I’m blocking — not just muting — Android, for good

In my lifetime, the way people use computers has undergone a night-and-day shift, which is impressive considering I’m only 21 years old. Us Gen Zers were thrown straight into the information age with little transition. 

The advent of the internet had already wrapped a tight digital layer around practically everything we did. Computers were certainly still anecdotal — used for taxes, research, email, shouting obscenities at people on used car forums and so forth — but it wouldn’t be long before internet-connected cell phones and tablets allowed us to take our cyberbullying on the go. Enter the iPhone.

I’m still old enough to remember how quickly Apple’s iOS transitioned smart gadgets from a luxury to a commodity. My mom and dad held out with their Motorola Q and Blackberry respectively, but the clamshell flippy bits and chiclet keyboards of yore inevitably walked into Darwin’s rake. 

My gateway drug into the constantly-connected, touch-enabled theme park of new-age computing was a “T-Max” tablet toting Android 4.4. 

Even in those days, I could tell there was something tangibly different about it. The main screen opened up to a playful little flip-clock widget and an inviting-looking Google search bar that invoked the few moments I had playing around with my Dad’s Samsung Galaxy S4. I remember being mesmerized zooming through Google Maps and web searches on the giant touchscreen. 

YouTube and video games were finally available to me anywhere I went, much to my parents’ chagrin. So infatuated was I that I hardly noticed the unimpressive battery, its abysmal speed, and the buggy, ornery affair of early Android. 

In those days and at that age, however, even being able to call such a portable computer my own made my diminutive ZTE feature phone look like an anachronism. 

The world of Android is not unlike the confusing multiverse of portable and home computers before it. It was one platform bound and connected by Google’s software that unified countless different oddball approaches to cell phones, tablet computers, point-of-sale terminals, cameras and even kitchen appliances. Unlike Nokia’s Symbian or Microsoft Windows Mobile before it, Google enabled devices like my old Amazon FireTab to omit and even forgo the use of Google’s default experiences and apps entirely.

This laissez-faire approach allowed manufacturers to build what Google couldn’t — or didn’t — bother to add in its basic version of Android. 

Samsung stuck powered styluses into their Note phones, building intuitive annotation software for them. Kyocera’s Echo phone had two screens which could be used for multitasking. Asus made a goddamn laptop shell that users could dock their Atrix phones into, to turn it into a full computer, for crying out loud. 

Like clockwork, the annoying Android customer in me was quick to flex Android’s magical toolbelt on my iPhone-using peers. SmartLock let me forgo a PIN or fingerprint when I was at home or near a trusted bluetooth device. Google Assistant could pull flight itineraries and boarding passes from my email and interact with websites for me if I didn’t feel like suffering through Fandango ticketing. Widgets let me check everything from to-dos to nearby restaurants right from the homescreen years before Apple announced that feature for iOS 14. 

Unfortunately, like Smeagol corrupted by the One Ring’s wicked power, such an open and unfocused ecosystem quickly turned Android into a demented and obnoxious creature. 

The minefield reliability and poor resale value present in Android phones, as corroborated by a 2023 Consumer Intelligence Research Partners report, are arguably a consequence of Google itself.

Despite their respectable head-start on the Apple Watch, Chris Wedel at Android Police correctly observed that the vitality of WearOS smartwatches, previously Android Wear, remained scant due to Google’s abandonment of the platform. 

Android tablets felt slapped together, while iPad apps were tailor-made and curated for the devices they ran on. Google took until 2020 to get major U.S. carriers to support advanced chat through Google Messages —  previously Android Messenger, previously Hangouts, previously Allo —  and a similar amount of time to get Quick Share, previously Nearby Share, previously Android Beam, to reliably send files between Android phones and Chromebooks. Apple — though limiting these features to only their own devices — implemented both of these things as early as 2011.

Then came the phones themselves. My beloved Samsung Galaxy Express 3 met just a little bit of rain in the wrong place and reacted like Ted Kennedy drove it home. 

My ZTE blade Spark could hardly hold a charge after a year. My Google Pixel 4’s poor battery, fragility and constant bugginess quickly overshadowed its great camera and impressive AI. My Pixel 6a constantly overheated and had weird performance issues with apps. My Motorola RAZR did all of those things while also having a weird peeling issue with its rubberized coating. 

At least my slightly-too-large Samsung Galaxy A53 was usable despite the annoying and forcibly-downloaded Microsoft and Samsung software. 

I know I’m a tech enthusiast, but should I really be on my ninth phone after ten years? Should I be wasting brain power comparison shopping between dozens of new phone releases? Should I have to re-learn how to use Google Wallet — previously Google Pay, previously Android Pay — every other few years? 

Count me out, Google. Apple has your homescreen widgets, your USB-C charging ports and your half-decent touch keyboard now. And unlike your years of false promises, I know my iPhone will stop dragging its feet and commit. We’re breaking up.