Android on Sammy Galaxy Note 4: Feels like I’m using Symbian again #Freeze #Lock

When Nokia went WP, Android seemed to be the go to place for the avid Symbian fan. It had more of the freedom that as powerusers, they expect. But with all that extra power seems to come a lot more responsibility. Like staying on top of what’s open.

How many times on my N8 did it just freeze and lock up because I just opened that one more app without realising.

I haven’t had this experience my little experiment in trying out Android. With WindowsPhone, there’s a carousel of apps that run. The frequently used ones keep running and should you open a new one, the oldest app gets sent to sleep. On Android, it just opens and opens and opens and opens. It’s cool in having all them apps open but realistically I don’t need all of them open, especially if battery is as dreadful as it is on my Note 4 (Charging twice daily, hurrah! 🙁 )

I’ve shared some feedback on this before there are definitely positives as well as the negatives of the platform. I love using a stylus. Writing uni notes, editing a picture – there’s definitely uses to it. This isn’t really another feedback post. More a rant on the AWFUL RAM management on this phone. It reminds me so much of Symbian. So much more when the freeze gets to a point where it doesn’t relax and return to normal, requiring me to pull the battery out!

Why does a modern day, flagship, expensive smartphone such as this lock up and freeze on its 3GB RAM? It’s really very annoying that I’m noticing this at least once or twice a week. Their multiwindow can be a double edged sword in this instance – multitasking becomes quite excellent in terms of having things open at the same time (for those rare apps that have this feature) but it also means more likely to induce a crash.

Steve adds that Symbian was terrific at RAM efficiency :p to be fair, what it managed on the anorexic RAM was actually quite impressive.

WindowsPhone is quite excellent in terms of the user experience of not having to manually manage things that are open. I like iOS and OSX too for this reason. Not used Windows 8. WindowsPhone however may have issues sometimes in downloading when you’ve set it in the background (though some apps can, e.g. certain youtube apps playing in background).

Tags: Rant

Category: Nokia