ANDROID IS FUCKING WANK

[DJ]

Hi everyone. My girlfriend got given an Advent Vega as a present a while back, it's running Froyo 2.2.
It's shit beyond all comprehension and I'm trying to make it do something. There's no Marketplace button to install apps, and it's apparently not compatible with Google Play so can't install anything from that either. So basically it does fuck all in it's current state, which makes me wonder how the hell Android devices even took off.

Anyway, after spending too long googling to figure out how to update it to make it have Marketplace and/or Google Play but I'm still non the wiser. I want a nice chunky UPDATE button, but there isn't one.

How do I put a version of whatever OS should be on it please? I'm hoping I can do it from my mac as well. Any help would be much appreciated, because all I'm reading is tech nonsense.

[RB]

What you have there is a piece of shit. As far as I can tell you won't get an official update. Your only choice is a custom ROM but the only stable version I can find is honeycomb which is old and shit.

Bin it. It will never be anything but shit and give you an unfair view of Android which is far away from what a new device with Jelly Bean can do.

[DJ]

Thanks mate, at least I know I was right in thinking it was garbage. It's been sat in a box for about 12 months by the sounds of it and I thought I'd try and get it working. It's probably way beyond me though which is a shame and criminal to be honest. How can they sell something and less than 12 months down the line completely forget it exists by dropping all support for it?
Vegacomb 3.2 is what I'm seeing.

I'm going to suggest she ebays it and see what she gets.

[Ekona]

How can they sell something and less than 12 months down the line completely forget it exists by dropping all support for it?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Android

[Joe]

Android can be a great long-term investment if you're willing to do the research in finding a good handset and take control of the upgrades yourself. Otherwise it's basically disposable.

[RB]

Get a Google branded Nexus device and get Apple levels of OS support. Buy anything else and all bets are off.

[DJ]

Unlike Apple, there's an entire market out there of Android devices where part of the user-base don't have a clue, hence the fact my gf has this Vega from her mum: she saw Advent, a brand she recognised because her laptop has the same name, and bought it. So for all those no doubt millions of users out there who don't understand what they are actually buying, they've got a useless piece of junk, or something they need a certain level of geekery to sort out.
Apple will always win this, rightly or wrongly, simply because it's simple, and when it comes to updating, it's clicking a button.

[Joe]

Go into any mobile shop shop, ask for help and you'll be steered towards the latest Android handset. The carriers love it because they control the level of OS support and therefore influence the upgrade cycle, ensuring customers walk away believing they're getting a premium smartphone experience when in fact they've been sold a crippled piece of disposable tat and will be crawling back for the next shiny thing before their 24-month contract runs out.

It's a shame Google didn't exercise the same level of control over all Android handsets as they have for the Nexus range, and all for the sake of a huge marketshare figure rendered meaningless by shitty platform loyalty and low user spending.

[Joe]

That's a dig more at mobile phone shops than at Google or Android, by the way. Android as an operating system gets better with each iteration, but the ubiquity and 'openness' seems to be abused by these asshole salespeople as a way to dupe people into long contracts with cheap subpar handsets.

[Jezreel]

I think you're right.

[Mr.Clark]

Get a Google branded Nexus device and get Apple levels of OS support. Buy anything else and all bets are off.

The Nexus 4, 7 and 10 are at a fantastic price point at the moment, if you get them from the Play Store. If the Padfone didn't exist and I was still on my Nexus S, I'd be hitting Refresh on the Nexus 4 page as soon as it hit midnight on launch day. It's an unbelievable deal.

[Ward]

As powerful as Google is, they're not at fault for this - it's purely down to the carriers - they want crap hardware and horrible branded handsets to fit every price point with certain features crippled or bricked off behind a paywall. It infects hardware and software.

Even Apple aren't immune, though they've done well.

[DJ]

I don't even think I'd want a Nexus 4, 7 or 10, because when the 5, 8 and 11 come out, yet more iterations of Android dilute the current trough and I could have a useless slab within in days capable of nothing with no support, regardless
Android is a victim of its own openness. The Vega - that has incidentally been consigned to a drawer by the girlfriend only to surface when she moves out to then go in the bin no doubt - could have still been of use out of the box if Android wasn't so open to leave the device out in the cold.
The carriers can't take all the blame because they're using the very thing Google has given them in the way Google intended: tweak to fit and create their own user "experience". Had Google been more like iOS though, Android could have been an absolute powerhouse of an OS that would have given a better user experience across every device, with no missing features of incompatible apps etc.
Android might be getting "better", but it'll never be great purely because of the ethos it's built upon.

[RB]

I don't even think I'd want a Nexus 4, 7 or 10, because when the 5, 8 and 11 come out, yet more iterations of Android dilute the current trough and I could have a useless slab within in days capable of nothing with no support, regardless

The Nexus devices get the newest OS. Only the original Nexus 1 has stopped getting updated in the same way the original iPhone has because it's just too old to run the new OS.
The now very old Nexus S (Nexus 2 if you like) is on Jelly Bean and should get the same 4.2 version that the Nexus 4, 7 and 10 run.

[DJ]

Ok thats all cool and stuff, but being the guy who once hot-swapped a DVD drive, all these numbers and the OS names are confusing. I'm not part of the whole Android eco-system (if one exists) so not as au fait with it all. Perhaps it's my ignorance that leaves me in the cold with Android, along with the instant reaction of how it feels.
But I've just gone on the Android web site to do a little looking around and there's 31 tablets. They're on different OS versions, even though it's Android. There's also tablets here I've never heard of. What's the likelihood of those devices being supported by whatever software it's using in a few months time? You can buy them now too, which is a bit of a con isn't it?
At least I know my iDevice could, in theory, last me 4+ years with OS support upgrades. With an Android device it's a complete guess. I could buy a Motoral Xoom from Amazon right now, but Google now no longer support OS upgrades to it.