Why are Android phones so unreliable?

If you read Kyle's thread it is evident that ultimately Google did not fully explain what caused the Pixel phones to get blacklisted and stop working (as of today, good news for Pixel owners, problems are solved). The title of this thread (which I created) is why are Android phones so unreliable. Not why is the hardware bad or Android software buggy, rather the user experience. Does the phone just plain work? In my view, Android phones fail this simple test with alarming frequency.

Among my friends and family I am one of the most tech savvy and plan to continue with Android despite the problems. But I do not feel confident recommending Android phones to "the regular folks" due to the risks of the devices not working for various unpredictable reasons. Certainly hope this changes in the next few years as the ecosystem matures. Google is a rich company with a ton of brilliant people (same goes for their manufacturing partners) so this is a reasonable prediction.
 
Apple has had a shitload of problems with iPhones over the years, in case you haven't been paying attention, so don't go off just dismissing them of their problems with reliability willy nilly.

I could drop a link to the rather hilarious and now infamous iPhone 4 introduction done by Steve Jobs himself where he almost blew a human gasket because the iPhone 4 demo models he was using were utter shit while he was trying to show how insanely great they were but instead showed how insanely stupid the engineers were when they designed the antennas as part of the metal band on the phone itself. In the same auditorium, with hundreds of people connected to the cell towers and using the Wi-Fi networks inside Moscone Center, the iPhone 4 just didn't work worth a damn in one hand while the iPhone 3GS in Steve's other hand had perfect signal strength on cellular and Wi-Fi as you'd expect. And thus, "Antennagate" was born.

When Steve asked people in the audience to disconnect from the cellular and Wi-Fi networks I knew someone was gonna get fired that day - he literally turned pink for a few minutes, fuming internally but holding it the best he could till he could get off the stage for someone else to take over.

Still the funniest tech demo I've ever seen in my life and a clear cut perfect example of EPIC FAIL if I ever saw one.

Oh, and then there's the time where a loyal Apple owner sent him an email asking him why his iPhone 4 wasn't working properly on the cellular network and Steve Jobs responded personally and said "Just avoid holding it in that way." or put in a more bluntly interpretive manner: "You're holding it wrong."

Seriously.

Look, I/we get where you're coming from, biggles, but the issue itself doesn't directly relate to Android which is what you asked - if you'd instead made the thread title "Why are all the non-iPhone smartphones so unreliable?" you might have have a better shot, maybe, I don't know. But I read the thread title and yes I'll admit I interpreted it as a slam against Android itself and I don't consider Android to be unreliable at all in my own personal experience of using it (since pre-public release days a decade ago before most people outside of Google even knew about it).

Apple operating systems, both desktop and mobile, are an ecosphere and they control it, top to bottom and every layer in-between unlike most any other hardware OR software maker out there, not even Microsoft has that kind of control nowadays. They're close with the Surface products but even so it's still not quite what Apple is used to since their inception. They fucking own it all, and that's how Apple is able to make things work the way they do, with excessively tight controls over everything and an incredibly narrow hardware profile that doesn't allow for a lot of customization or end-user configuration at all which is precisely why their products and OSes are considered to be "reliable" - but they do fail, a lot more than you might be aware of, 24/7, constantly all around the world.

If you personally feel iPhones are more reliable and devices you consider worthy of your recommendation then so be it, recommend 'em till you drop, Apple won't thank you personally but the > 40% profit they'll make over every device you help them sell puts a big fucking smile on their faces, I promise. And if your experience with Android hasn't been all that great well, that's sad in some respects but it's not really all that unusual in the big scheme of things. In other words, you're not alone, and people everywhere have problems with most everything.

Except me, of course, 'cause I rarely ever have hardware or software issues, maybe I'm lucky, but I doubt that's the reason. ;)
 
Domingo said:
Nearly every Android phone has a catch. Be it hardware or software. There is no ideal model anymore. Moto was supposed to be, but Lenovo wrecked that.

