“I Used an Android Go Phone for a Month, and It Was Terrible”

Megalith

Megalith

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Due to the ubiquity of inexpensive Android phones already on the market, many questioned Google’s intent for Android Go, a stripped-down version of Android designed for spearheading cheaper handsets. Android Police decided to give Google the benefit of the doubt by adopting one Go phone (Alcatel 1X) for a month, but ultimately agreed the idea is pointless: not only do they run bad, many are priced higher than cheaper models with better performance.

Android Go's current hardware and software offer a very limited experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone, and the ~$100 price associated with at least some of the more marketed handsets is far too much. OEMs have been able to make less expensive non-Go phones with better specs, and the virtual shelves of eBay and Swappa are lined with older but higher-end devices at the same price.
 
I have an LG Phoenix 3 on ATT Prepaid. Actually quite a good cheap phone. I paid $39 on Rollback at Walmart.. Took over 2 hours on the phone to port my phone number back over to AT&T from Cricket. Salesmen at Cricket talked me into the ZTE Overture 3 as it was cheaper than a BYOP kit. I kept the ZTE phone for a month of torture, and then when they cut my data off and wifi would never work right from the start, I just went back to AT&T prepaid..

I think the best cheap phone I ever had was a Microsoft Lumia 635, and the LG Phoenix 3 is a very, very close second. Best Android but the camera isn't quite as nice as the Lumia camera. I don't use phone camera a ton so that just comes with the territory
 
If it is someone coming from a 5 year old phone. Trust me I know many people that refuse to buy phones.
I am sure a Android Go phone would be fine.
Think about a kid and there first phone.
I personally would not buy a high end or mid phone for a kid in middle school.

But fore any one into tech [H]ardOCP'er or the like it would be a fail.


….ps, get off my lawn....
 
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This highlights a marketing problem Android devices have had forever.

There are a lot of people who refuse to even consider Android because "android sucks". They came to this conclusion by using the cheapest android phone on sale at best Buy, a 3 year old bottom end model from a 3rd rate brand being sold off cheap.

Android devices, due to their diverse number of manufacturers with different levels of design skill, making devices for differing price points means that there will be a wide range of Android devices, some absolutely terrible, and some fantastic. This is too complex for the lowest common denominator non techie phone buyer. They want to know they can "just buy brnad X" and always be happy, and that's why they go to Apple.

It's interesting to see what Google is doing here, but I'm not sure if it helps or hurts this problem. Mauybe by getting as many as possible of the low end devices under the "Go" umbrella, they can create an easier to distinguish difference between them. This might help. Not sure.
 
if all you need is a phone without all the fancy other shit, they're totally fine.
on the other hand if youve been using a recent high end phone and then go to one of those? yes of course its going to suck.... duhhh.

I do think many of them are overpriced though yes.
 
My phone is a $50 ZTE Blade Spark meant for AT&T Prepaid, but I use it with a standard AT&T account. This is the third burner android phone I've used. The first one was a $20 Alcatel and it was truly terrible. I suffered with it for a year, at which point I could no longer deal with it. Then I used a $50 Huawei Fusion 3. That phone was comparatively good, but not great. The older version of Android it was running started to become an issue, combined with not enough ram or storage space and a battery that was losing capacity, but it lasted me a couple of years. I didn't yearn for a new phone until the last couple of months I had it.

I've had the Blade Spark since December and I love it. The camera is pretty poor, but I don't care because I don't take that many pics. Otherwise I don't find much to complain about. I've got all the apps I want on it and still have 1GB of free space on the internal storage. It has plenty of memory and processing power, so the user experience is good. The screen size is perfect for me. Any larger than 5.5" and it wouldn't fit nicely in my front pants pocket.

I was aboard the Android train since the beginning. I owned the OG Motorola Droid with the slider keyboard, then upgraded to a Droid 2. I will never again pay hundreds of dollars for a cell phone. I don't see the point when I can get one for $50 that does everything I want it to.
 
Android Go is a nice idea, but until you get developers running crap phones, you're not going to make progress. People where I work won't spend their own money on phones, and the company provides flagship devices only; so it's no surprise the app keeps eating more and more storage, ram, and cpu -- these people don't have the experience of only having 250 MB of useful storage on a device (and it getting lower and lower over time thanks to mandatory google updates). I can only imagine it's worse with developers at Google. The most reasonable choice in phones are disgraced flagship attempts a year or so after their kickstarter ships, when they're doing a firesale (hello Nextbit Robin; I'm waiting for you Essential phone), but that's not really sustainable -- I can't live on the tears of kickstarter backers forever.
 
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