1x30: He Saved Every One Of Us

Right, Jolla / SailfishOS / Ubuntu Phone. I guess I really ought to say controversial things now…

I use Android, and have done for about 3 years now, since the Galaxy Nexus. I now have a Nexus 5 and consider it the greatest (hardware) tool I’ve ever purchased, with the sole drawback that it has too short of a battery life.

I will not be switching to any other operating system, even if they’re better in terms of features, battery life, or “freedom” – and it’s precisely why Apple were so successful with the iPod / iPhone / iPad line – the network effects of a nearly-closed-loop ecosystem.

The Android platform allows me to login once and automatically download all my settings, including email notifications and wifi passwords (of which there are many over the years), and it all just works. I can go from new phone to fully restored in about 15 minutes, 12 of which are waiting for the inevitable software update to finish. I’ve done this several times – not just for factory resets, but new phones and proving to someone that “it would work” (always a risky manoeuvre)

I’ve not had to export/import my contacts list since moving to Android, I get to manage them within GMail, I get a very pretty calendar interface that shows both my work calendar and my personal calendar on the same list, and it will automatically download all the apps I’ve purchased and put them in the right places. It will even re-populate my “Play Books” list with the books I was reading at the last place I read them.

Incidentally, the only apps I do download outside of the core Google utils are Facebook, Spotify, and PocketCasts – all of which sync data somewhere so that it picks up where it left off.

None of the other mobile operating systems will let me do that yet – or at least, nowhere near as easily. Android – no, Google is a fantastic ecosystem, and the network effects of having one single company deal with my email, my calendar, my books, my movies, everything I use at home… It’s just one less thing I have to faff around with. Combine it with a Chromecast, and the fact I use a Chromebook Pixel at home, and I’m pretty much tied in entirely to the Google ecosystem.

Should I need to leave Google, all that data can go with me very easily (I’d only really need an ical and an imapsync run, everything else is retrievable from that). I don’t ever intend to.

I use Android primarily because Google is fully integrated with it. If Google’s excellent integration features were on something else, I might try that – but they’re not. Some would call that a monopoly. I call it an excellent product…

I think bryan preempted Jono by saying that word that jono says a lot near the beginning whilst talking about open vr drivers possibly?

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Ooh, really? Can you grab an audio snippet? :slight_smile:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8geHaXcsTNSY2NuVWtoT1pBQ3M/view?usp=sharing

here it is somewhere around 8.26

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I found one and posted it to What a letdown. C*mmun*ty thanks to your pointer :smile: