I don’t want ro ‘spoil’ the release announcement thread, as there has been no major problems with the update process itself. Plus, many vulnerabilities have been adressed and the integration of 5G on top of restructuring the basis for future versions surely deserve some appreciation.
However in my perspective the way how the efforts have been managed are no longer in range of a customers expectation for years now. As a result, updates are working in itself but do not contain fixes or quality improvements the user is relying on. This all started with the lack of VoLTE support back in the day: It simply broke the main feature of a phone in some countries, where 3G was switched off and only a weak 2G signal was available. Those were horrible days. I expect from a vendor that such things are adressed in advance. We’re not talking about a weather app integration, we talk about the ability to make phone calls on a phone. This as essential as it gets.
Moving on, the fix was to implement VoLTE as a beta which saved it in a way, but then again: ‘beta’ with all of its downsides… One of which: Sending sms messages is no longer working when VoLTE is activated. This issue still persists today and reminds me that it’s not done yet.
On top comes now the 4.6 release which brings back android connectivity issues for mobile networks, ironically described as ‘fixed’ in the ‘known issues’ document by version 4.5. In fact, this wasn’t even quite true as it happened from time to time with 4.5 versions, but it was at least tolerable. Now it’s getting worse again. It also affects the mobile hotspot function: I constantly need to toggle mobile data now several times on a daily basis.
I refuse to believe that these are ‘unsolvable’ problems. I can also see that there are people working hard for the forthcoming of their product. What I criticize here isn’t the effort, nor the knowledge. It’s the guidance. Somehow in time this company has -at least in parts - lost focus in serving it’s customers. And as essential functions are not addressed or aren’t tested thoroughly enough before roll-out for years, I can only assume there is a decision making process behind it. Someone seems to say something like “we have already 13 iterations of the new release: It’s time to roll-out!”, ignoring the fact that some parts still need further testing and - as it turns out now - obviously: fixing.
So I’m very reluctant to say the least, when it comes to the monthly paid license services. If the guidance or decision making is not changed regarding essential functionalities of a mobile phone OS, more money won’t do anything. It can help in general to keep the company alive, for sure, and I’m all for that. But when it only fuels the strategy I feel lost and unimportant with, I can’t see any value in that to support it actively.