnant list of contacts, it was a social hub where you could see news feeds from services, see statuses of contacts, see their Facebook photos RIGHT FROM CONTACTS as well as their history of contact with you and their newsfeed! Messenger was also unified like webos which I love and miss (though IM has slowly become less used). For me, it was the perfect transition. Once again, I sold my iPod touch, but this time replaced it with an ipad. So I rocked a windows phone and an ipad for about six months and then the webos tablet came out and almost immediately went on fire sale! I sold my ipad and bought the touchpad. I knew it wouldn't be updated but also knew a dual booting android was in the works so I figured it would have been useful regardless. The webos tablet did suffer many of the previous palm issues and eventually it went to ice cream sandwich and I never really used webos again.

I loved the features of windows phone but was not a huge fan of the design.. At all. I also didn't like the apps that were coming out. Many looked horrible (and I am not a developer but I managed to EASILY design and develop a nice nutritional monitoring app. It was a simple daily tracker with no journal or anything but I did manage to make it look professional and functional. I only stopped development because I really didn't like development enough to learn the coding necessary to add more functions and I also was NOT a great coder so when I tried to add more features the app become slow and buggy) there was also some of the same problems with webos. Many apps did not come to windows phone and would likely never come to windows phone. While windows phone had this awesome Xbox Game Center, the games never matched what were on ios or even my old pre. At that time, the maps app was also not really helpful. I rely on public transportation in a non-metropolitan city so public transportation sucks and having an app really helps. In February of 2012 I ended up buying an early upgrade (still way cheaper than buying a phone upfront) and buying what was the best phone on sprint at the time, the epic 4g touch (gs2) at first I loved the customization! Unlike webos which could have tweaks, windows phone is even harder to jailbreak than an iPhone!) however I was not a fan of pre-ice cream sandwich at all and Samsung made it worse. Whoever designed the original android had no design taste and samsungs designs to this day are probably some of the ugliest in my opinion, however it functioned well for a while. Battery wasn't as good as my previous windows phone, but neither could last me a whole day while at school. (I get horrible single on campus and the 4 hour bus ride to school leaves me bored so I use my phone for at least an hour or more of that time.)
It wasn't even a month later that I rooted my android phone. I was sick of some of the issues I kept having as well as the lack of an update to ice cream sandwich. Something wi does phone, webos and ios were all good about doing if the phone supported it.) but even after doing that there was always some issue, and battery life progressively got worse, I thought maybe rooting was the culprit or some rouge apps, so I went back to stock (which had ,at that point become updated to ics) and it was worse! Jelly bean also was now out (not for my phone of course) My phone now looked like someone merged ice cream sandwich on top of a bad gingerbread Samsung rom. Even some visual elements weren't working properly. I thought it was my fault, but researching just proved it wasn't. Even stock was slow and battery life was also bad. Even at home on wifi most of the day I could barely pass 14 hours with minimal usage and that was frustrating. On school days I would be at 30% by the time I reached school and that was with an hour of usage or so and 2 hours on standby.... I was getting extremely frustrated. My touchpad with android didn't even really release any of the usage from my phone because it had few apps that integrated with each other and tablet optimized apps were pretty scarce. Since it wasn't officially android anyway, it was buggy and laggy.

This year I gave up. I had three spare batteries and not one of them lasted me a whole day so I know one wasn't dead, I also was just sick of little bugs, having to have virus protection ect. I loved the openness of android in the beginning (especially being able to upload and download directly from a browser. It was great for downloading or uploading homework!) but I was done. I thought about just getting an s3, but I was frustrated with android. I ended up deciding to go ios, something I thought I wouldn't do again. It just worked. "Openness" just isn't that great. Those apps that might not make it through apples App Store, may be a good thing. No more apps with random notification adds, very little app crashing, no really annoying bugs or restarts or having to root to solve manufacturer problems or get an updated OS.

