I repeat my statements earlier in this thread. The manufacturers are simply ruining Android. It's that simple. Here's an example (Bruno, you'll love this):

I have a new client with a small business who's email is done through a hosted Exchange account. This week she got rid of her old Blackberry and went with the HTC Thunderbolt because she's loyal to a Verizon franchise store, and because neither Verizon nor AT&T let their franchise** stores sell the iPhone for some reason, she went with the Thunderbolt. I probably would have suggested the same thing.

Well I certainly don't now.

Her Exchange account added just fine, and she can get her email and calendar items. The problem starts with contacts. MOST of her nearly 8000 contacts synced, but oddly some of her most-used contacts did not. Even with the ones that did, they were missing different pieces of info, like some would be missing one or all phone numbers, or a mailing address, and not a single one shows a second email address if it was entered.

Clearly, this is an enormous problem for someone running a small business who's making calls all day long. In addition to this, HTC has designed their dialer so that in order to call the person you want to, you either start typing their number or you spell it out using the 9-digit keyboard. That's right, it's a smartphone that came out this year that's expecting you to use a sort of T-9 system to find the contact you want to dial. What's worse? When you press the search hard button, it doesn't bring up a QWERTY keyboard where you can search for the person you want, no, it brings up instructions on how to use the 9-digit keypad to find the person. If it had been my phone I think I might have thrown it against a wall.

Now, just to make sure it wasn't a problem with the Exchange server or something, I decided I'd try it out on my own phone. I even went so far as to blow out my own contacts and stop all syncing so as not to risk any cross-contamination of data. I added her exchange account and waited an hour. Sure enough, the stock "Contacts" app (the HTC app is "People") was showing every single contact she was having problems with. It also showed every piece of information for every contact I looked up, including multiple email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers.

In order to go back to my client tomorrow with all the information I could muster, I looked into rooting the Thunderbolt and putting a replacement ROM on it. Turns out it's one of the less supported phones out there, and while the rooting process isn't the hardest around, it's not dead-simple.

Thankfully, I was treated to an incredibly rude a-hole on the AndroidForums who basically said "here's a link to the 23 different ROMs out there." Nevermind they all have names that look like the names of hacker BBSs, and I have no idea which one would be best suited to my client. Cyanogen, sadly, isn't ready for this device.


After this, combined with Tom's experience with his Samsung, I simply can't recommend nearly all Android phones to the average consumer right now. The Nexus S is fine, and for more advanced users so is any phone that will take a stable version of Cyanogen. Otherwise you're dealing with s**t that manufacturers put on their devices in an effort to differentiate themselves, but ends up ruining an otherwise wonderful platform.

I can't tell you how frustrated this makes me. It also solidifies my decision to wait until a new Nexus device is released (there's rumors of one at the end of the year).


**"Franchise" might not be the right word here. I'm not sure what you call these stores, but they're usually family-owned. There's an AT&T store in my home town that used to be a general cellular phone store, but went exclusive with AT&T. The owner was seriously pissed when AT&T wouldn't let him sell the iPhone.