Additional notes on Android

Look how beautiful it is. I really wanted it to work.

Once again, below, I complained about Android. Well, here's a fresh story from today of what I mean. If it just happened occasionally, I might live with it, but it is typical. And it's the same over all the Android devices I have, a handful.

OK, for one thing, the Galaxy Note I have... love the size and the screen... does not have any hardware button for Menu, like most devices have... And often the software does not have any menu button either. So often I'm stuck if I suspect there are options in the menus I'd want.

For another thing: I've been downloading video to the Note via dropbox. (At first I wanted to do side-loading via USB, but the device did not turn up on the computer, and I don't have good experiences with custom software made by a hardware manufacturor for its devices.) Dropbox worked fine, after I established that it can play .MP4 files, but not the other kinds of files I have.

I got a handful downloaded. Then it stopped doing it. Well, it pretended to do it, but it only lasted a second, and the file didn't turn up on the SD card. And here's one of the typical bits: there was no error message or any other way of knowing that something did not happen, or what was wrong. (Update: I was wrong, there was a message, but it was small, appeared at the top of the screen, and disappeared after a second or two, so I hadn't seen it.)

I thought maybe the card was full, I could not remember how large it was. So I bought a File Manager. But as for "size", it only gave me the total MB of the files on the card, not the total capacity. Again, typical.
I had to shut it down and open it to find out that the card was 32GB, lots and lots of space left.
But it still won't download anymore. (I'm on Wifi, no limits.)
Oh, by the way, I can't find any way to save to internal memory. The other options from Export (and why is it called Export instead of Download?) are weird options called Allshare, Bluetooth, email, Gmail, Messaging, wifi, and Youtube. I tried youtube as an experiment. Nothing happened.

I'm sure with help and time, I could figure this out eventually. But right now my patience is at its end. And my point was not to get help with this problem (though a tip with good certainty would not go amiss), my point was just to illustrate why I don't use Android, despite having really tried and really wanting a 5-inch phone. It's simply that things like this happen all the time. It's a second-rate system, and it simply does not work well, seems to me. Like Granny Weatherwax says: "I can't be having with it."
I really wish it were otherwise, I'd love to have the great choice of devices.

I honestly don't understand the gleeful reports from a couple of reporters like Andy Ihnatko, who are so happy having gone to Android. Maybe they've been really lucky. Or maybe they like to fiddle with things to make them work, I dunno.

Update: I was just thinking: weeeell, the thing I really need to work is the Kindle app. maybe I'm just letting my frustrations run away with me. Let's try reading on it again. So I fired up the Kindle app. It had been updated (with features which had been on the iPad for ages). I tried downloading a recent book. Failure. Red exclamation mark. (No explanation or tips.) I tried another. Failure. I tried a third one. Failure.
This has never happened on any of my Apple or Amazon tablets. No, it seems to be not just me.

Update: I finally found out how to expell the sim card adapter which was stuck in the Note, and put in an inactive card. And now, the device would let me update the software. (What's up with wanting that card? I don't even let it use it for data.) And for the whole evening, I've been updating software. On the System software alone, I'm now on the tenth download-install-reboot cycle, and I don't know when I'll be done! But the upside is that now Kindle works properly, and there are signs I can download videos again, we'll see.


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I can see I am not alone in frustration. Graphics like these are real easy to find: