Smart Phones

For the most part, they don't run Windows. ;-)

Amazing how reliable computing can be when the software that can be installed is all digitally-signed and certified by a central authority, doesn't have a backward-compatibility requirement for some x86 ISA out of 1987, and the OSes are derived from the Linux or Mach kernels, which were written with some intrinsic notion of security.

hardware is less reliable, my phone had the focus motor on the back camera stuck for 4 months, but then it came good again. then the magnetometer, and now after falling on it again also the accelerometer quit

software is a walled garden so that helps a bit wirh quality.

Hardware it's a portable device, it will get dropped, knocked, etc. frequently.

You're unlikely to get an unbiased response

--
This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software

I've had my current Android smartphone for over a year, and I can think of maybe one occasion where the whole system was brought down by a misbehaving app. And it's not even running a particularly modern version of Android (4.4.4).

Out of curiosity, do you get any requests to fix Chromebooks? Chrome OS is somewhat similar to Android on smartphones.

I get those questions fairly often, mostly on iPhones. If they're simple, I do my best. If not, I don't bother doing the research and send the owner to the Apple Genius Bar, which usually can fix the problem, but rarely supplies a coherent explanation of what they did to fix the problem in case it happens again. Android is much easier because for every common problem, there are usually a dozen YouTube videos on how to fix it, usually by a 15 year old.

I have a few friends and customers that carry two smartphone. You must live in a 3rd world county.

You forgot one. Users assume that smartphones are simple and easy to use. Advertising, showing kids, slackers, the jet set, upper management, and public personalities, few of which are blessed with a technical background, reinforces this impression. Users are also brain-laundered into believing that smartphones are so simple that there couldn't possibly be something wrong with the service, hardware quality, software, or firmware. If something doesn't work, or can't seem to be done, it must be the users fault. If they went to you for assistance, it would be like admitting that they are clueless and somehow deficient in the ability to operate such a simple device. So, they suffer with the bugs and config problems, secure in the knowledge that none of their friends know that they had considered asking for help on a smartphone. Perception is everything.

Yes. The usual questions on smartphones that I get are dealing with email problems, which usually are major. Last week, I had to deal with a customer that had 50,000 emails saved on the IMAP4 server. Same with the common "trash can" that had never been emptied. The rest are usually how to do weird and ridiculous things, which are usually solved by offering a more sane alternative.

1. Because people try to do things on their smartphone that are best done on a laptop or desktop. Tablets are kinda half way, with the worst characteristics of both smartphones and laptops.
2. Because people often leave the water running, and don't notice until there's a flood. Mostly, this applies to email, but also to streaming music running in the background, subscriptions to high traffic mailing lists, and notifications from hell. On a smartphone, notifications are similar to advertisements and are a real PITA.
3. Because people tend to scale problems by the size of the machine involved. Desktops are big, and therefore have big problems. Smartphones are small, and therefore have much small problems. The smaller smartwatches were suppose to have even fewer problems, but vendors couldn't resist the temptation to throw in more than just the kitchen sink, and turn it into an unusable mess.
4. Because smartphones are highly personalized, far more than desktops and laptops. In effect, they become an extension of the users personality or their "Personal Digital Assistant". I find myself operating at reduced functionality when I forget mine at home. The convenience of having most of my important information on hand has become addictive to many, causing users to panic when something doesn't work right. Android is quite good at recovering from such situations. Apple, not so good. You're not seeing smartphone problems because your friends and customers haven't become totally addicted to smartphones, yet.
5. Because smartphones are now a fashion statement. My guess is that you're not into fashion, cool, or trendy, and therefore are not a good person to ask for information on the latest and greatest fashion accessory, the smartphone.
6. Because smartphones are commonly and often mishandled, even by the most careful users. I get broken screens, broken connectors, broken switches, broken chargers, broken MicroSD slots, broken BT keyboards, broken battery connections, etc. If it's user accessible, it will break. I've become fairly adept at replacing the MicroSD receptacle on the smartphone main board. Replacing screens vary from easy to impossible. I usually check online to determine the difficulty before trying.
7. Jailbreaking and rooting phones is in a class by itself. In general, a user with such phones will produce an endless string of minor problems, all because of the side effects of breaking the factory security. I help by doing the research, but find excuses not to do the actual work.

I can go on forever, that should suffice.

The only problems I take seriously are security issues. Theft of the address book by apps is the most common. It's fortunately not very common among smartphone problems. The rest is a question of how much the customer is willing to pay. Often, they do not want to separated from their smartphone for very long, so I temporarily move the account to a loaner phone, until the parts arrive and the repair is done.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I'm reasonably sure no one really "certifies" anything (in terms of attesting to its quality/reliability/etc.). Rather, it's just a way of controlling who can push apps to phones.

That suggests the security model is lacking in a big way. I've not seen an "application" crash a Windows machine (of mine) since pre-W2K (though I have seen hardware errors bring the kernel to its knees by its refusal to panic()!)

I suspect most phone apps have no need to even THINK about the hardware so can't affect anything beyond their own (contained) execution environment. Not so in the PC world where you have folks designing video cards, USB/FW peripherals, etc. -- all needing driver access to the system.

No. I don't know anyone who owns one! Tablets/iPads (which I "beg off"), laptops/toughbooks, desktops, servers. I've avoided Mac's and phones, successfully!

I don't think there are many "complex" apps on phones (for typ users). And, I don't think people expect to interact with their phones for "challenging" work.

I had a cute little slide phone (despise the "soft" keyboards) that had stripped down versions of Excel and Word installed. I can possibly see someone using one of these to open/view an email attachment. But, I can't really see someone sitting down and designing/populating a spreadsheet on a 2.5" screen!