At this point I won't bother with anything that isn't straight-up Google. My Moto X Pure was supposed to be the best of both worlds, but I've only seen 2 security updates in 2 years and I'm still on Android 6.0. Evan Samsung is doing better than that. On top of it, my battery is going south quickly. I can kill off 20% of my battery with nothing but 15 minutes of web browsing now. Even 6 months ago that same activity used to only drain 5-7%.

I've dealt with 2 Samsungs and that was more than enough. Horrible apps that replace the defaults, multiple stores/logins, a clunky pulldown, and a launcher that seemed to get a little slower every month.

Supposedly the Pixel 2 will have some basic waterproofing, which is one of the only reasons I haven't bought the current model. Well, that and the oversized bezel. If they can give me a waterproof model with a larger display, I'm in.
Click to expand...

FWIW, my wife's (unlocked) Moto Z Play has been getting semi monthly security updates so far this year. I think the X Pure got left behind because it was the last Moto phone before the Lenovo acquisition and for whatever reason Lenovo didn't feel like supporting it afterwards. That's just my theory though since the X Pure was pretty quick to get Marshmallow when it came out a few months after the X Pure was launched. The Z and G phones since then seem to have gotten OS and security updates as fast or faster than any other OEM so far from what I've seen.

I know it's hard to consider an OEM after they've burned you like that though, but I try to consider the current situation before I write any brand off when I'm shopping for anything. I'm glad I did that with HTC after my wife's Rezound was pretty much EOL'd after 9 months and one broken OS update and I decided to get an M8 after that because a lot had changed since then and the M8 was a fantastic phone for the 2 years that I held onto it. I wish I could get another M8 with newer specs, because no other phone since then (besides the M9 and Mate 9 now) has made a phone with stereo speakers and an IR blaster that I still miss every day on my 6P.

Anyways, to address OP, I'd chalk that up to having a bad phone (G4). Although the G4 would be a great phone if not for LG's shitty parts binning and manufacturing process, LG's hardware reliability has been pretty lackluster for the past couple years since then. G4 owners got a raw deal for the most part because it was the first phone to have all these hardware issues so it was impossible to foresee and they were great phones before they started dying prematurely. So I'm amazed to see OP select a G6 even after learning about this; I wouldn't touch LG phones for at least another year or so IMO because of that.
 
Last edited:
If you want to talk extremely short lifespans for a device, I was so excited about getting the Samsung Galaxy Note when it was first announced that I was actually going to pre-order one with T-Mobile who had followed up Samsung's announcement with a date of their own release. I decided to wait and buy the device in a local store here in Las Vegas instead of doing the pre-order, and without me realizing it T-Mobile actually altered their official release date to a point sooner than I was expecting (by about 17 days). By the time I realized this and that T-Mobile should have them in retail stores I went in to get one, still excited to get this awesome device and...

Literally within 14 days of them going live in their retail stores they had already pulled them and were no longer selling them.

I'm serious too, and it pissed me off something fierce like not many things are allowed to do. They simply decided for some reason that the Note wasn't worth it or it just didn't sell at all in their retail channels and they stopped selling it. I couldn't get one at T-Mobile's website, couldn't get one in retail stores, couldn't get one anywhere and it took nearly 3 months before I saw one listed on eBay but the price the seller was asking for was even more than the retail price because they had turned out to be so rare from being available for such a limited period of time.

Blew my mind, still has. They of course went with the Galaxy Note 2 and had no issues with keeping it stores for a long long time, but the original Samsung Galaxy Note T-Mobile variant - SGH-T879 was the model number - disappeared before I could even get one and I have to admit I'm still pretty upset about it ~5 years after the fact. Over at XDA the Galaxy Note (original model) subforums are loaded with posts and ROMs and all sorts of info but the T-Mobile variant subforum has barely 280 posts total which is like, "Why even bother having the subforum at all..." considering it's XDA. :D

I still want one, amazingly, but I suppose at this point I'll never get that T-Mobile variant so I'll just have to accept it at some point and move on. There are two of them listed on eBay, one seller wants about $250 for it (like, NO) and another seller wants $400 (like, FUCK NO) so, dammit, that's one that got away from me. ;)
 
Good responses all and I appreciate the detailed feedback. T4 asked about why I picked LG G6 even though the G4 was a dog. Couple reasons, one is that I assume these companies have a lot of really smart people working for them and that they learn from mistakes (reward for success is market share and profits). Second is that someone else posted in this forum commenting on LG being a reliable brand going forward despite their problems. I can't find the post right now but this person had worked in that part of the tech industry and seemed to have credibility on the subject. FWIW it has only been a week and the G6 has been fantastic so far in all the ways that matter: no error messages or crashes, no lags, much better battery, much faster operation.

The LG G6 is an unlocked model and so will be a good hypothesis test on the idea that Verizon bloat was partially responsible for causing the G4 to malfunction. Previously I had disabled a bunch of the bloat (including DT ignite) and error messages stopped showing up during GPS.

Tiberian: for all I know iPhones are unreliable as well. No first hand experience with them. Wife does have iPhone 6s for 1 year though and it has been basically perfect for her. Not enough data points there to determine their reliability, in my view would need to observe multiple ios devices over several years.
 
I didn't read most of the comments but I will say this:

I have owned nothing but Android phones since they first came out. I will also say that they are very unreliable, even with aftermarket ROM support.

  • Inconsistent battery life
  • Battery bugs where the phone shuts off at 60% (has happened on multiple phones I have owned)
  • Random battery drain bugs that are almost always impossible to fix
  • Slow downs
  • Random restarts
  • Bloatware
I'm sure there is more that I am leaving out, but its bed time. I consider myself a power user but I do not have anymore then 5-7 apps EVER installed on my phones. I do not play games on my phone. I use my phone strictly for some social media, messaging, and email. I loath anything Apple or I would have already switched; everyone around me gets great, consistent battery life even with regular use throughout the day.

And... it gets tiresome trying to sift through dozens of aftermarket ROMs when all you want is consistent fucking battery life. Ive learned to just uninstall and move on instead of trying to monitor betterbatterystats or something similar to see if I can kill processes that are draining battery. Shit gets old.
 
Best phone I ever had was HTC. Worst I ever had was Samsung (across multiple devices). Currently using Motorola and the crazy inconsistent battery life is driving me insane. I bought a cheap ZTE "flagship killer" at one point and I would actually say that was better then any Samsung phone I have owned. I honestly will never understand why/how they sell millions of phones. Ive had at least 5-6 Galaxy phones, a couple Notes, an Edge.... :X3:
 
I'm going 2+ years on my motorola droid, not problems. I keep getting msgs to come in get my free phone upgrade LOL

for me to upgrade, it'll have to come with a 12 core cpu, and at least 6gig of main ram. Also dont buy the cheap model lol mine the back is made of kevlar lol
 
HeavensCloud said:
Was that a joke?
Click to expand...

No. Every single Samsung phone I have had has had problems. Same with many friends and family. I know probably 10+ people that have switched to iPhones because of constant problems with their Samsung phones.

Wifes Note has a battery bug that cant be fixed right now because the ATT variant of the phone is completely locked down. No amount of factory resetting or trying to uninstall/reinstall updates has fixed it. I have to buy her a new phone because it shuts down after about 20% battery usage and goes into an infinite loop of restarts... does the same thing with a brand new battery.

My S6 Edge+ was alright, but for a powerful phone it would slow down way too often. I sold it and went back to my Moto X 2015.
Had battery drain problems with my S5 even after going through a handful of different roms.
Worst phone I ever had was a Japan specific variant of the Galaxy S3... there was a problem with the NFC hardware that would kill battery life and Samsung refused to replace the phone even after acknowledging the issue.

All that being said... I never seemed to have problems with any of them until at least 3-4 months of usage. Most consistent usage I ever got out of a phone was with my Moto X 2014. The ZTE phone I had was in use about 6 months but it didnt end up supporting all of Tmobiles LTE bands so I ditched it.
 
In my opinion I think the majority of issues on any Android phones stems from the fact that every manufacturer has their own bloated garbage they install. Fragmentation is the bane of Android.

