Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Cellphones

Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? 484

Posted by Soulskill from the your-dad's-flip-phone-is-pretty-stable dept.
janimal writes: The iPhone used to be the smartphone that "just works." Ever since the 4S days, this has been true less and less with each generation. My wife's iPhone 6 needs to be restarted several times per week for things like internet search or making calls to work. An older 5S I'm using also doesn't consistently stream to Apple TV, doesn't display song names correctly on Apple TV and third party peripherals. In short, as features increase, the iPhone's stability is decreasing. In your opinion, which smartphone brand these days is taking up the slack and delivering a fully featured smartphone that "just works"?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? More

Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days?

Comments Filter:

  • Is it the phone or the stupid stuff installed on i (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DeadlyFoez ( 1371901 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:03PM (#49552293)
    Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes.. Blaming the user for shitty software...

      Iphone is pretty well gardened up.. doubt the apps are causing the shitness

    • Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.

      I vote for stupid stuff. My Droid M works fine for two or three days after reboot but gradually gets slower and slower until the touch screen no longer responds.

      But I don't play games, and the only games on the device are the bloatware installed by the carrier. I suspect that the device's entire problem is related to bloat.

      • Millions of slashdot arguments flared up in Rage at that statement :) After all, Micro$oft security problems was well established on /. to be the fault of the OS - and not what the user did....

        I've never had any issues with my Galaxy S5 - but then again, I shut apps off and discard them instead of installing stuff.

      • Your vote and your actions don't line up. You blame "stuff" but don't play games (and likely don't randomly install new stuff every few days).

        Isn't this obviously a memory mgmt/memory leak issue?

        I see tons of this on desktops/laptops -- Chrome, you are currently #1 on the hit list. Why can't it be even more prevalent on the newer platform of smartphones? That don't make it easy to bring up a Task Manager and study the memory usage of applications.

    • Re:Is it the phone or the stupid stuff installed o (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @09:58PM (#49552951) Homepage Journal

      A little less blame on the owner, and a little more blame on the carrier? How much genuine crap comes pre-installed on a carrier subsidized phone? I'm talking about genuine worthless crap, that does and gives nothing of value to the end customer, the owner who pays for the phone.

      The phone is regarded by the carrier as a tool, with which to keep track of the chattel, or the sheeple. Again and again, the carriers are exposed for their overzealous data collection. And, for the most part, people aren't able to turn these "features" off, unless they are willing to invest some time in research, then risk voiding their so-called warranties.

      Yeah, end users are mostly dumb clods, but the carriers are responsible for a lot of the problem.

    • and blame Gracenote for the song and album cover screwups. that's who Apple uses.

    • Re:Is it the phone or the stupid stuff installed o (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Sunday April 26, 2015 @12:18AM (#49553431)

      Every phone seems to have this same issue, but it is not the phones fault. It's the fault of what the owner installs on it. My wifes galaxy mega was great at first, but now that she has all these stupid games installed it is buggy and needs to be restarted regularly.

      Blaming applications for screwing up the system is not an acceptable answer in my book. The OS should be capable of gracefully withstanding abuse from user land without freaking out. If it can't it deserves to be called out for its failure.

  • Hands down (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:04PM (#49552295)

    Windows Phones (at least the Lumias).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by JawzX ( 3756 )

      Agreed, the last time I restarted my 928 was because it ran out of Battery. Before the 8.2(denim) update I had some cell-radio failures every once in a while that required a restart to resolve, and camera freak-outs with failure to reinitialize auto exposure, but since the update it has "just worked" all the time, every time, Apps may crash but the system stays up, all feature work as advertised, and it's tough as nails too. I may be moving to an Icon soon, I certainly WILL NOT be getting an Android or iOS

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 )

      Windows Phones (at least the Lumias).

      Yup. My next phone will be a Windows Phone. I'm so fucking sick of Android.

    • I've got the HTC M8 One running Windows, and quite honestly, I don't think I've ever rebooted it

  • Blackberry. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by damnbunni ( 1215350 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:06PM (#49552313) Journal

    No, seriously. Blackberry OS 10.3 is pretty damn solid. I don't have any issues with system stuff crashing on my Q10.

    I do have some apps crash, but that's the app developer's problem. Not much the OS vendor can do about that.

    I initially got a Blackberry because I wanted a hardware keyboard, and couldn't find an Android with a good one. However, after using the Q10 for a while, I would hate to go back to Android even with a good keyboard - I really, really like the Hub and the way gestures work.

    Blackberry's voice assistant isn't as flexible as Google's or Apple's, so that might be an issue for you. It works well within what it's designed to do, though.

