Hi Owen, Yes, Android phones are open. There are two paths for this:
1. Download updates yourself. Lots of places to do this, the best of which is generally regarded to be CyanogenMod http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ 2. Wait for your manufacturer to stream you updates. Plenty of good reasons to do both. The best manufacturers -- I like HTC -- are consistently tweaking and adding features. CyanogenMod tends to be faster to the big updates. Use what you like. There has been some controversy about locked bootloaders, but everyone has pretty much backed off of that now. As to battery life, I'm sorry if I was unclear. The Sensation is as good or better for battery life when you use it the same way. But you won't. If you keep that quarterHD screen lit for four hours non-stop reading Heinlein on your Kindle app while streaming Pandora...yeah, you're going to need to recharge. If you only flick the screen on when you hear a text come in, not so much. Please keep firing questions as you think of them! cjf ________________________________ From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Owen Densmore [o...@backspaces.net] Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 4:52 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [SUSPICIOUS EMAIL] Re: Android Choice On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Chris Feola <ch...@nextpression.com<mailto:ch...@nextpression.com>> wrote: <snip> Of the phones, the Galaxy has far and away the best screen, but you'll always find them laying around here because the staff doesn't grab them. Samsung NEVER updates, so bugs and such never seem to get resolved. (The GPS STILL doesn't work on the original Galaxy, after more than a year.) People who have all their music in iTunes trend toward the iPhone here, but no one is crazy about the 4 the way they were when the 3G came out. Great info, Chris and everyone else. This brought up an issue that first time android folks wonder about: update. I thought Android phones were "open" so to speak .. so wouldn't you just update by downloading the latest from Google? I realize the mfgrs want to "add value" but I'd prefer the vanilla Google distro, I think, unless there is reason to prefer the mfgr's modifications. Are there particular vendors that are best for plain Google android? The phone that disappears if you put it down is the Sensation. The screen isn't as good as the Galaxy IIs in terms of color depth, but it is HUGE-4.3"-while the phone itself seems incredibly small even next to an iPhone or Galaxy. You really have to think about it as a small tablet, actually, with that screen. I use it as my Kindle, do most of my surfing on it; I gave up both my Xoom and iPad because I'd simply stopped using them. That said, it doesn't have a tablet's battery. I get less than half the battery life I did on the Galaxy or HTC G2; but then, I didn't read books on either. So we all carry a battery pack that recharges USB stuff. It's fast -- dual core processor -- its small, GPS and call quality are great, and the screen is huge. Recommended. cjf OK, this is another puzzler: wouldn't battery life for a phone be quite important? It may be that I just don't push my original iPhone 2G hard, but it seems to go for a week on just a couple of calls, nearly no SMS, lots of email (yes, even on TMo/Edge .. phone's hacked), modest web, maps etc. Do androids have the same battery life as the iphones? I do know the latest iphone 4s has shorter standby time. So maybe 3G etc drains the battery a lot. I don't want to be on Edge-only if I can avoid it. Thanks again, really a big help; -- Owen
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