My next phone will either be a Pixel or Nexus variant and if that fails me then I dont know what the hell Im going to do.
 
HeavensCloud said:
I was referring to the fact that you stated wondering how they sold so many phones then in the next sentence stating you yourself have purchased more than eight of them ;)
Click to expand...

My friend works for Samsung so I have gotten "family" discounts on them. I would never pay the insane prices that they typically go for. And all those were spread over two people.
 
Tengis said:
My friend works for Samsung so I have gotten "family" discounts on them. I would never pay the insane prices that they typically go for. And all those were spread over two people.
Click to expand...

Lol no worries. I've sworn off Samsung since their Knox virus was installed on my S3 and S4's, completely incapacitating them. Fuck that company.
 
HeavensCloud said:
Lol no worries. I've sworn off Samsung since their Knox virus was installed on my S3 and S4's, completely incapacitating them. Fuck that company.
Click to expand...

This...so much. The S3 was by far the best phone I have ever used, before Knox infected it with one of the last OTA updates issued (Sprint version). Because of that shit, I will likely never buy another Samsung phone again.

Update on my LG G3: As of this past weekend...she's dead, Jim. Everything was scooting along just fine, then a bunch of Google Play services updates hit last Wed-Thu, and it went into the bootloop of death and bricked. It's degraded to showing the LG boot splash screen, then straight to recovery/download mode, then locks up to the point that the battery must be pulled.

Did some research about it, and it seems there are quite a lot of older Android devices (phones and tablets) with ICS, JB, KK, and LP that are bricking from the latest Google Play services updates, as well. Smells suspiciously like a case of intentionally planned obsolescence.

Almost three years of heavy use daily...shit, I've killed regular laptops faster than that with less workload applied. THAT was the best phone I've ever used...but this new Axon 7 I'm typing this response on just may take the top spot. Only time will tell.
 
I have much more consistent battery life on my Google Pixel XL than any of my previous Samsung phones (note 2,3,4,5,7).

I had to have warranty service on my Note 2 and 3. Note 2 wasn't charging properly, Note 3 had a bad proximity sensor.

It's hard for me because I actually really loved my Samsung phones but the truth is they have great features, great hardware but the software is lacking. The difference in speed and smoothness between my Note 7 and Pixel XL is undeniable and getting monthly security updates is becoming increasingly important. My note 5 is about 3 or 4 behind right now last I checked.
 
That's just bad luck. I've had the LG-G2, G4, and now the G6 and none of them has had any problems. I still have my G2 which I use as a remote.
 
If I could buy a "pure" version of a Samsung S7, I'd do it today. I'd probably get an S8, too, although I'm still not so sure about the cases for that one. Yet Samsung's software keeps me far far away from ever buying their phones again.
 
Vengance_01 said:
The g3 died due to a hardware failure not a Google play update...
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced of that. After the initial bootloop on 5.0.1, I was able to find the original shipping ROM with 4.4.2 and successfully flash it. Booted fine. After I set up my Google account, it pulled the latest Google Play services updates and then immediately bootlooped and bricked.

[edit]
Here's something that may be related, since the G3 has a SD801 ARM CPU under the hood...

https://support.google.com/googleplay/forum/AAAA8CVOtD8uX3Xqk2gi_k/?hl=en
 
Last edited:
My Padfone S has an 801 but it was never bricked. It's been updated to 6.0.1 now, but can't go further because 7.0 requires 64 bit SoC's, which SD801 is not. The only problem is that 6.0.1 doesn't support installing apps on SD cards so I have to do a bit more file maintainence on my phone than usual.
 
chenw said:
My Padfone S has an 801 but it was never bricked. It's been updated to 6.0.1 now, but can't go further because 7.0 requires 64 bit SoC's, which SD801 is not. The only problem is that 6.0.1 doesn't support installing apps on SD cards so I have to do a bit more file maintainence on my phone than usual.
Click to expand...