    Apps can be an issue. Usually for anything I want an app for there's one or two apps, probably paid, versus thirty free ones in the Google Play store. I can access the Amazon Appstore for Android (comes with the OS) and sideload Snap, which lets me use the Google Play store, but the phone lacks some Android services so a good chunk of apps don't work. The Android runtime's pretty solid, so the apps that don't need Play Services work well.

    • I'd say the OnePlus One which comes with CyanogenMod already. No extras, no gop, all the good parts of Android without extras, it just works and is less expensive. https://oneplus.net/one [oneplus.net]

      Otherwise, any of the phones that have CyanogenMod available for them, but that requires the user download and click an app along with running windows software to install, so easier to just buy the phone that uses it directly.

      • My experience with CyanogenMod is pretty negative, both on a Tmobile G2 (Desire Z) and Galaxy SII.

        It wasn't too bad on the G2, though I had random app closes, but on the SII it's horrible. The dialer can't even make calls reliably. I switched that phone back to the stock ROM last week.

        • Part of the problem with Cyanogenmod is that very late (recent) versions of Android are available for phones which can barely run them. I have an OG Motorola Droid A855 (the very first Android phone) and you can get Android 4.4.2 for it! I tried it and it runs so horribly slow that it takes about 30 seconds to respond to each button press. I backed down to CM 10.1 and it is MUCH more responsive. It still gets stupid and slow as in everyone else's experience, but it will run acceptably for a few days bef

    • I initially got a Blackberry because I wanted a hardware keyboard, and couldn't find an Android with a good one.

      Interestingly, just the other day I found this. [gearbest.com] I wonder how good it is.

    • Blackberry OS is like Android in that it doesn't prioritize the UI thread, so it suffers from lag issues. I can attest to the lag with my Z10.

    • I'm about 6 months into driving a Passport [engadget.com].
      I am pretty happy with it, I do like the larger screen when I need to read spreadsheets, email is well thought out, the "keyboard + touchpad" is clever.
      Haven't noticed it crashing like my last android (HTC One).
      Some Android apps easily available from the Amazon app store.
      Built-in map navigation was hard to use, adding google maps helped.
      The only thing I really miss is having the Uber app... but I'm getting by with traditional taxis (which is fine for work trav

    • How does the battery life compare to whatever smartphone you had previously (if your previous phone was a smartphone)?

  • Just works? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:07PM (#49552315) Homepage Journal
    What does "just works" even mean? Do you want it to be able to reliably make phone calls without having to worry about software failing? Get a non-smart phone.

    If you want a "reliable" smart phone that doesn't need reset or suffer stupid ass software failures, get one of those $50 Samsung android smart phones. They are pretty reliable because they can't do much to begin with.

    If you want a top of the line, super-newest-version, can-serve-as-my-PC smart phone, you are going to have issues, just like every other computer doing complicated tasks does.

    • > If you want a "reliable" smart phone that doesn't need reset or suffer stupid ass software failures, get one of those $50 Samsung android smart phones.

      Some of them don't have a forward-facing camera, but generally speaking they have the same OS as the lastest and greatest from Samsung, and can do *everything* that any other Android phone can do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tmosley ( 996283 )
      "They are pretty reliable because they can't do much to begin with."

      What can you do with a more expensive one that you can't do with a cheap one? My $100 Android seems to be able to run every ap I have downloaded. But then, I don't use it to play games, either.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Clsid ( 564627 )

        For one, typing in the small screens is awful. Second, most of those models come with pretty bad touchscreens, both for display and for the touchscreen component (meaning non-capacitive). And the camera is mostly there to say that you have a camera, because those will take you back to the dark ages of digital cameras. So there are some trade-offs that are justified only when you see it in the money saving context.

    • If you want a "reliable" smart phone that doesn't need reset or suffer stupid ass software failures, get one of those $50 Samsung android smart phones. They are pretty reliable because they can't do much to begin with.

      Huh? This makes no sense. If they're Android, they can do an incredible variety of stuff. Being low-end, they might not do it well, but they should run pretty much every Android app out there. If they "can't do much to begin with", they're not Android.

    • What does "just works" even mean? Do you want it to be able to reliably make phone calls without having to worry about software failing? Get a non-smart phone.

      Ha! I had a number of "non-smart-phones" back in the late 90's and early 00's. After a while they'd develop some sort of problem that destroyed their usefulness. Sometimes it was general software crappery, occasionally it was something like the battery door had come loose and it'd jostle in my pocket and shut it down. On too many occasions I looked at the display, everything seemed okay, but it turned out the phone was frozen and needed the battery removed to be rebooted. I could not rely on these phone

  • WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:08PM (#49552323)

    Is this a joke? Paid corporate fodder?

