Android Has Jumped the Shark

A year ago, I was so psyched about Android, I ran out and bought aMotorola Droid on Verizon Wireless. It was the first smartphone to run Android 2.0 which debuted tons of new features and services. Motorola put together a powerful device (fast CPU and high-res display) and left the software untouched so it was a pure stock Android experience. Working in the PCMag lab, I've spent the last year playing with the latest Android smartphones. I've noticed a trend—most manufacturers screw up Android by injecting it with non-removable customized interfaces and bloatware, and what's worse, they fail to provide proper software updates.

Unlike mobile operating systems from Apple, HP, or Microsoft, the Android OS is open-source, so every element can be changed by handset makers. And manufacturers want to make their Android smartphone look different than the competition's eerily similar offering. The thing is though, these changes rarely improve the user experience. The worst part is that since these customizations are permanently coded into the OS, they can't be removed without clever or tedious hackery.

Take the Motorola Droid X, for example. It's our Editors' Choice Android phone on Verizon Wireless. But to me, its Motoblur customization is useless and there's a lot of junk that runs in the background that sips battery life and reduces speed. Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan also conceded that the Droid X was one of the best Android handsets on Verizon Wireless, but in his review he describes the Droid X and its software as "ugly, scattershot, and confusing." He adds, "We've reached the point where custom interfaces on top of Android really don't do anything better than Google does. They're almost universally worse."

I couldn't agree more.

The best example I can show you of how confusing most customizations are is this comparison of the phone app between stock Android and Samsung's Android handsets. With Samsung's UI customization, called TouchWiz, answering the phone is literally a puzzle. I have no idea how to answer a Samsung Android phone.

Another huge Android problem is the lack of OS updates. But that's not the fault of Google. The company frequently updates Android, but it's up to the manufacturers to build the code and tailor the update to each handset. The most current version of the Android OS, 2.3, was released last December, but According to Google's data as of early February only 0.8 percent of Android devices were running Android 2.3, and just 57.6 percent had the previous 2.2 build, which was introduced back in June. That's pretty pathetic.

Computerworld put together an interesting report examining all the Android handsets released by the big four U.S. carriers between 2009 and 2010 and how quickly they were updated. The manufacturer that updated its handsets most frequently was HTC: roughly 50 percent of its handsets were upgraded to Android 2.2. Motorola came in second at 15.4 percent. Think about it. The manufacturer that achieved second best at delivering Android updates did so with just 15 percent of its handsets.

And the Computerworld report doesn't even address the fact that are three builds of the 2.2 version of the OS: 2.2, 2.2.1, and 2.2.2. That last build is the one you want, since it has the fix for the pesky bug that can send your text messages to the wrong people (!). I don't know of any Android handsets besides Google's own Nexus One that currently run Android 2.2.2—they're all at either 2.2 or 2.2.1.

When Apple releases an update for the iPhone, it's available for install that day. They're even still pushing out updates for the iPhone 3G from 2008. When Google releases a new version of Android, it's a waiting game to see if your manufacturer will offer an update for your handset.

As we saw at CES, Google's latest version of Android customized for tablets (3.0 or Honeycomb) looks fantastic on the Motorola Xoom. And that's because the OS is untouched. But I guarantee it'll only be a matter of time before Honeycomb Android tablets run into the same troubles that plague the Android smartphone market.

Here at PCMag, if we encounter a laptop or a desktop that comes with bloatware that can't be removed, or doesn't allow for regular software updates, we wouldn't recommend it. Period. So for me, come phone-buying time, I'm dropping out of the Android game, and checking out Apple, HP, or Microsoft handsets instead.