I never got the opportunity to update to the AT&T 6/M OTA, since I'm on Cricket and they require an active AT&T account to get it on the G3 D850. Makes me wonder if the 6/M update would have been immune to the Google Play services bootloop/bricking issue that I experienced with both 4.4 and 5.
 
No phone is truly 100% reliable. Android (unlike) iPhone is at a disadvantage only due to the amount of different hardware and software configurations. Samsung has been the best in consistency when it comes to their phones, but that's only on the Galaxy S lines and even them, due to the nature of Touchwiz tend to start lagging after a good four plus months of usage if you're not on top of maintaining the software side of things.

The iPhone on the other hand has far less for app devs to worry about due to Apple's total control on everything. The only issues I've really seen are on the lower storage tier iPhones, and is usually caused because people fill them up quickly without really paying attention then when it comes time to free up storage are too stubborn to do so, but when they do issues usually go away. That's not to say the higher storage tiers aren't prone to issues, I have the 128GB 7 Plus and it's had a lock up here and there but nothing that required a restart.

At the end of the day you have to figure out which is more important: alot of features but with iffy reliability or less features and more reliability.
 
I loved my HTC 10 until it developed serious battery drain problems after the first few months. Been using a OnePlus 3T since February and am very pleased. Battery is comparable to my 7 Plus. I tend to upgrade often (already looking to buy an OP 5 in a few weeks :D), so maybe don't keep phones long enough to see some of the problems other Android users experience.
 
I follow a 2-year schedule for replacing phones. Usually that's enough time where the battery starts to die quicker and quicker or the phone starts to bog down. That's been the case with both Apple and Android devices. My current Moto X Pure has seen the most dramatic battery issues, though. Hopefully it's the exception and not the rule moving forward.
 
Tengis said:
I didn't read most of the comments but I will say this:

I have owned nothing but Android phones since they first came out. I will also say that they are very unreliable, even with aftermarket ROM support.

  • Inconsistent battery life
  • Battery bugs where the phone shuts off at 60% (has happened on multiple phones I have owned)
  • Random battery drain bugs that are almost always impossible to fix
  • Slow downs
  • Random restarts
  • Bloatware
Click to expand...

All valid points, but not on my original Moto X. That phone was bullet proof.
 
Of Samsung phones, I've only owned the Note line, all of them except for the first Note and the last exploding version. All were fantastic and reliable phones (again, I missed out on the one that exploded). My wife's S4 on the other hand was a piece of shit.

My Nexus 5x is also a trooper. Never had a problem with it and vanilla Android is excellent.

My $60 BLU R1? Kind of shitty but gets the job done. For $60!

There is a ton of variation in the Android ecosystem, that's what makes it different, and I don't think you can generalize across all of Android about reliability. It's really a phone by phone thing.
 
I owned note 1 and 2. But I srsly didn't like the battery life and the whole android os. Later on I bought and tried iphone and have been using it since then. Apple is just way better imo.
 
With respect to battery life, and as previously mentioned, the fact that there are so many Android-powered devices being cranked out causes problems for the manufacturers making them. There's only been one company that not only created a new smartphone but also custom tailored the OS - CyanogenOS, a mod of CyanogenMod as a factor of irony - specifically for the hardware it was to be installed on the same way Apple can custom tailor iOS for their iPhones and iPads, etc and that company is OnePlus.

People that got the OnePlus One, their first product, running the original CyanogenOS builds (their OxygenOS came along later when Cyanogen pulled out of the contract they had with OnePlus), found their smartphones not only having extremely fast smooth fluid performance on that Snapdragon 800 SoC but also extremely long battery life. How long? Many people, including myself, found that we could use our One's for really extended periods of time with 12+ hours of screen-on-time aka SOT - and I don't mean just playing videos one after another in a loop at low brightness either, I mean actually being able to use the One on a single full charge for over 12 hours (and I know a few people that got in excess of 14 hours SOT) before having to plug in again.