    You spew some anecdotal crap about iOS becoming less stable over time and then an almost rhetorical question about an alternative "fully featured smartphone that just works". The iPhone and Apple eco-system is the fully featured system that just works. If you're having a bad time now, don't even bother with Android -- just give up and get yourself and your wife some flip phones because the problem is the user not the OS or device.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As a long time Apple fanboy (my computers are all Macs, and I've had every iPhone ever made except for the 3G and the 6 Plus)... iOS has definitely lost any claim it had to being the king of stability. I had far fewer problems with my Moto X than I've had with the iPhone 6 I have now. It's been so bad that I'm seriously contemplating ditching this phone and getting a new Moto X. I wanted to get back into the Apple ecosystem for some convenience features, but it wears on me having to reboot the phone ever

      • Your experience sounds very unusual. This can't be normal, or everybody would be screaming. Maybe you just have a lemon phone. It happens, and Apple should make it right. It's got a year of Apple Care. Fix the phone, rather than bitch about it.

        • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Funny)

          by umdesch4 ( 3036737 ) on Sunday April 26, 2015 @01:44AM (#49553611)
          You know, the odd thing is, every single person I know with an iPhone (too many to count, dozens perhaps?) has all kinds of strange problems with it that they feel compelled to tell me about, I guess because I'm "IT guy". They all say the same thing. It must be just them, because otherwise, everybody would be screaming. My assumption is that there is something severely wrong with iPhone owners.

    • I was having the same problems described here with my iPhone. I've been with Apple since smartphones became a thing, but last year I became tired enough of the iPhone bugs that I decided to switch to an Android. I went with the HTC One M8 and there definitely was a learning curve, but it's definitely more stable. No more rebooting it to make it work. It just works.

      I believe there was a time when the iPhone was more stable and easier to rely on, but that time has definitely past.

  • No problems with iPhone 6 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pghmike4 ( 4093035 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:38PM (#49552441)
    Actually, I'm pretty happy with the iPhone6: it just works. I'm on T-mobile, and I doubt I've had to restart it to get it to work more than 3 times since I got it in September 2014. My wife has had the same experience -- she can't recall ever having to restart it to get it to work.

  • The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:41PM (#49552447)
    Your wife's iPhone needs to be looked at. Your 5S is streaming even higher res video to another device on a WiFi network (it couldn't be the home network - nah, impossible) yet here you are, putting a trend line on something with two data points. Yeah. That's how it's done.

  • Wireless Networking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @07:41PM (#49552453)

    In my experience many problems can be attributed to networking. Most wireless routers have crap support for device discovery. I have some WNDR3700 routers are they were constantly requiring reboots. The only solution was to install a basic OpenWRT firmware - then they were great.

    So when a device can not connect to another, or freezes when communicating over the network - check your wireless network. Many problems that are realized on portable devices can actually be tracked back to other devices entirely.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      In my experience many problems can be attributed to networking.

      Same here. I had no end of problems with my old Buffalo running Tomato, needing a wifi base station reset once every few weeks. In the end I switched to an Airport Extreme base station. It hasn't failed once in over a year. I'm so happy with it that I bought one for my parents too.

  • Give it another 2-5 decades and that quality-level may be reached. At this time, the smartphone software makers are just making all the mistakes that have been made on desktops.

  • I have an iPhone (5c) and a Samsung Galaxy (5s) for private use in different parts of the world, and both are pretty unstable. The phone I have that "just works" is my Blackphone.
    The caveat there, though, is that the two private phones have a fair amount of crap installed on them, both by myself and the carrier. The Blackphone has just the basic corporate and productivity tools.YMMV though, as a couple of colleagues with Blackphones have had problems with them.

    However, my overall view from fairly recent fac

  • IPhones (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @08:03PM (#49552543)

    You're not kidding about iPhones (or rather iOS) becoming less stable.

    I've got an iMac, Macbook Air, iPad Mini 2 and iPhone 6 Plus, all in daily use, and it was a godsend to me when Yosemite and iOS 8 introduced handoff and full AirDrop support. Except... it only works randomly. One minute the iPhone can see everything but nothing can see it. Then it can only see the iPad but now the iMac can see the iPhone.

    I regularly need to transfer screenshots from my iPhone to my Mac and I used AirDrop for about a week, but then it stopped working and hasn't worked since.

    When it first stopped working, I started using Cloud Share and uploading all the screenshots to the cloud so I could then download them on the Mac... but there's always one file missing. No matter how many screenshots I transfer, if n>1 then only n-1 turn up on the Mac.

    Honestly over the past couple of months I've lost confidence in Apple. There's no point adding these great features if they don't actually work. And in my experience, Apple features that don't work never get fixed. New features seem to be more about marketing than actual usability.

    • Odd. I had a couple issues with the first release of iOS 8 and Yosemite as far as Handoff, Continuity, and Airdrop goes, but since some later update it's been rock solid. I use airdrop all the time between various iOS device and Macs and haven't had any issues for ages. Same with continuity. I don't find handoff very useful so haven't really tested much.

    • Re:IPhones (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ahabswhale ( 1189519 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @09:11PM (#49552771)

      If you think it's any better with Android, you'd be sorely mistaken. After installing Lolipop on my SGS5, it's performance went to complete shit and the battery life is abysmal (even with a brand new battery). I was able to fix the performance problem by doing things no user should have to do but I'm still working on the battery issue. And my experience is hardly anecdotal. Do some googling and you will find this is happening to A LOT of people.

  • I am very happy with my LG Transpyre. It works on Verizon Wireless and I picked it up for a whole $76 at Wal-Mart. This phone seems to be super stable even though it is low budget. It actually has Corning Gorilla Glass and a quad core processor. It runs Android KitKat quite well and does everything I need it to. I've been using it now close to 6 months without any issue.

  • Any of the mid- high-end Lumias (Windows Phone) (Score:4, Informative)

    by ianbnet ( 214952 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @08:05PM (#49552551)

    If Windows Phone has anything going for it, it's stellar speed and stability. My Lumia 930 and my wife's Lumia 830 are rock solid and fast - always. If the majority of your time is spent on the basics -- phone, text, email, web, facebook, netflix, games etc - it's the best platform out there.

    That said, the OP's question of "Fully Featured" and "Just Works" are pretty tough to reconcile. Most iPhones I have used or see are less stable than the Lumias -- but they can do more, through their app catalog and integration across Apple's vertical ecosystem. [Insert favorite Android model here] is going to be more capable than anything else out there, but it's been a long time since I've seen an Android distribution that didn't lose control of background tasks and require a fair amount of overhead to keep the thing functional. Windows Phones are definitely more stable and consistent over time, but they don't today have the long tail of apps that Android has or the guarantee that everyone is going to support them that Apple has.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikaere ( 748605 )
      I have a Lumia 920, and it is very solid. The basic work great, and I think the interface is way more intuitive than the icon-laden Androids and iPhones.

  • Seriously, I restart my samsung a few times a day just to prevent problems from occurring in the first place.

    If you can prevent problems, then you don't have problems. Stop complaining.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      Your paranoia of rebooting your phone several times a day is an illness. Your advocation that this is necessary is ridiculous. Your assertion that when we buy expensive products we should all adopt sheep-like acceptance of low-quality and functional issues without even complaining is just downright insulting and retarded.

  • Poster is an Idiot (Score:5, Funny)

    by sonicmerlin ( 1505111 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @08:31PM (#49552639)

    Dude, your wife's iPhone is broken. Go take it to an Apple store and get it fixed you tool.

  • Why, the ones with the biggest lithium batteries, of course.

  • Reboot? A phone! (Score:4, Informative)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @09:30PM (#49552861) Journal

    Galaxy Note 2 been going strong for about 3 years, I don't recall it ever crashing, I think I may have rebooted it a couple of times for obscure reasons - big OS update and me messing with phone. I've never noticed any slowdowns or quirkiness after time. Used lots to browse web and play games and use map apps.

    Some people are jinxed I swear.

  • 1. Apple's iOS compares quite well, but if you want to maximize stability be cautious about updates until there are some reports (some of the 7.x and 8.x releases were clunkers, though the current 8.3 seems quite good now), and turn off features you don't need, especially the privacy-invading ones.

    2. Blackberry. They're still around, and they're rather solid -- provided the device is. (Some of their devices have been clunkers, others solid. Again, take a look at consensus reports.)

    3. Nokia/Microsoft S40 d

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • N900 (Score:2)

    by dbIII ( 701233 )
    It got stuck and needed a reboot two or maybe three years ago and has been rock solid since. Still nothing viable to replace it without having to use two separate devices.

  • It's a Samsung Note 3. I didn't install 3rd parties utilities. I mostly use Samsung and Google software. I stream on my chromcast without problem.

    Before this I had a S3, same good performance. I change it because of a broked usb port (don't buy cheap cable.) anyway I installed QI wireless charging... best thing to do.

    My son have a Samsung ace 100$ with 1 mounth service from Walmart. not fast, but no problem so far.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close