The Android experience, so far......

[gotluck]

I think being on Android for one year or less, the user should still be considered a newbie. I've been on Android going on three years and I'm still learning new things from it and this is all without root.

This is very true IMO

Those that use it for 30 days or whatever aren't even scratching the surface of understanding.
Unless the user is very highly technically inclined (coming from iOS that probably isn't the case JK, but not really )

 

[JackieInCo]

So I've had my Nexus 4 and 7 for well over a year.

The 4 has always had a weird problem where once in awhile the battery would drain unusually fast. I upgraded to Kitkat about a month ago and the battery life got much worse and the phone would unlock even with a pin code while in. Y pocket and change settings, usually with the time and set some timers just as it would do if I had the slide to unlock set. After three hours off the charger with minimal use, the battery would sometimes be down to 70% and sometimes! down to 40% after 7 hrs. When 4.3 was released, I upgraded and that seems to have fixed the battery life that the first two Kitkat releases gave me and of course the dialer screen is fixed.

When I bought the Nexus 7, I was pretty much happy with it and the after a few months, started hating the developers for not making many of my favorite apps in a tablet version. So it's been a year and four months of owning it and some of my apps that I have installed now have tablet versions and some of them are pretty impressive now and comparable to the versions I have on my iPad. I have one app that I am very happy with on my Nexus 4 and iPhone but it has not been updated for my iPad since January. Not sure what the developers problem is there.

Also on the Nexus 7, I could never get over three hours screen time between charges. Switching from AT&T to T-Mobile did help and that's something that I noticed on my iOS devices as well. I always got worse battery life on AT&T and Verizon then on T-Mobile.

Between my two iPads (Retina Mini and Air) and my 5S and the Nexus 4 and 7, the battery life on the iOS devices has always been impressive and sorely lacking on the Nexus devices. Sounds like battery performance is still an issue on many Android devices still today. At my job, everyone with a non iPhone is always plugging in. When I do use my iPhone during a night at work, it's still at 95-97% after 7 hours.

I've been wanting to get an S5 but I will most likely get the next iPhone and then wait to see what Google does for the next Nexus if there is one.

Currently I use the Nexus 4 at my job in case it gets stolen, I can live without it. It would bother me much more to lose my iPhone.

 

[JackieInCo]

And I meant that I upgraded to 4.4.3 and not 4.3.

 

[coldjeanzzz]

So my early veredict, not being a power user or ultra-tech savy is that Android is a "non expensive" alternative to iOS. Not going much into the Android hardware,because seems to me there are outstanding pieces of tech, some on par with Apple offers or even with better specs.....

The newest iPhone is no more expensive than the top Android phones, people need to stop pretending like owning an iPhone is a status symbol or something. If you want a cheap iPhone you can get the older models and if you want a cheap Android you get the less spec'd out models.

 

[Zaft]

I can go 3 days on my iphone 5 if I don't use it... If I use it i don't get more then a day.

 

[Lloydbm41]

I can go 2 days on one cycle with my 5s, but that's normally when I don't use it

On a serious note though, one thing I do appreciate about iOS & battery life in comparison to Android is appreciable standby time. It's a good (& bad) thing that iOS does less under the hood because it literally brings your battery to a halt when not in use. Android on the other hand is doing so much that your battery could lose anywhere from 3-7% just within an hour.

This is true in both standby and when shutoff. My original iPad has been sitting for 9 months on the shelf, and still has over 50% charge.

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I can go 3 days on my iphone 5 if I don't use it... If I use it i don't get more then a day.

Normal for most flagship phones regardless of os.

 

[0dev]

I had a similar experience over a range of Android phones and tablets over the last year.

Battery life on many is awful. I don't know why, but it was something I saw with each device I have/had.

The Google Play store is mediocre. I like the laxer policies (Allowing emulators and a variety of other things that Apple doesn't), but overall it could use some polishing in my opinion.

My biggest issues were media players (the stock ones are garbage, as are most 3rd party players - especially for video), and the battery life. Apps generally seem a bit higher quality on iOS as well, which I prefer.

That being said? If you're not as big into iOS it's a solid alternative that I don't see tons of issue with.

For a media player, install VLC. It's still beta on Android but it's been in development for a good while and it functions like you'd expect a non-beta would. It will play any format of music or video you can throw at it.

I use it over other music players because other music players on Android have this same irritating bug where they cannot display album art properly. If you have a bunch of songs in one folder and some have album art and some don't, the ones that don't will randomly be assigned album art from one particular song in that folder, so you'll get a bunch of songs with the same incorrect album art. This bug has existed since before Gingerbread. Pretty ridiculous tbh but at least there are good alternatives. VLC uses its own media engine so it doesn't have this bug.