That means all the typical stuff: checking emails, reading news, looking at websites, watching some online videos (and local offline content as well), listening to audio streams and also local playback content, social media (if you do that sort of thing), etc - actually using the device with the display actually on for 12+ hours, that's a pretty rare thing nowadays even with more battery efficient SoCs, more efficient (but much higher pixel count) displays, and bigger and bigger batteries well past the 3000 mAh point. Hell, the Galaxy S7 Active I had last year had a 4000 mAh battery in it and I was typically getting 11+ hours of SOT with the Snapdragon 820 in it, damned phone was and still is quite awesome. :D

The only other device that I've ever owned personally that could match that kind of actual real-world usage was a modified Motorola Atrix HD where I replaced the stock battery with one from the RAZR MAXX which was 3200 mAh and with that battery inside the Atrix HD I could easily get 15+ hours of SOT without breaking a sweat.

But because the OnePlus One was a custom made device and the company making it could custom tailor and tune the actual code of the OS to that specific one-time hardware platform they were able to seriously eek out massive levels of performance and extremely long battery life even for the Snapdragon 800 which is still one of my fave SoCs ever made. The Amazon Fire Phone I picked up last week has that SoC in it and now that it's running LineageOS 11 it's like an entirely different device from when it was stuck on the FireOS crap from Amazon and once the new battery gets here I suspect I'll own it for quite some time.

Anyway, most manufacturers cannot really spend an adequate amount of time tailoring and tuning Android for their devices, they just crank 'em out as fast as possible and companies that don't do that - OnePlus being probably the closest OEM to the way Apple works and in that I mean they release like one new smartphone a year or something close to it - cannot possibly expect to get great performance (especially when they slap those crazy overlays and UIs on the devices like Touchwiz and whatever) and absolutely not get great battery life.

Also: people should really stop using full/max brightness 24/7 on their smartphones, it's a waste of energy in almost every situation except being outside in direct sunlight. But geez, I see people constantly with their smartphones and they are maxed out regardless of the ambient lighting and I can't help but laugh knowing they'll have plug in probably twice as often as they would if they'd just reduce the brightness to 40-60% or even less. I keep my devices at 30-40% unless I'm outside in direct daylight situations, there's just no reason for it and I can see them just fine and I use matte antiglare PET screen protectors on all of 'em as well.

Ah, humans, always a good source of humor. :D
 
Thats the weirdest thing. Lots of hate on samsung phones for reliability and software issues yet year after year the same people buy the new one. After a few Samsung phones back to back (G S2,3,4, Galaxy Nexus, Note 1-3) being so shitty and unreliable I quit and never bothered because I learned my lesson. Also grew up and changed my priorities but if I were ever to buy a new Android based smartphone it would be from Sony, loved my Xperia Z1 and Z2. Both were close to flawless.
 
///AMG said:
Thats the weirdest thing. Lots of hate on samsung phones for reliability and software issues yet year after year the same people buy the new one. After a few Samsung phones back to back (G S2,3,4, Galaxy Nexus, Note 1-3) being so shitty and unreliable I quit and never bothered because I learned my lesson. Also grew up and changed my priorities but if I were ever to buy a new Android based smartphone it would be from Sony, loved my Xperia Z1 and Z2. Both were close to flawless.
Click to expand...
My mom has Z3 Compact and I really hate how they bloated the Android. It's full of Sony crap that's constantly updating. Hardware wise it wasn't that great since one day the screen stopped working. They replaced it and soon after the battery cover broke...
 
Tup3x said:
My mom has Z3 Compact and I really hate how they bloated the Android. It's full of Sony crap that's constantly updating. Hardware wise it wasn't that great since one day the screen stopped working. They replaced it and soon after the battery cover broke...
Click to expand...

My Z1 and Z2 had very little bloat, the Z2 was pretty stock. Never had a compact though so I cant comment.
 
I have been pondering the switch to iPhone. Biggest reason being, I'm just tired of having to do so much maintenance on my V10, and being on this eternal quest for the "perfect" phone. From my experiences, it seems the iPhone would grant me easier use and convenience with my daily tasks.
So for now, I am researching making the switch. I have the money and ability to do so, that's not an issue. I just need to make sure whatever apps I normally use can and will convert over to iOS.
The only other concern is pairing my Moto 360 to an iPhone. If not, I sell it. I don't plan to go with the Apple Watch though.
 
