Who-sane's

Yes, it’s very sad. I’m breaking up with Android.

Why am I ending this relationship?

First off, let me say, I love the Android OS and I will always think highly of it. I’ve been advocating it for the past three years now, and have even successfully converted several of my friends to the Android cult … but, well, enough is enough.

As an early Android adopter (having bought HTC’s G1 a week after T-Mobile launched it), I eventually got fed up of waiting for several important elements which Google has been turning a blind eye on since day one. And in this day and age of fast software development, three years is more than enough leeway for any company to listen and action its customers’ feedback, and it’s more important when the company has a large user base  in the Middle East that it’s ignoring, especially considering it’s one of the top three largest software companies in the world!

And as competition in the smartphone category grows fiercer every day, a lot of the Android’s unique features simply seize to be unique anymore, and the lack of support to a certain segment of your users, a large segment for that matter (there are more than half a million Blackberry users in the UAE alone!) becomes a problem, eventually forcing your supporters to look at other options.

This particularly applies to the Middle East (and perhaps other parts of the world). In any case, here’s my main reasons, which won’t come as a surprise to Android users:

Lack of Arabic support:

Since its inception, Android has not been supporting Arabic. Neglecting a large segment of your main stakeholders, your users, is today’s corporate cardinal sin. It’s simple integration of a language we’re talking about here: enable your users to read and write in their local language. Something all mobile companies have been doing for decades, so it can’t be rocket science! To me, this translates to a lack of respect for your Middle Eastern client base.

There has been, however, efforts exerted, individually though, by vendors such as Motorola, HTC, and others, to introduce Arabic into their Android devices, and they have been successful in doing so. But that is restricted to their mobiles and cannot be applied on other Android phones. And if you’re lucky and managed to download and install the Arabic software on your device, what happens when Google releases a new update? You can’t but sit and wait for your vendor to release the new update with Arabic support.

Android Market:

The Android Market, the equivalent of Apple’s App Store, is not available for users in the Middle East. It’s simply non-existent. If you’re one of the lucky ones who bought their mobiles from other parts of the world, like I did, you would have access to the Market. But even then, you won’t have access to paid or protected apps, which doesn’t leave you with a lot of options. The lack of an official Market has introduced SlideME, a half-decent alternative, but not as good or comprehensive as the Market.

Feeling more frustrated than the users are the app developers. These guys are the people who are keeping operating systems in the game (here’s Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, literally sweating his ass to stress, in his crazy Steve Ballmerish way, how important developers, developers, developers, developers, are). Those frustrated developers have wonderful products that users in several regions like ours (13 out of 46 countries to be exact) aren’t benefiting of, which ultimately means less revenue for the developers.

And you’d think Google would have a smart explanation for that, but it doesn’t. Users the world over filed complaints, filled online forums with inquiries and started online petitions, and still there’s no market! The only way to fully access the market is to root your device (the equivalent of jailbreaking an iPhone), which is a procedure  users shouldn’t have to do to be able to get the most out of their devices.

OS instability:

Google’s OTA (over the air) updates are great, only if they really work. See, Google has no clear and consistent method of sending its OTA updates, and users receive them in no specific order, leaving many with a serious case of update-envy.

Vendor control:

Android is an open-source OS, so companies can, and do, tweak the original code in an effort to make it unique to their brands. There is no streamlined strategy between the OS developer and the vendors. For example Motorola introduced MotoBlur, HTC has its HTC Sense, and Sony Ericsson, well, has rendered its Android devices beyond recognition.

This means that even if Google rolled out a new update, not all users will get the latest version of the software because it’s the vendor that ultimately decides when to send their users the latest update, after having to check whether it’s compatible with their phones or not. Fair enough, but that can get really frustrating when you’re a Sony Ericsson Android user stuck at the obsolete Android 1.6 version when everybody else is on 2.1 or 2.2. This also poses a difficult challenge to the already frustrated app developers, as they have to cater their apps to every single Android device out there.

It breaks my heart to say it, but, so long Android! I know I will miss you dearly, but I can’t go on with this one-sided relationship. Therefore, we must go our separate ways, for now.

I might come back when you get your act together and start respecting your Middle East fan base, but for now, I’m hooking up with an iPhone 4!

Related posts:

1. Why I love Android