Poll: Best Mobile OS



  • Continuing the discussion from Poll: Do you have Discourse Syndrome:

    @codinghorror said:

    I can't wait until Apple introduces their 4.7" and 5.5" iPhone 6 and ditches their tiny jewelphone strategy. I will be dropping my Android phone experiment immediately at that point. Android is literally the Windows 3.1 of phones. It works, for the most part, but it's totally cobbled together.

    So, the best mobile OS is:

    • iOS < 7
    • iOS 7
    • Android (please elaborate on exact version below)
    • Windows Phone
    • Symbian
    • Firefox OS
    • Palm OS
    • Web OS
    • some other mobile OS @faoileag was too lazy to mention
    • whatever @blakeyrat deems to be the best mobile OS
    • OPERATING_SYSTEM_NOT_FOUND
    • I don't have a mobile phone, you insensitive clod!


  • I voted for the @blakeyrat option on the assumption that he would say WP8, which is what I have.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I'm sure my phone has some sort of an OS, but I have no clue what it is. Not a "smart" phone, obviously. Whatever Verizon would put on an LG Cosmo (Cosmos? something like that).


  • BINNED

    I wanted to answer iOS, the Cisco kind (Or is that only the routers? Does that Java atrocity on their phones have a name?). But then I noticed you specified "mobile"...

    Seriously, whatever I can customize the best. And I mean on the level of rooting the damned thing. So, currently Android, despite it's many flaws. Voted OPERATING_SYSTEM_NOT_FOUND though since Android is only barely good.


    Filed under: Member of The-I-hate-Cisco-club



  • I've never actually tried it, but MeeGo Harmattan looked promising.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av8_dQvwi-g

    Don't worry I'm sure Sailfish will start gaining users any day now.... 2015 will be the year of the Sailfish phone, you'll see!


  • BINNED

    <Qt fanboy alert>
    That thing looked freaking awesome! I wanted to buy that thing just for the OS!
    </Qt fanboy alert>

    And then they abandoned it... And switched to WP... bleh.



  • Missing option: They all suck.


  • 🚽 Regular

    Android is great. I now have a Note 3 running a ROM based on KitKat (4.4.2). It's very stable and I keep finding new features (they tend to be generally useful as well).

    Some of our work users have Windows Phones and those things are appalling. The UI is just confused. They seem to be reliable though one you get the things set up.

    Interestingly, the vast majority of the iThing users in the company are currently trying to jump ship to Android and WinPho.


  • BINNED

    @Cursorkeys said:

    Some of our work users have Windows Phones and those things are appalling. The UI is just confused. They seem to be reliable though one you get the things set up.

    I only poked around it very shortly, but it didn't seem that bad to me, objectively.

    Now, personally, I find anything but the tiled home screen (which is rather good IMHO) terrible, but that might be just me.

    Still, limited exposure, so my personal gut feeling may be right and it's genuinely bad, but I'm giving it the benefit of a doubt.


  • 🚽 Regular

    That's really interesting because I hated the tiled screen. I thought the information density was too low, it looks wrong.

    The menus were where I had the most trouble. It's all very monochrome and drab and isn't obvious what's click-able or even where the option you want might be. The iOS and Android menus just seem subjectively to be better laid out.

    Yeah, the only exposure I've had to them is setting them up, so it's first impressions only for me on WinPho and iOS.



  • I don't believe there is much availability of Firefox OS in the U.S. but I bet they will knock it out of the park (obviously you cannot do everything on mobile). I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 currently running Android 4.4.2



  • I got this one.

    I don't know if whatever it uses can be called an OS.



  • I really like Windows Phone, even though mine is ancient.



  • The best phone OS, no kidding, is Nokia Series 30, hands down.
    Nothing can beat my old trusty Nokia 1280 (I had a Nokia 1112 which was better but it got stolen).



  • I hate to say it but iOS. In theory I should like Android but I find that invariably its too-many options actually are a hindrance to me. I haven't found any options that I personally need in iOS that aren't there.



  • I used to think iOS was okay, then I had to write an iOS app. XCode and Objective-C have convinced me to never touch an Apple product for the rest of my life. Nothing is worth that hassle.


  • BINNED

    @dhromed said:

    I got this one.

    Is that one from the time before or after SE "dumb" phones became shit?

    I'd say after because the last good one I used was W800 but hey, might be an exception.



  • @Onyx said:

    Is that one from the time before or after SE "dumb" phones became shit?

    I don't know, this is my second phone since 2002 or thereabouts.



  • I voted Android, but not because it's the best, but rather the best one at not being the worst mobile OS.

    I particularly dislike the brokenness of the plah play store, but at least I can get rid of vendor crapware by flashing a custom ROM. It also has cheap phones which are not total crap spec-wise.

    I run CyanogenMod 11.



  • NewtonOS



  • @FILE_NOT_FOUND said:

    the plah store,

    Yeah, it's a bit plah.



  • I voted Android and don't have a version in general. Every version I have used so far has been fine at the time, with the only caveat being the moving target of phone hardware that developers try to focus on, while slowly leaving older phones that might be stuck on older versions of Android in the dust (or worse, keeping them on but still aiming their programs at the higher specced devices, which cause all sorts of issues with apps).

    While I do see iOS as being somewhat nice, there are quite a few things I dislike about it as a user, and quite a lot I dislike about it as a developer. And the problem I listed for Android isn't seemingly gone from iOS either (I have an iPad 2 and now, effectively every app I run causes every other app to "be unloaded", even stock iOS apps).



  • If you're seeing unloading of apps when you run things, that's because it's running out of memory.



  • That's my point. iOS is running out of memory running even stock apps, and that's a pretty shit UX, and they make it worse by showing the snapshot of the app when it went into the background to fool you into thinking it's fine, then it fades out to reload.



  • Not so much. iPad 2 debuted with an iOS 4 version... it's been 3 years since then, and we're on iOS 7.x by now - where everything's been made bigger and chunkier and the 512MB RAM just isn't enough.



  • That's my point.

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    keeping them on but still aiming their programs at the higher specced devices, which cause all sorts of issues with apps

    Building their apps as based on running on the new iPad which should actually be called the iPad 4 or 5 or whatthefuckeverwhydon'ttheynumberthesethings, when they keep the iPad 2 on the supported list (at least for now, they finally discontinued it for manufacturing this year) is pretty stupid. They want to keep the iPad 2 as supported, it should be their (Apple's) baseline. I can understand other apps maybe not supporting it as well, but Apple themselves?

    By the way, the iPad Mini 1 also has 512MB of RAM, and looks to be the same specs as the iPad 2, but it as far as I can see, isn't discontinued.


    Filed under: [Granted, I paid nothing for my iPad.](#tag2), [It was a bonus at my work.](#tag2)


  • You will pry Symbian S60 from my cold dead hands.

    OK, once my Nokia C5 dies, I'll be looking for something similar to Nokia 620 (preferably with better battery), or possibly something based on Sailfish OS (assuming somebody puts out a small phone running it).

    I dislike Android, but in my experience iOS is even worse. I need my phone for phonecalls, SMS messages, alarm clock (needs to be able to set multiple recurring alarms, so S40 is out), calendar and GPS, and right now my C5 does all of this decently (and the battery lasts around 5 days of normal usage).



  • I'm currently running Android 4.4.2 on my phone, and 4.4.3 (I believe) on a tablet. I'm able to manage everything just the way I want, and the OS mostly stays out of my way.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Some of those Sony Ericsson phones were rather nice at the time. Nothing like as complex as current phones, but did what they did without too much fuss and were comfortable in the hand. And with my typically only light usage, the battery would last a week without problems.

    I only got a new phone when the old one was physically wearing out, with the keys only sometimes registering presses and sometimes registering phantom presses too.


  • BINNED

    @dkf said:

    I only got a new phone when the old one was physically wearing out, with the keys only sometimes registering presses and sometimes registering phantom presses too.

    Pretty much the only thing I ever managed to kill on a Sony Ericsson phone: either the keyboard, or the * shudder * joystick.

    My sister managed to break the screen on one. That I gave her as a spare after I used it for like 2 years at least.



  • @dkf said:

    Some of those Sony Ericsson phones were rather nice at the time. Nothing like as complex as current phones, but did what they did without too much fuss and were comfortable in the hand. And with my typically only light usage, the battery would last a week without problems.

    True. I had a W200 and remember it fondly, even though it used MemoryStick instead of SD, so I was stuck with a 256MB card for a good while. For a music-oriented phone, it kinda sucked. Oh, and the display was pretty small, at 128x160.

    It was very sturdy, though (I gave it away eventually, but after 7 or so years even the case stays unchanged), and Opera Mini was the best mobile browser for reading text ever (at least on the pages where it didn't crap out and force you to scroll horizontally),

    And all the apps and games actually worked fairly fluently, which can't be said about my Xperia J - this thing has twice as much RAM as W200 had storage, and it still manages to shit itself in a messaging app on a cleanly booted system. And listening to music and browsing teh internetz at the same time? Pray you don't hit a more demanding webpage, or it'll OOM Winamp out of existence.



  • I don't have a smart phone and let me assure you it is no laughing matter.



  • @Nagesh said:

    I don't have a smart phone and let me assure you it is no laughing matter.

    For you, @Nagesh, this is a smart phone:


    Filed under: It's all relative.



  • Push buttons is 22nd century for me.



  • Well, you sure put me in my place. :(



  • that is a smart looking phone.



  • IT does the job of making call and receiving of calls.



  • @Nagesh said:

    IT does the job of making call and receiving of calls.

    Can it run Discourse?



  • @Keith said:

    Can it run Discourse?

    if(mind === blown){
    alert("TRUE")
    }else{alert("FALSE")}



  • @Nagesh said:


    if (mind === blown)
    {
    alert("TRUE");
    }
    else
    {
    alert("FALSE");
    }
    elseelse
    {
    alert("FILE_NOT_FOUND");
    }

    FTFY.

    Edit: I broke the quote :(



  • Needs more wooden table.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Code quoting doesn't work in quotes. Yep, it's DC's parser. 😡



  • if (mind.blown == true) {
       alert("TRUE");
    } else if (mind.blown == false) {
       alert("FALSE");
    } else {
       alert("FILE_NOT_FOUND");
    }
    

Log in to reply