[cliveowen]

Lollipop is just a bad, bad update. Tap the square button and close two apps at the same time. If you did everything right, now your phone says that Android UI failed. This has been going on since day one. Day one. Which was sometime in November.

Their Hangouts app sucks. I don't know how people in the U.S. use it, but here people use it only for SMS, and they crammed everything in that so it's hard to do the main function. But not to worry, they made Messenger too. So, if you're a sane person, you disable Hangouts, install Messenger and all is good, right? Of course not. Because since the 5.1 update, every few minutes you get a nice message that says "Hangouts has stopped unexpectedly". You know, the app that you supposedly disabled because you have no use for. So you enable it again, and the message goes away, and the app just stands there, unused, taking up space and memory. And by the way, why do they feel the need to make two or three different apps for doing the same thing? Photos and Gallery? Why not. What about Email, Gmail and Inbox? Sure, my app drawer was a bit too empty anyway...

There's so much more that could be said about Google "products" (I hate this word) and their problems, but my blood pressure is already acting up, so I better leave it for another day.

[joesmo]

Bad is an understatement. Problems with Lollipop I've experienced so far:

* Calls don't work. Had to reinstall OS a couple of times. Known Google bug that they refuse to fix on their own Nexus 4 phone. Bug also exists in Android 4.x. Yay!

* Contacts didn't show names. Had to reinstall OS.

* Bluetooth skips, sometimes fails to connect, and after disconnecting, always reconnects with no sound (though the song metadata is transmitted) - no solution that i've found so far

* Calls and texts sometimes do not alert, even when not in the quiet period - no solution / unable to replicate

* For a long time google apps just crashed, but I was able to finally solve that after reinstalling the OS and google apps a few dozen times

* Hangouts will not let you delete more than one conversation at a time

* No silent mode (speaks a lot to the idiocy of Google's product team)

* The new maps interface is incredibly slow and unusable at times (the article gets this one spot on), especially without a very fast connection (not limited to Android of course--the new slow, downgraded experience is available on all platforms from Google)

I'm pretty certain I won't buy any more Google hardware due to their lack of support (which seems to span all of their product divisions) and likely will avoid Android in general if at all possible. It's ironic because the Nexus 4 hardware seems to be quite excellent and well built--I haven't been able to break the phone yet even when intentionally smashing it into the ground as hard as I could multiple times because of the above (the bumper helps a lot, I think). The only reason I haven't made the switch yet is that a $649 starting price (really closer to $800 for a decent model after tax) for an iPhone is simply atrocious for a phone and worse than the horrific problems described above. For now ...

EDIT: Added newlines.

[ethbro]

> Because since the 5.1 update, every few minutes you get a nice message that says "Hangouts has stopped unexpectedly". You know, the app that you supposedly disabled because you have no use for. So you enable it again, and the message goes away, and the app just stands there, unused, taking up space and memory.

The only thing that makes Android usable in a sane way for me is custom ROMs and Titanium Backup's app freezing.

To continue the parent link's sentiments, it's like someone built an operating system at a company that employed such talented people that no one wanted to work on usability minutia. (Note: design is NOT usability)

[tdkl]

Speaking of Lollipop, this bug has been at the top of /r/android today :

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=165558

Mind you this was the case since the L preview that came in July 2014.

Type-Defect Priority-Small

I'm glad Google is all about fixing it.

[grkvlt]

Am I just desensetized to quality or, do I put up with a lot more issues than I should, or do I not have the same high standards as everyone else? As far as I can tell, Lollipop (aka Android 5.0) works brilliantly, and everyone thatI recall speaking to who has it is also similarly pleased. To call it a failure seems to be vastly overstating the viewpoints of a minority of customers. My Sony Z3 Compact and LG G Watch R work great, and that seems to be the general experience of other with modern devices. I get that it's fun to hate and rage, but this seems nitpicky - nothing is perfect, and Googla has great track record for pushing bugfixes and updates for Android and Chrome. #satisfied

[TeMPOraL]

> Am I just desensetized to quality or, do I put up with a lot more issues than I should, or do I not have the same high standards as everyone else?

Hard to say. My best guess is that you put up with a lot more issues than you should. The mobile is so utterly broken that we all have to get used to it to stay sane.

But from my personal experience, and I'm not saying that it applies to you personally, I've noticed that many people just don't give a fuck about the looks. Go and look at how majority of people write letters, or even how they write on the Internet. The amount of typos and overall lack of style is so big that 60 years ago a typical reader would get a heart attack.

Looking at the world as it is today, I start to feel that it's me who has insanely high standards because I want things to look and feel nice, not just barely work.

----

Oh, and about Lollipop - I've seen so many cases where something utterly broken on my device worked fine on everyone elses and reverse, that I learned to appreciate that things just really don't work the same even on the same brand of hardware. It's entirely possible that you and your friends have a good experience while for some reason, GPs device-software combination is broken. Hell, I personally never had any issues with Windows Vista, and almost no one believes me it's possible.

[GFischer]

The Sony Z3 Compact is a VERY powerful device, and also pretty expensive (U$ 400 or so). On slightly older or less powerful devices, Lollipop is INCREDIBLY bad.

It's so bad I'm recommending a switch to Windows for users that haven't bought into the ecosystem too much - basically U$ 100 Windows/Nokia phones outperform U$ 100 Android phones by a huge margin, so are a better buy for casual users, plus Microsoft is subsidizing phones over here.

My Google Nexus 7 tablet was unusable with the Lollipop update. My LG G3 Mini also performs extremely badly. OTOH my iPad 1st generation is still going strong (though I've seen iPhones go bricky with iOS updates).

Edit: note that I had badmouthed Windows phones previously after an incredibly frustrating experience with older Nokia phones.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8698802

[cillian64]

I can't replicate your "Android UI failed" problem on a Nexus 5 running Android 5.1

[eanplatter]

me neither, but a bug I've only seen on my Nexus 5 is that my timestamps on recent hangouts messages say "now" for hours. This is a problem if I mix hangouts and SMS because SMS runs on a normal timestamp, so essentially all of my texts appear above my hangouts. For a while it just seemed like my texts weren't actually coming in at all.

[wyattshacker]

On my Note 4, I get the same (possibly related) date/time issues manifesting in Google Maps; "Driving distance 37 miles. Drive time estimated 72 hours" :)

[genericone]

Is your timezone or date-time set differently than your current location?