"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 7:43 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
In reply to: "Last year's phone" by ewen
Parent article: Tasting the Ice Cream Sandwich

> nearly as locked in to phone manufacturer/telco

Only if you choose to buy a subsided phone.. nothing comes free. Buy an unlocked android phone like galaxy nexus.

> the lesser of two evils

If you consider and 98% closed source iOS lesser evil than a 90% open source system...

> I'd rather not give all my calendar/contact/etc information to any megaplex, kthx.)

No need to: https://android-client.forge.funambol.org/

Even better, you can actually build your own galaxy nexus aosp build without any apps that talk back to the google mothership. meanwhile, your iphone is still sending all kinds information to apple..

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 8:27 UTC (Wed) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link] (7 responses)

FWIW, the "lesser evil" was being locked in, rather than having data sync being via storage on servers out of my control.

Thanks for the pointer to non-Google data sync with Android. It's definitely useful to know that the situation has improved over 2-3 years ago when I was last making the decision (where AFAICT at the time it was "sync via Google, or no sync at all" -- neither of which was desirable).

Ewen

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 9:43 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (5 responses)

Again, this is simply not true. Data is local to the phone unless you give permission otherwise. The situation was identical 2 years ago when I bought a phone. The Google account part is strictly optional (although I expect most users to opt in, much like they are on Facebook).

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 9:58 UTC (Wed) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (4 responses)

The Google account really isn't optional if you want to use any of the features of the phone. Just to install apps from the marketplace^WGoogle Play requires you to set one up!

- Sent with disgruntlement from my HTC Desire

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 12:25 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

"Any of the features on the phone" is simply not true. The only thing missing is the Play Store, and of course any attempts to sync, chat, email or locate friends using the Google apps fails (but that's what desired in this case). Everything else works perfectly.

You can still make calls, send SMSes, use the GPS, use the browser, and install as many third party apps as your heart desire. What else could you want? I know I didn't run into any other limitation.

The fact that Google requires an account to use for example Latitude or Gmail is not something you can hold against Android. They don't offer Gmail anonymously on any platform.

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 12:40 UTC (Wed) by yaap (subscriber, #71398) [Link]

Having a Google account doesn't mean that all your information will be synchronized. You still have some control on what is synchronized and where. And depending on the kind of data, sync can use other services than Google's ones.

For example, my device is registered (for Market/Play access) but the only data seen from my Google account dashboard is the phone id and list of downloaded applications. There's no calendar information because I don't use Google calendar but my company groupware instead. Other services are equally blank as I don't use them either.

So there's some amount of granularity in what you want to show Google.
However I find the fact that the WiFi settings are sync'd puzzling. It doesn't show on the dashboard, but I'll be sure to try it when I get a cheap/small Android tablet end of this year (current tablets are too expensive for what I see as a couch potato device ;).

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 26, 2012 17:41 UTC (Sat) by djao (guest, #4263) [Link] (1 responses)

Apple iOS is no better in this regard. It's impossible to install apps from the Apple App Store unless you have an Apple ID.

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 26, 2012 19:12 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

It's actually a lot worse. Without iTunes you can't install apps at all on the iPhone. On Android you can at least install the apk-files directly from the web browser or a file manager. The only problem is getting hold of the package files, as many authors do not distribute their software outside Play, but for those that do (including all free software) it's totally painless.

"Last year's phone"

Posted May 16, 2012 20:03 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Hmm. There's the CalDAV Sync and CardDAV Sync programs that I've been using with my own davical install for a while. Email still needs to be migrated away from Google, but that's a larger issue than the Andriod side but K-9 is fine with IMAP sync. These apps work with my Incredible which is going on 3 years old now (though I now have/use a Galaxy Nexus).