OTOH, it was handy for checking email and some limited web sites (esp as it was tiny enough to fit in a pocket without sticking out like an oversized candy bar -- and just as fragile)

From my (brief/limited) examination of the sorts of apps that run on phones, they tend to be very trivial things -- almost "weekend projects" in terms of logical complexity. Not the sort of thing that you'd be "exploring in depth" or for any significant amount of time.

I long ago came to the conclusion that phones exist for the convenience of the CALLER. Even moreso with cell phones (note how surprised folks get if you don't answer on the second ring: "Where WERE you??").

[Note how incapable most folks are to "break their conditioning" -- Pavlov chirps their phone and they're reaching for it before even considering *why* they should be reaching for it ("Oh, someone wants to tell me something! I must obey...")]

I keep an iPhone (w/o service) in the car as a "911 phone", camera, portable wifi email/WWW client, calculator, etc. I certainly wouldn't want to feel obligated to carry it on my person! Or, have it with me at all times (for the convenience of folks who want to get in touch with me). :>

[If *I* want to contact someone, I'll send an email -- knowing they can read it and reply at THEIR convenience *or* visit face-to-face. Unlike the "instant gratification" generation that expects their questions answered almost as soon as they pop into their heads, I can think about what I want to ask and how I want to phrase it -- in the time between the thought occuring to me and the time I act on it]

I don't have that sort of a relationship with my friends/neighbors (nor colleagues). There's no pretense in our relationships. I don't try to leave the impression that I can do thoracic surgery -- nor operate a back hoe. Likewise, they don't claim to know (or even understand) what *I* do. If so, why would we need each other?!

IME, people seem to just use this sort of thing as an excuse to "upgrade" or change providers. I inherit a fair bit of "broken" kit that often isn;t REALLY broken -- someone just wanted to make that claim as a way to justify making a new purchase.

I suspect people manhandle/caress their phones far more than any part of a laptop/desktop. And, refuse to leave home without it -- regardless of how appropriate it would be in the environment in which they will find themselves.

You've never had a Windows application lock the entire system solid such that it required a reboot to get it to respond again? Never since pre Win2K?

You must be extremely lucky...;-)

Not even "misbehaving" strictly I guess, but run a bloated enough app on a phone that doesn't quite have enough resources to accommodate it and you can lock up an Android phone, no problem at all.

I'm somewhat convinced the entire smartphone upgrade industry is driven by just how bloated and resource hungry the Facebook application becomes. I believe a couple years back the Android devtools had to be amended because the FB Android app's codebase was hitting up against the maximum number of classes allowed in the framework; something like 65,000.

There are over 2 billion active smartphones on the planet: That's one in 3 humans, including kids and seniors, who have one. Face reality... you're surrounded by smartphones.

If you have a chance, you might want to take a look at a Chromebook. I have several and they are my number one computer for web and email.

Most of the complex apps are Google and Microsoft's attempts to force fit desktop office programs onto a smartphone: There are also a large number of web apps, which will work on anything that runs a web browser.

Sorta. Smartphones and tablets are not very useful for data input or even editing. However, they are quite useful for viewing data and reading documents. For example, I have an Autocad DWG viewer for dealing with drawings on smartphone and tablet. Note that it can be used for editing, but I only use it for annotation.

Todays smartphones have MUCH better screens. In particular, the OLED screens are gorgeous. For example, I just horse traded for a Samsung Glaxy S6 phone: which has a 5.1 inch screen with 1440 x 2560 pixels (~577 ppi pixel density). I need to use my reading glasses to see detail, but even the fine print is readable. Incidentally, that's more dots than my junk laptop at 1600x900 dots or my desktop at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 dots.

I presume you've never tried any of the games that are designed specifically for smartphones, which seem to have infinite complexity (and are capable of burning infinite amounts of time).

Correct. I'm in business and if I don't answer the phone, the customer will call someone else to fix their computah. I started with an IMTS mobile phone in my car and an Motorola H04ANC pager in my pocket in about 1975. I've gone through a succession of 2 way radio phone patches, pagers, cell phones, and smartphones in order to stay connected. If I ever want to retire overnight, I can do it by simply not answering my various phones.

I have friends and I have customers. The only difference is that the customers pay me. I do far more than just fix their computahs or machines. I'm often asked to work on all manner of electronic devices, some of which I'll readily admit that I've never attempted. The days of the neighborhood repair shop are long gone. Yet the need persists. Today, I cleaned the crud out of the neighbors cordless phone handset keyboard. Yesterday, I fixed a loose connection in a big battery charger, replace a broken glass in a pressure gauge, removed a years worth of accumulated crumbs from a keyboard, and troubleshot a balky diesel engine (open glow plug). Tomorrow, I'll be rebuilding (loose and missing screws) and cleaning a microscope. It's like this every day, and on almost every service call. If all I did was one thing, I would be bored stiff.

Bad guess. There are those that have to have a new toy to play with every year or two. However, most of my customer try to use their smartphones and computers for as long as possible. Part of the reason is that it saves money, but the real reason is that they don't want to fight the learning curve with a new toy unless absolutely necessary. In general, they upgrade their computahs and phones when they need to do something important and the old device isn't capable of doing it, or the old device has become so slow as to be nearly useless. I'm facing that now with my now ancient Motorola Moto G (1st generation) with only 8GB of RAM. The OS and apps have grown so much that I'm constantly running out of storage space. Time for an upgrade.

True. Smartphones are a fashion statement. Laptops were at one time, but no longer. Tablets, probably not.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

No. And, with multiple cores, nowadays, even less likely that "something" will manage to tie up all cores to the exclusion of everything else on the ready list.

Hardware failures, OTOH, seem to be handled ungraciously -- as if "waiting" is always the wisest thing for the kernel to do...