I have a somewhat mixed history with smartphones. Initially, I didn't see the point in them at all and stuck with my flip-phone until sometime around 2011, my hesitation being mostly due to power concerns and not wanting my GPS, phone, calendar, and audio player running out of battery all at once. Needless to say I stopped caring about that issue and simply devised ways to prevent the device from ever running out of power. I clearly remember my first phone, the HTC Inspire. Sadly, that phone was released right before Android started to essentially require a dual-core processor; I only had about six months to a year of comfortable usage out of it before it was painfully obvious that the phone was not powerful enough for the operating system of the day.

In 2013, I switched to a Nokia Lumia 920. Call me crazy, but that has been without a doubt, the best phone I've ever had. Sure, Windows Phone had net to no applications and market share, but the build quality was excellent, the camera superb, and the battery life is still the longest of any phone I've owned to date. Sadly, the digitizer died on that phone in 2015 and due to the cost of the repair, I simply purchased a new phone. (Though if anyone wants a used Lumia 920 with a broken digitizer, contact me, I'm willing to sell. The phone still works amazingly otherwise).

My next phone was the Lumia 935, a budget phone I bought for $50. I discovered that Windows Phone shines on lower-end devices as there was virtually no difference in experience between my top-of-the-line 920 and the bargain-bin 935, save for a few luxury features such as an ambient light sensor to automatically change screen brightness. I intended for the 935 to be a hold-over until the eventual release of the 950 later that year, but that's not exactly what happened. The 950 eventually ended up being released, but at the absolutely insane price-point of $599. The closest competitor I saw as the Google Nexus 5X, for a measly $399 by comparison. Needless to say, I jumped ship for and was on Android once again.

Being back on Android made me realize an important thing: Android is incredibly open and yet incredibly closed at the same time. Time and time again, I came to realize that what I, and most people, think of as "Android" is actually Google's Ecosystem, and with each update the two become more and more difficult to separate. Quite possibly, the best example I can think of is Google Now. For the unaware, Google Now is a digital assistant and wrapper around Google's search engine. It can do many useful things such as tell you about flights, remind you to pay bills, and remind you to leave for appointments. To accomplish all of these tasks, it requires access to your email and calendar, however, there is no way to add a third party service for either of these. I have used Outlook for my calendar for many, many, years, even longer than Google has even had a calendar application and switching is too much work, but, Google Now simply cannot read a non-google calendar, and does not appear to have a way to add a remote calendar from their web interface.

This upsets me, since Android used to be hailed as the alternative to iOS where the user had control over their experience and Google used to embrace and support that. However, the Android of today is no different than iOS, with Google desperately trying to keep more more people in their walled-garden of services instead of supporting alternative as they once did. Perhaps I'll take the plunge and install a custom ROM in the future, but for now, I'll complain about it on the internet.