So I’ve had my HTC Desire HD mobile phone since it was released in October 2010. As I’m not one to follow trends, line an arrogant company’s pockets and make a fashion statement by opting to buy an iPhone 4, the HTC Desire HD really was the obvious choice for my next phone. Overall, I have to say it’s a brilliant piece of kit. Android is really easy to use and it does everything, well almost everything you ask of it very well. Then HTC put their spin on Android , they produced a device that really gives the iPhone 4 a solid competitor.
However, as I said before, I’m not one to follow trends, but I’m also not one who likes arrogant companies like Apple, and now Google. How can I say Apple is arrogant? Well easy! They charge an arm and a leg for a device that will only be good for 6 months to a year (if you’re one that follow fashion trends) before they replace it with “Version 2”. To make it worse, they don’t even give you an option to change simple things like the battery. However, this post is not to slam Apple, as I use a MAC myself with Final Cut Studio, a software package that is very powerful, easy to use, and compared to similar products from other vendors, rather cheap (and we all know the cheap word and Apple don’t go together all too often). No, this post is to slam Google for not listening to its customers when all we want to do is keep your text messages once we have received them.
Yes that’s right! All I want is for my text messages to live happily ever after on my Android device after I have received them! Is that too much to ask from a mobile device? For a 10 year old Nokia device that’s been dropped, kicked and lived life to its fullest? No problem. For a brand new Android device? Well, that could be a problem.
Many people, including non technical people will be asking why someone would be complaining about a new, state-of-the-art device’s functionality surrounding the rather ancient technology known as Text Messages and also known as SMS messages. But I have to say, it is rather annoying if your shiny new, all-bells-and-whistles mobile phone (or for you guys in the America, Cell Phone) randomly decides to delete all of your text messages. What’s more annoying than that is when it happens for a second time two months later. What’s even more annoying than losing more than a thousand text messages over a period of 3 months is the fact that the great search engine giant responsible for the Android operating system, Google doesn’t seem to be bothered about the issue. At first, I thought it’s an issue that only affects the HTC Desire HD handset, but a quick search on Google revealed that the issue affects most, if not all Android devices.
My mobile phone have now on two occasions randomly decided to delete all of my text messages! How? Well easy! I decide to send a text message, and when I open Text Messages on my phone, all my messages are gone!
When this happened to me again last night, I decided that I’ll jump on Google.com and have a look if anyone else is having the problem. Sure enough. It turns out that the issue has been around for a very long time. Many people have complained about losing thousands of text messages and in some cases photos and contact information and this has been going on since 2009.
The issue, known on Google Code forums as issue 5660, has been around for more than a year. Since 26 December 2009, a whopping 959 posts of complaints have been made regarding this problem on this forum thread: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5669
Yes, that’s right. People have been losing data on their handsets for more than a year and Google still hasn’t replied, or to my knowledge even acknowledged that there is an issue.
When Apple launched their iPhone 4, the entire world kicked up a fuss surrounding a small issue where the phone had signal problem in certain cases. That, in my book isn’t an issue compared to data loss. However, the peeps at Apple were forced to respond with advice on how to fix the issue as it was a media frenzy. Now my question is.... WHERE IS THE MEDIA FRENZY on this one? Why is Google allowed to get away with not listening to their customers.
You know what. Everyone out there, if you are unsure on what the next mobile phone you would like to buy, BUY AN iPhone. Don’t buy an Android device. Google doesn’t deserve your support as clearly we, the consumers and users of their operating systems isn’t important enough for them to care. It’s a sad day, as I love my HTC Desire HD, but in reality, until they fix the issue surrounding data loss, I cannot trust it with ANY of my data at this point in time.