New phone

[peterb]

It may be that your SD card isn't 'fast enough' to be adopted as internal storage. When I got my Moto X force, I tried to make the SD card adopted, it came up with a warning that the card 'may not be fast enough', I ignored it and hey presto, although no updates failed (I've got 32gb onboard) Swiftkey must have stored my personal dictionary in adopted storage, and it didn't work, so I went back to the traditional 'extra storage' method and just chucked my music on there.

Strangely, my nVidia Tablet X1 is only 16gb, but it's adopted the SD card with no issues. I did make sure I got a faster one, not sure if that was the reason, or if it's cos it's on 6.01, whereas my X Force is on 6.0. Anyway, with SD cards being quite cheap, why not try the fastest card you can and see if that fixes the issue?

It's a Sandisk ultra. I think I did get a warning (I wonder how much checking it does or if it's a standard warning) but it formatted OK and some applications do seem to be stored there. I do think it's a developer problem as much as an OS issue.

[Jonj1611]

A lot of what was happening with apps on my android device was it seemed to shift part of the app to the SD card and leave behind a portion of it on the phone, meaning the device was filling up regardless. Some apps had 65MB on the phone and 3MB on the SD card.

[Smudger]

It's a Sandisk ultra. I think I did get a warning (I wonder how much checking it does or if it's a standard warning) but it formatted OK and some applications do seem to be stored there. I do think it's a developer problem as much as an OS issue.

I've got a Sandisk Extreme in my tablet, it was on offer at Amazon, but that one did not come up with a warning, and has been fine as adopted. Could be a simple solution...

I think some apps are fine, but if it needs real time access to data (ie, a custom dictionary) it crumbles unless it's the fastest SD...

[peterb]

I don't use swiftkey (I tried it, it drove me insane - I find spell checkers and predictive text slows me down) so it wasn't that. There doesn't seem to be any logic as to which applications use it. I would have expected Googles apps to be OK, but they aren't.

[DanceswithUnix]

Just saw this, quite the eye catching display. Having 128MB of flash as standard should do me for now:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/201...ails-price-uk/

[cptwhite_uk]

It's also a 6.4" screen and 82mm wide....love the concept but it needs shrinking down to 5.5" or less for me to seriously consider it.

More details.
http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_mix-8400.php

[jim]

Worse, some of the apps I don't need/use/want are ones that Google wants me to have and can't be deleted.

You're aware that you can go into settings, apps, and disable apps that you don't want?

I do understand what you're talking about in your rant, though I find it intriguing that my iPhone annoys me about as much as your Android seems to.

[DanceswithUnix]

It's also a 6.4" screen and 82mm wide....love the concept but it needs shrinking down to 5.5" or less for me to seriously consider it.

More details.
http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_mix-8400.php

Yeah it is 9mm wider than my current phone. Could I live with that, hmm dunno. Had been considering the Xperia XA which is a bit smaller than my current phone, but at £220 it is hardly an impulse purchase.

[peterb]

You're aware that you can go into settings, apps, and disable apps that you don't want?

Oh, yes, I've done that, but it doesn't seem to free up much space...

I do understand what you're talking about in your rant, though I find it intriguing that my iPhone annoys me about as much as your Android seems to.

If you want to swap....

[peterb]

Well, I wandered into my local greengrocers this afternoon to look at the iPhone 7. I always thought the G2 was about as big a phone as I'd want, the 7 is a tad smaller, the 7+ a tad bigger, but it doesn't feel quite as large in the hand as I expected, possibly because it's thinner. (Downside is that it won't fit in the slip case I have for the G2.

Anyway, long story short...









I walked out empty handed









(But I think it's a case of when, not if... especially with the finance offers)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Because comparing a £500+ iPhone7 to a £100 to £125 Android phone is totally normal,especially when the later versions of the same phone now have double RAM and have 16GB of storage as minimum and a much faster SOC. It is also waterproof.

The 4th generation is even faster and my mate just upgraded from his first generation Moto G 3G to one recently and its been around different parts of the world.

Its like me buying a R9 285 2GB two years ago for £160 and then buying a GTX1080 for £500+ and saying Nvdia is 10x time better and AMD sucks since it couldn't run Deus Ex:Mankind Divided at qHD at decent framerates.

You are comparing a budget phone with one of the most expensive phones on the market. It makes me wonder if you had a much more expensive Android phone with more onboard storage whether you would be saying the same like my mates who had Nexus 4 phones for years.

One still uses his one which he bought at launch now four years ago,and the another two upgraded this year. One to a OnePlus2 and the other to a OnePlus3 and both cost less than the overpriced stuff from Samsung and Apple.

I updated my 1.5 generation 4G Moto G to a 3rd generation one earlier this year and the only problem it ever had with performance is when I tried to run Ingress and Pokemon Go at the same time during a very warm summers day and after an hour it hated me.

That old Moto G was given to a relative was an 8GB model. It was generally fine with the 16GB mSD card I chucked in,until they managed to destroy it.

Both my Moto G phones were pushed with geocaching stuff and games like Ingress in all weathers. They had hard lives and seemed to have done OK.

Edit!!

Also regarding my mates with iPhones.

Expecting a phone to last 4 to 6 years is not really go to happen especially with a cheaper phone. Its bad enough with £400+ phones.

I don't know a single person who has an iPhone 4(let alone a 4S) at all anymore. Apple is very stingy with system RAM,so in the end that lack of RAM condems the phone with newer and newer updates.

Yes,you can avoid updates but it leaves security updates,etc not installed on your phones.

Either they broke since they were fragile or the system updates made the phones slower and slower and slower.

In the end they caved in and bought another £500 iPhone.

The cheapest phone I know off which has maintained a degree of performance was the Nexus 4 which was around £250. At the time it had a 1080P screen and 2GB of RAM,and the latter has only recently become standard in lower end phones.

A mate is still using his after nearly 4 years,but even that is starting to show its age and he HATES UPGRADING.

With smart phones built in obsolescence is a given.

I tend to aim for two years from my phone and get the cheapest I can get away with.

But I will still spend less with more frequent updates.

The only modern phone I can see remotely lasting 4 years is the OnePlus3 due to its 6GB of system RAM.

System RAM and storage are the two areas which companies get you with. Then as time progresses the batteries start going and more and more newer phones make it harder for you to take the phone apart to replace it.

Look at how hard it is to take apart an iPhone or the new Google one??

No wonder - the whole market is geared towards the two year upgrade cycle since many are on contracts lasting that long.

[cptwhite_uk]

Just to note the Nexus 4 has a 1280 x 768 screen....my Nexus 5 is still doing me proud.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Just to note the Nexus 4 has a 1280 x 768 screen....my Nexus 5 is still doing me proud.

Oops.

[jim]

Oh, yes, I've done that, but it doesn't seem to free up much space...

No, it doesn't - but it should stop the update requests which was what I was referring to.

If you want to swap....

Trust me, if it was up to me I'd have been rid a while back. The once thing I'll concede is that it's useful when an app refuses to install on a rooted device, or the designer can't be bothered to release an Android equivalent. But not really great benefits.

[peterb]

I think for me it's the integration with the infrastructure. I have thought for a while that it's less about the platform and more about the infrastructure. As I'm now pretty much Windows free, it's either Google or Apple and Apple seems slightly better (because their business model isn't predicated on mining personal data).

Google Docs is better than Apple's equivalent, but I can use those from any platform. Apple's infrastructure is less open than Google (Google 's has to be open given it's business model) but that isn't a drawback for me.

[peterb]

Well, after an unexpected but fairly profitable contract, I bit the bullet and shelled out for an iPhone 7. Configuration was a doddle as I could download the apps I had on my iPad easily, and it picked up the passwords for wifi etc from the cloud, along with the passwords for websites etc. The only thing I really had to do was set up my mail accounts, and re-arrange the icons.

There are one or two things I miss about the Motorola, possible the settings screen, and the ability to set billing periods and limits for data use, but that is insignificant compared with the seemless mmessaging, the ability to answer calls on any device (not just the phone) and the fact that I only need to carry one device now, instead of two.

I don't miss in any way shape or form Google's pre-installed apps (although Apple has a few of its own - some useful, others not. Wallet and Home control are.

I take Cats point about comparing phones at two end of the price spectrum, one of the reasons I bought a cheap low memory device was the ability to add an SD card - but that was a disappointment - only a limited number of apps could be installed on the SD card, and even with the latest version which allowed the SD card to be integrated with onboard memory, it still didn't work properly. That may have been Motorola's implementation - but it didn't help me.

Would I have been happy spending a similar amount on a high end Android phone?

Probably not, I'd still be concerned about how Android had been implemented on the device, I'd still be using the same apps for core functions, and while they might have worked better on a better specified device, it would still have been a risk.

With iPhone, I knew in advance exactly how the core apps would work, so no awkward surprises or work rounds.

I will keep the moto, probably as a spare with a PAYG SIM.


To return to a previous theme, had I embraced the Google ecosystem, android tablet and phone, I might be raving about the seemless handover, perfect integration etc, but there isn't an Android desktop as such, (although there are the Google web based applications, and it could be argued that Chrome is the nearest thing to a Google desktop) and there is still the uncertainty of how implementations from different manufactures would work together. In theory they should be mutually compatible, but there doesn't seem to be any central quality control.

I am disappointed that I couldn't get the Android device to suit me, but it was worth the experiment. And of course, other people's mileage may vary!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread with hints, tips advice and comment.