But that was before Hurricane Sandy…

For security reasons, Apple has made the decision to tightly sandbox third party apps. iOS is still not invulnerable, but it should be noted that Android is subject to many more malware exploits than iOS.  This is the tradeoff one makes.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/102212-trendmicro-android-malware-263542.html

1) Carriers who want you to get a new phone more often because they get a cut of the sale. Holding up OS updates means people get annoyed and buy a new phone.

2) Manufacturers who want the same as carriers because moar! is never enough.

3) Hardware diversity and regional customisation. Because most manufacturers make a Android phones that range in outright price from ~$200 to $800+ there is a great diversity of hardware from crappy to awesome. It is hard to get all hardware profiles to play nice with new OS updates because some of them simply don’t have the guts to run the basic functions of the OS. Same happens for Apple phones: iphone 3s does not get ios6 and iphone 4 doesn’t have siri (if I’m not mistaken). Regional cistomisation also holds up rollout of OS updates internationally because actual laws govern these phone in regards to things like emergency calling numbers and functions.

If you want OS updates fast there is really only two options: Buy a decent phone and run something like cyanogenmod to take control of the phone and install whatever OS version you want. This option has the problem that in the case of some phone brands/models certain core functions of the phone (like bluetooth or wifi) may not always work (which bites). The other option is to get a Nexus series phone – the series which Google guarantees timely updates for, provided the phone can handle the new functions. I personally have a Nexus S which was one of the first (if not the first) phone to get both the ICS update and JB update over-the-air without any tinkering. This phone was released in late 2010.

I am looking to upgrade soon but sadly Google (or LG, I’m not sure who to blame) this week officially announced the Nexus 4, but also announced that the phone is not going to have 4g connectivity (or LTE as Americans refer to it) which is just. plain. stupid. Talk about building redundancy into a device! That mean at present the phone I am considering is the Samsung Galaxy S3 4g (which has JB) but I really wish I was able to just buy a nexus series phone that had 4g.. C’mon LG/Google – make it and just take my damn money!

Now you are talking about comparing system level voice actions on the iPhone compared to that on your HTC.   This is a worthwhile comparison to make, but not really within the scope of this article. But understand that each phone’s voice input capability has its strengths and weakness, and one can bias the competition by choosing precisely which test cases to include. 

The single function device concept was the short-sighted prediction of the future.

That and our “futuristic” space uniforms don’t involve girls in go-go outfits either.

Much more limited in scope, but far more reliable, as now I can’t do anything, as it’s bound to misinterpret one word or another in any command longer than a word or two!

As an aside, I found the voice commands in my HP Pré 3 to be much better at understanding me than Google Voice.

WIthout access to Google’s server, the app would be nonfunctional regardless of whether text was being parsed locally.  The fact that the app reports a missing internet connection before you start speaking doesn’t prove anything. It is preemptively warning you that speaking your query would be a waste of time.