Android has a freedom of choice and freedom of control (over your device) that iOS lacks, but the carriers, manufacturers and Google are trying their darndest to take that away from users, so their main advantage is quickly drying up
nobody seems interested in making a flagship phone with top-tier hardware, efficient software, and full user control, and going through the shenanigans to get it on the major carriers' networks
you either get crap hardware, or inefficient software, or less control, or some combination of the above
it's hard to make Windows, by "evil old Microsoft", look like a liberating and pro-user platform, considering how anti-user much of it actually is; but Android and iOS have succeeded wonderfully at that... by modern standards, Windows is saintly to its users
what's that, Windows spying on you? oh, just kill these services and apply these registry tweaks; done! what's that, you have ads and malware? no problem, install this browser extension!
Samsung: We'd prefer that you carry our phone with the software as-is, but if you demand otherwise, so be it. (Samsung can't force the carrier to not add bloatware.)
with Windows, the answer to "how can I...?" always ends with, in the worst case, "write a bunch of code", and in the best case, a click by click solution (possibly with software purchase). the solution is almost never "there is simply no way to do what you're trying to do, at all, ever." but that answer is very common with iOS and, increasingly, Android
Android Lollipop tries to address the bloatware issue by having the apps automatically downloaded through Google Play when the network SIM is inserted, rather than preinstalled on the device; the user is free to remove these apps unlike with preinstalled apps.
However, this only really applies to Nexus devices.
I still love my Nexus 9, and while I don't have a smartphone yet, I plan to get the Nexus 5X when it comes out carrier-unlocked so that I keep my freedom of choice.
@DragonLord "Carriers are demanding phones are that locked down." is this a US centric limitation? I bought a Moto G (2nd gen) handset in NL. Then a seperate SIM card. Moved to the UK. Bought another SIM card. My phone was never locked to a carrier. And nothing was ever downloaded from Google Play when I installed either SIM.
@DavidPostill Don't confuse the ability to move your phone from one carrier to another, with the software platform being open to modification.
The term "unlocked" is overloaded, unfortunately, to mean two entirely different things.
Carrier unlocked = you can take your phone to another carrier by swapping the SIM card. This is common even in the US.
Bootloader unlocked = your phone is a computer. You can flash arbitrary code onto the NAND and boot it. You have full control of the storage and the platform. You can therefore have root or whatever else you want to do with it.
@allquixotic I've been relatively happy with the Fairphone, which is open from specs upward, and can be flashed (I believe, haven't done it myself). Starts off rooted, for various reasons. But it's not mainstream, and I'm not sure how available it is US-side.
@bertieb In nearly all cases, devices that aren't branded by a US carrier and being sold in their online store can only be used to make basic phone calls on US carriers. They can't get any kind of IP data. Or if they can, it's only 2G.
Samsung Galaxy devices are locked down in the US but international models are often bootloader-unlocked. (If I'm not mistaken, T-Mobile versions of the flagship Galaxy S phones are bootloader-unlocked.)
Access to 3G/4G on the US cellular bands is contingent upon FCC certification, which is only granted to phones made for, and with the explicit cooperation of, the big carriers.
@allquixotic Now I'm confused. My phone is clearly carrier unlocked. I could root my phone if I wanted to (but I haven't so far felt the need to do so)
@allquixotic Really? Didn't know it was that bad. How on earth do they justify that?
Ah hmm
> the issue that FairPhone will need to face is for example in the U.S. the cost of FCC Certification. FCC Certification in the U.S. is per phone, per network, per firmware revision.
@bertieb "Network optimization". In short, they claim that if they just let anyone put any devices they want on the network, it would make it slow, buggy and unusable. They use the same justification to lock down the firmware for the baseband processor (the integrated circuit that powers the cellular connections, both phone and data), and by extension, anything that could potentially write to the baseband, like the kernel and OS.
@bertieb sure, and it's the same argument used to charge between $10 and $15 per GB (well, maybe as low as $6 per GB if you get a special deal on a largeish chunk of data) when most of the towers aren't saturated for most of the day.
and it's the same argument used to throttle grandfathered unlimited users who use more than 2 GB per month (on AT&T/Sprint/T-Mo, at least)
Tags on Super User are meant to categorize posts to help people with specific expertise or interests to quickly discover posts that are relevant to them.
Over time we've collected quite a few tags that aren't actually helpful in this process, so we have an ongoing effort to clean them up.
How d...