To the best thing about the phone is the battery.... I thought the only good battery was the one I. The razr Maxx. I know people still complain about the iPhones battery life! (And there are some ways to drain it quick and some improvements still need to be made) but wow. Still haven't had it die on me! Next semester will be the ultimate test (didn't go to the same campus this semester but school had just as bad signal, just not nearly as long of a bus ride to use the phone with) I have gone to DC for vacation, taken pictures, had it on lte which alternated between lte and 3G all day and lasted without ever dieing, I have forgotten to charge it and had it still have juice I. The morning despite five hours of usage the previous day including GPS, maps, browsing, music and various other activities. It lasted about 28 hours with that usage plus some usage the next day. Yesterday, I forgot to close out google maps so when I went to class to take an exam for 3 hours, my phone had dropped dramatically to about 64 percent in a matter of 4:30. When I got off the bus I had about 2 hours of total usage and 5:30 of total on time and was at 57% (half an hour waiting for bus and another half an hour on bus I basically used the phone most of the time.) from the time of 12:30pm until about 12:30 that night, my phone lasted on that 57 percent and still had 10% left at 1am when I put it on the charger. I should also mention that I was out almost all day (till about 7pm) looking at apartments all over town. I also had lte which would switch between 3G and lte when lte wasn't available. (Lte is new here so its not blanketed consistently) I have been in similar instances with my old phone and it would have been dead by 3. I also looked up stuff on Internet, downloaded some apps, and talked on the phone AFTER reaching that 57%. That's impressive for a small 1440 battery. Then again, the specs on the iPhone are low compared to android, but run so smooth. That's why I will not be switching back to android for a while. I got the iPhone 5 with the notion that if I didn't like it by the time my contract expires this year (bought on eBay) I will get new android phone, however if I did like it I would stick with this phone until an iPhone with a decent improvement comes out.

I also got an Ipad around the same time as my iphone and let me just say it is FAR more useful than an android tablet. Many apple apps are optimized for the tablet and even sync well between the phone and tablet. Photos also are synced with each other through iPhoto and there are some extremely useful apps. iWork apps are awesome. Literally did all my homework this semester with them. They allowed my to do all the proper formatting required I. College. IDraw is an amazing app that makes designing things on a tablet easy! I find it easier than photoshop and while it may not have all the features of photoshop, its still impressive considering how ipad was supposed to be a consumption device. There's also garage band, and many awesome and impressive mobile games. Which easily surpass the graphics of the original psp and game boy ds despite not even being a gaming machine. I use my ipad significantly more than my touchpad. It also lasts a long time without being charged.

almost two years ago I thought I was done with ios, but now I don't know if I will leave it anytime in the near future. It's simple, and just works. Apps are polished, tablet optimized, and professional. Battery lasts a day I. Any experience I have had and that's important to me!

NOTE: if you would like to drai. Your battery quickly leave a location based app in your app drawer, while apps don't really use memory much when in that drawer, location apps like google maps and other, do continually pull for. It. It's not bad if in a good signaled area, but if you are getting bad signal, not only is your phone fighting for signal (decreasing battery life) but the app is polling for GPS and Data and. Will drain the battery faster. Always make sure to close out location based apps. Other apps are fine though.

 

[revtech]

OP . . . "This leads me to believe that this is some engineering failure on the part of Samsung. Samsung is known for poorly engineered antennae, so why would GPS be different?" . . .

That's because you were holding it wrong ;-)

 

[Richard Nieves]

Re: I'M BACK!!!

I find that the allure of Android-based devices is certainly found more in the hardware than anything else. Personally, I feel that the Android OEMs are incredibly concerned about getting the latest and greatest hardware into its customers' hands that the software experience is kind of lacking. Even though many OEMs (like Samsung) put a lot of time into developing their own custom UIs and features, many of them don't cover up the general (in my opinion, unappealing) feel of Android.

Apple is different, and this is what I like about the company. It doesn't care about the hardware; it's all about the experience. You'll never see Apple using cutting hardware in its products because iOS is refined so meticulously to provide the best possible experience to its users.

