Dear Android:
I like Android. A lot. Really, so please don’t send me any nasty messages, but I was just wondering if you’d ever heard of a company named Apple? I’m personally not a big fan of Apple, having left their ecosystem after three generations of iPhone to get on the Android bandwagon. But they got one thing right for sure – yearly hardware and software refreshes with small software updates throughout the year. That meant that I could actually be happy with my phone for a whole year before I salivated for the next best thing. And, it meant that at the end of the year, there was a pretty good market still for my device – enough to fund an upgrade to the newest model.
Why, oh why Android, do you taunt your loyal users, your early adopters, with better, shinier, faster models every 3 months. And to make matters worse, you offer them on different carriers each time, so there’s really no option for us to move on to the next best thing without incurring early termination fees and the impossibility of selling a device that’s obsolete (even if we bought it 6 weeks ago – think consumers who bought the Droid Eris in early March).
Even worse, because we love Android and are just a little geeky, we’re forced to explain to every aunt, cousin, sibling, and best friend’s mom why they should get the Nexus One and not the MyTouch 3G, or the Motorola Droid (even though it’s damn ugly) and not the Droid Eris (which is just sooooooooo cute). Thanks Android. Because my Aunt Doris, and my friend Julie’s mom – they all understand that the Arm Cortex A8 550 mHz processor not running Sense UI is so much faster than the 528 mHz MSM7600 processor (but the Droid Eris is just sooooooooooo cute). At family reunions I get pointed at as the geek who carries the ugly phone, and just a little stupid too, for not buying the cheaper, and obviously cuter model. Thanks a lot.
Is it too much to ask for you to manage the upgrade path just a little more? For tech heads this would mean that we can actually be early adopters without getting the shaft as new models are released – think G1 owners who were denied the option to upgrade to the Nexus One without first cancelling their service. For consumers this would mean that there would be no confusion as to the level of phone we’re purchasing. So I might choose the cute phone, and understand that it’s a 3rd Tier device – not as powerful as the 1st Tier device, but cute.
In my world, this is as simple as providing minimum specs for hardware and software in order to be included in each tier. So while the Xperia X10 rocks it out with some awesome hardware specs – Tier 2 means that it doesn’t sport the most updated version of the OS and has no multitouch. Yearly refreshes of these tiers would mean that I could still sell a Tier 1 device at the end of a year for some value, as its likelihood of being obsolete is far less than a Tier 2 device. I’m not a marketing expert so I know this is a very simplistic view of a complex problem. However, I am a consumer who is becoming increasingly frustrated with the Android experience. Not because my personal experience with my phone is bad, but because I know it could be better, but there’s no cost effective way for me to get there. There is no incentive for device manufacturers to produce a flagship type device and sell it as such for the simple reason that there’s no way for the general consumer to identify which device is really superior to others. This is why the Droid Eris sells for more on Craigslist than the Motorola Droid. And that is why I’m stuck with my Droid until Verizon bails me out with an early upgrade option. I just hope at the time I’m eligible for an upgrade, there’ll be a phone released that’s flagship quality and not usurped 6 weeks later by something better, shinier and faster.
Sincerely,
theGadgetMom
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