Last edited:
Ive had very few problems with samsung, Ive had the note 2, 3 and 4 and the 3 and 4 still work great. the note 2 got borked after an over the air update. Made it really slow, factory reset wouldve probably fixed it but it was time to upgrade anyway and i switched to verizon from att so i had no reason to mess with the note 2 anymore. I found a handy little app called package disabler pro for a buck fifty that lets me disable unwanted/unneeded apps/bloatware that works great. never had any lag problems some people talk about. everything i use it for works fast, and i use it for pretty much everything.

in the end it really comes down to knowing what youre doing, closing apps youre not using, disabling system apps youll never use, not downloading suspect/malware apps and optimizing the settings for your needs in my experience. Cant wait for the note 8, might upgrade, but honestly the note 4 is still killin it. the only issue I have with it is it gets a little choppy on the live view sometimes when im flying my dji drone. Older version of the app worked fine, i think its a lack of ram issue, but it is 4 years old. Hoping the note 8 has a IR blaster.
 
I've had good luck buying Moto and Nexus phones that have stock Android. Really loving the Nexus 6P I've got at the moment and the Moto X I had before that was great as well. I usually upgrade on a 2 year cycle so perhaps a Pixel 2 for me. Having the latest updates and no bloatware always helps.
 
In the past 6 years, I've owned 2 smartphones.

Motorola Atrix 4G
HTC One M8

The Atrix wore out 2 batteries, then finally it's screen digitizer died in year 3. There was no point in fixing it at that point so I upgraded. It was stable the entire time, but ate through batteries quickly needing a charge once a day. It got insanely hot when putting it under any processor load (game, video, etc.) but still never faultered.

The HTC One M8 has been the best phone I've ever owned. Subpar camera and software, but otherwise amazing. I also cannot replace the battery, but I've never needed to. It's design with the slim edges and curved back make it slicker than snot, but a case fixes that. I've disable most of the Sense UI stuff, but I keep the weather and clock widget. The Battery Saver Mode does very well in making the phone last 3 days on a charge with some minor usage of the internet and text messaging.

I've had ONE software bug with the HTC, that's it. The clock and weather widget rely on a data connection. If you set it to update constantly, it will chew through 500mb of data in a month BY ITSELF. You can tell it to update every few hours instead of constantly and it works better. However, if you have your phone auto connect to a WiFi hotspot, and that WiFi requires a secondary login through the browser (which you forget to do), the phone will insist on re-sending the data requests over and over again while failing to get a reply. The widget didn't seem to have any sort of time out programmed into it. This resulted in increased battery usage and the phone starting to get rather warm. This required me to spend some extra time remembering to log my phone into the company WiFi hotspot at the beginning of my shift or I would be dealing with a dead battery and a phone hot enough to scald within 3 hours.

This bug didn't manifest itself until year 2 after a software update and no amount of clearing cache or doing a factory reset would fix it. This bug somehow got fixed with an update 6 months ago (Android 6.0 I think?).


My Fiance has had 5 smartphones in 6 years, all Samsung.
1. Samsung Continuum
2. Samsung Continuum Refurb Warranty Replacement
3. Samsung Note 2
4. Samsung Note 2 Refurb Warranty Replacement
5. Samsung Note 3, Refurb Warranty Replacement
Notice a trend?

The Continuum was the biggest piece of shit ever. Unstable, had to be charged 3 times a day, and rebooted just as often. The secondary screen that worked like an RSS feed was probably the source of most of the problems. Both phones eventually stopped charging and the USB port became loose. I'm surprised the warranty replacement didn't catch fire, the battery was bulging when she upgraded to the Note 2. Replacing the USB cables did not fix the charging issue as the issue was the plug's on the phones.