I agree with this! From what I understand the iPhone 5 has similar specs to my old gs2 yet runs far smoother with less bugs. It also has a much higher resolution LCD (usually less power efficient) and a smaller battery (1440 mahI believe) yet it lasts twice as long as my old galaxy s2 with even an upgraded battery of 2000 (its originally 1800 mah) to me, that is something google needs to stress to it's manufacturers. Software optimization needs to come from both google, and manufacturers. Also, manufacturers like Samsung frustrate me. Their phones are so high spec'd yet they have so many issues. They also feel the least polished. Their skins are STILL very gingerbread/mash up oriented and while they have so many features, they just don't have the elegance of what google intends for android to have! This isn't a Samsung only problem, but they are the top dog and yet have such an unpolished product.

Personally, I think LG with the nexus 4 did good, as well as Motorola with its razr devices. Moto really gives you a solid device for what you pay. The razr M is a sleek and fast phone and only sold for 100 on contract new! The big razr offers an even more premium feel with high end materials and good specs. It also has a razr Maxx which has amazing battery life! Of course Moro isn't perfect either. Their cameras are probably the worst of all high end smartphones (if not mid range as well), and they don't have a flagship that is on all carriers. Moto also needs to work more on software optimization like most other oems of android although their software is minimal and much closer to a true google experience.

I really think android is awesome but its manufacturers keep it back, and it still needs more optimization for battery life as well as less bugs. Also, hardware needs to last longer without failure and RECIEVE UPDATES FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS! The fragmentation hurts the os, not just in updates but different standards screen resolutions ect. I also think the app ecosystem needs more regulation. i hated having random notification ads and not knowing which app caused them, also some apps are just downright crap. There isn't even close to the amount of awesome games on ios on android! The problem is manufacturers are not optimizing the OS for their hardware or using standards and the software they use is not always as helpful as it is harmful. Hopefully the new moto-google combo will finally yield a true google phone with truly optimized android on a device that is worth the 200+ price subsidized. Android IS a premium OS but without a TrueType optimized connection between its hardware and better hardware options, I personally don't think androids appeal to the non-tinkerers will last forever. I'm not saying everyone will go apple either, but who knows. Big advantage of apple? Hardware and software under the same roof, fully optimized for performance and a good experience not "high specs".

 

[abazigal]

Re: I'M BACK!!!

I really think android is awesome but its manufacturers keep it back, and it still needs more optimization for battery life as well as less bugs. Also, hardware needs to last longer without failure and RECIEVE UPDATES FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS! The fragmentation hurts the os, not just in updates but different standards screen resolutions ect. I also think the app ecosystem needs more regulation. i hated having random notification ads and not knowing which app caused them, also some apps are just downright crap. There isn't even close to the amount of awesome games on ios on android! The problem is manufacturers are not optimizing the OS for their hardware or using standards and the software they use is not always as helpful as it is harmful. Hopefully the new moto-google combo will finally yield a true google phone with truly optimized android on a device that is worth the 200+ price subsidized. Android IS a premium OS but without a TrueType optimized connection between its hardware and better hardware options, I personally don't think androids appeal to the non-tinkerers will last forever. I'm not saying everyone will go apple either, but who knows. Big advantage of apple? Hardware and software under the same roof, fully optimized for performance and a good experience not "high specs".

That only Apple is capable of optimising their hardware, software while still designing their own processors (or at least, they are the only company I know of that bothers to do so) is proof of the difficulty of such an undertaking. But make no mistake - specs matter just as much to Apple. That's why they introduce faster processors every year, just that there is no need for such gargantuan leaps.

As such, other smartphone companies likely find it easier and cheaper to just 'brute-force' their way out of the problem by stuffing their offerings chock-full of specs. Why spend all that time and money coming up with a custom processor, when I can just use stock parts? If 2gb of ram doesn't cut it, I will just add 4! A quad-core processor not enough to wow the crowd? Let's stick 2 together and call it an octa-core! It also gives them another selling point to crow about - better specs on paper, even if those don't always translate into better real-world performance.

Likewise, when you are just one seller in a sea of clones, you will want to further distinguish your own offering by further customising your Android OS, even if that custom launcher or skin or carrier bloatware just ends up slowing down the device or making it more confusing to use, or whether those new features are even practical or relevant to your everyday life (how often is it that I will need to answer an important call from my boss while eating ribs or face termination?).

I personally wouldn't blame manufacturers for this. They are just doing the best they can to make a living using the limited resources available to them.