So I currently have an iPhone 5 and am thinking of making the move back to Android because of the vast options for customization. My last Android phone was the Droid Charge which maxed out at Gingerbread version 2.3.6 I think.

What would you guys tell someone about the Android experience who has yet to experience anything beyond Gingerbread?

All I've known from personal experience was a laggy and buggy OS which has clearly come a long way. I have heard that people feel like the apps for ios feel more polished. Any truth to that?

Apple has finally released a tool to fix the issue where people stop getting texts when switching from iOS to Android.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

More feedback on Droid Turbo, because I know there are a few people ITT interested. As I said before, so far I'm quite happy with it and am going to keep it. Here are some of the downsides I've seen so far, though:

-Slow camera - read about this in a review, and have to agree that sometimes the camera makes you think that it took the picture, but then you go check and the picture was actually taken a second or two later, resulting in the pic being either blurry or of something else entirely. I think this is the same sensor as in the Sony Xperia line, though, so should be a software issue and not hardware

-Quiet earpiece. It's loud enough for me, and I'm hard of hearing, but I'd like it to be louder. Disabling "Audio Effects" seems to help

-Weak vibrate. I definitely miss more notifications with the phone in my pocket

-Reception not as good as I expected (though still better than my GS3 on CM11). Not sure if it's a phone issue or just my expectations/perceptions

-Mirroring over Chromecast not yet supported

I think most of those will be either fixed with future firmware updates or with Lollipop. I definitely recommend this phone, but yeah there are a few minor kinks to work out.

From what I remember the Droid series has always been the unrefined hardware beast. Like they just threw in the highest performing components but didn't really refine things on the user experience side. I remember being blown away by the screen res like 4 years ago when my cousin got whatever Droid was just released. Then promptly being disappointed when the thing froze up. In my opinion I'd rather sacrifice the short-lived edge on specs and have a more refined user experience than have the latest and greatest across the board for 3 months.

Well Motorola now uses stock Android with their enhancements coming in the form of pre-installed apps (Moto Assist/Display/etc). So the UX/UI is as refined as Android is.

Phones now are so commoditized that even being on the bleeding edge is pretty stable. The CPU/GPU in this thing is the same as the Nexus 6, for example, and is just the next generation up from what was on the S5 and such. It's not a brand new unproven architecture or anything like that.

I haven't experienced any bugginess at all, fwiw.

I found a cheap second hand galaxy tab pro 8.4 online, really been loving it's size at about three times the area of my gs5 and a weight that isn't super light but is comfortable to hold. 1600*2560 in an 8.4" screen is fabulous.

Anyone have any recommendations for good tablet apps?

Some apps have great tablet versions (Gmail and Chrome are great examples being fundamentally better than the phone version) but others are kinda crappy right now (like Inbox and the 2+2 app) with just a blown up phone view.

Thoughts on the new Google messenger app? Evolve and textra still the favorites here?

I like the labels they use similar to how gmail now looks. Easier to scan through threads and know who was talking, especially if you're looking for a very particular message. For instance I was looking for a password someone sent me for something, but I had like 500 messages from them so it was near impossible to find without kinda reading everything. But with the color coded message blocks my eyes were better adept to catching what the sender was saying and completely tuning out my own responses. That extra bit of visual separation really helps in comparison to just having one message box/bubble on the left and one box/bubble on the right.

I also like that it is a dedicated SMS app. I dont use Hangouts messaging feature, I just use it for SMS, so whenever I want to send a new SMS to someone it always asks "SMS or Hangouts?" which is annoying.

The quick insert of photos and audio clips also makes me more likely to use these features than before. Even though it's still just attaching as an MMS, it's integrated better.

I dont like the extra clicks you have to go through to ignore somebody, but since you only have to do that once it's not really a hassle. I could just see someone missing it the first time through if there's a particular contact they dont want to get notifications for.

Can you do scheduled SMS in it? I couldn't find a way so didn't use it for long, but its pretty for sure.

No, not included. I barely text so happy to use it.

Nexus 5 OTA .zip (check your build version) is on Android Police if you want to sideload and install via adb (see their post) or if you are stock with a custom recovery you can just flash it there.

I dont see google messenger on play-store..how do i find it?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...essaging&hl=en

Thank you
Whys doesn't it appear in a search on Play Store?

I don't understand why they finally consolidated everything into hangouts, and now they're segmenting things again. What can Messenger do that they couldn't have just incorporated to Hangouts? Both are pre-installed on lollipop.

Doesn't make any sense but Hangouts SMS isn't the snappiest. I would use messenger but it doesn't support gifs. And without gifs my **** talking game takes a huge hit.

Google talk was the best, wish I didn't have to root to put it back

As I understand it, because of pressure from the carriers. I think the carriers were concerned that if Hangouts was the default SMS app, it would expose more people to chatting via Hangouts rather than SMS. People might then chat more and text less, eventually leading to fewer people paying for unlimited texting.

But they let Apple do iMessage, so who knows. Apple also gets Visual Voicemail included for free, and they keep their phones entirely carrier-bloat free. Sometimes it's good to be king.

If you reddit, Reddit Now is great on tablets. The dual pane layout is perfect on 8.4 inch displays.

Really having a tough time deciding whether or not to use my upgrade on the Nexus 6. Lack of LED makes me want to wait until the S6 and the next HTC one, but it's a such a sleek looking device.

Weird, Messenger completely mangled all my MMS. Back to Hangouts.

Anyone ever have to deal with google customer service?

I would expect it to be smooth and easy, just wondering in advance. the power button on my N5 is stuck (seems a common problem from some minimal searching) but you have to get an RMA from google and send it back for repair or replacement.

On that note, does anyone have a OnePlus invite I could use? with the N5 drama (it died on the return part of a 3 day road trip) I am looking to get a new phone ASAP and would like to get a OnePlus before they open the flood gates on November 17th.

You can get an incite on eBay. I had one but only good for 24hrs

Sent from my A0001 using 2+2 Forums

I'm rooted so I can't get Lolipoop on my G3

See what Chainfire is up to on XDA and Google Plus. I follow him on Google plus and saw he wrote this big post about all these devices he figured out root for on lollipop.

Then you could just unroot, upgrade and re-root.

Edit: Sorry, misread G3 as S3. Presumably you can factory reset - not ideal - or are the stock images available for the G3? I don't know. A quick look suggests there are solutions on XDA.

If you've rooted your N5 or made any changes to the system image, simply unrooting and reverting to stock recovery/boot.img won't be sufficient to apply the OTA. Happy to help over PM if anyone gets stuck.