The Note 2 was neat, but after a few updates it too began eating through batteries needing a charge twice a day. This also meant extra wear on the USB port. It too eventually stopped charging due to a worn out USB port, however it's battery tested fine. The Note 2 Warranty Replacement #1 had the same issues as the first Note 2. Asurion sent her the Note 3 because there was no longer stock of the Note 2. So far it has outlasted all of the other phones and she still has it. However, it still eats through batteries and has to be charged twice a day. To be fair though, she is on the phone constantly doing facebook, youtube, and games. The Note 3, like all the other phones before it, has also developed a loose USB port. Replacing the USB cables again did not fix the charging issue as the issue was the plug's on the phones. However, I switched cables to Magnetic charging cables to lessen the wear. Her phone often gets hot and locks up, so I opted not to upgrade it to wireless charging. Despite all her issues, she has fallen in love with the Stylus and massive screen on the Note series. As an artist, she loves having it as her mobile sketchpad.

Conversing with all of my co-workers who have Samsungs, they have all experienced the same issues. Software updates causing phones to chew through batteries thus needing charge more than once a day and USB ports wearing out. One co-worker's S6 and her warranty replacement decided to stop fast charging altogether, no matter what she did...cable replacement, charger replacement, wireless charger replacement, clearing cache, factory reset, etc. The only co-worker I've had that did not experience these issues was also the only one that rooted his phone, installed Cyanogen (until they stopped updating it), and used the samsung wireless charger.

 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
biggles said:
This past week alone:
1. Failure to write file error when snapping picture or video to micro sd card.
2. Android.process.acore error when using gps
3. LG Urbane smartwatch bluetooth disconnecting when using the device in front of clients.

Phone is Verizon LG G4 which bootlooped and was replaced 6 months ago with refurb.

Other Androids previously owned have had lots of other issues:
1. LG G2 headphone jack had loose connection
2. Samsung Droid Charge forced lock screen into landscape mode, preventing entry of pin code
...and more.

Am I unlucky, or are Android phones unreliable devices?

My wife has an iPhone and it has been much more reliable in comparison.

I need to get this resolved because it is harming my contracting business. Maybe I have been selecting the wrong manufacturers.

Perhaps the unlocked LG G6 I ordered last week will be better. Hoping so.
Click to expand...

Here's the issue I have with the title to your thread: it assumes that your issues with Android are everybody's issue with Android. I for instance have owned 2 Android phones in my life over the last 7 years and outside of a few program crashes here and there have had no issues to report. My wife on the other hand has had issues with every iPhone she has owned. Daily issues with multiple program crashes, wifi issues, phones becoming slow. Now I don't believe it's that IOS as a whole is worse than android, just my having better luck with Android than she had with IOS. I also did tech support for Apple for 18 months and we received on average 90000-150000 calls a day from people having a variety of issues. I'm sure Android would be similar if anybody could find a contact number to call Google or their phone manufacturer. Basically shit can happen regardless of OS.
 
Simmonz said:
Here's the issue I have with the title to your thread: it assumes that your issues with Android are everybody's issue with Android. I for instance have owned 2 Android phones in my life over the last 7 years and outside of a few program crashes here and there have had no issues to report. My wife on the other hand has had issues with every iPhone she has owned. Daily issues with multiple program crashes, wifi issues, phones becoming slow. Now I don't believe it's that IOS as a whole is worse than android, just my having better luck with Android than she had with IOS. I also did tech support for Apple for 18 months and we received on average 90000-150000 calls a day from people having a variety of issues. I'm sure Android would be similar if anybody could find a contact number to call Google or their phone manufacturer. Basically shit can happen regardless of OS.
Click to expand...
On a brighter note picked up LG G6 unlocked version (model us997) about a month ago and it has been perfect so far. Fingers crossed. Up until that point my experience as shown in this thread was poor. It was possibly just bad luck. Wife had several HTC phones before switching to ios and her experience was much better.
 
The G6 looks fantastic, especially with the 2 for $500 promo they had. You SERIOUSLY can't beat $250 for a flagship. But, the fact they preemptively upped the warranty to 2 years makes me a bit nervous. WHAT DO THEY KNOW?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top