Matt Birchler’s Pixel 2 and Android Oreo Review ⇥ birchtree.me

Matt Birchler used a Pixel 2 instead of his usual iPhone for a couple of months, and has started publishing pieces about his experience and impressions. It’s worth your time to start with part one and work your way through his thoughts, but this bit from the “Performance and Stability” section stood out to me:

[…] My time with Android has shown it to be anything but the “stable” alternative to iOS. Just 31 days into my time with the Pixel 2, I had to restore my phone to factory settings to fix the errors I was experiencing. In addition to the issues raised in that post, I have also had issues with apps crashing, notifications staying on silent even though I have them set to vibrate, random reboots, and more. After a few weeks I actually stopped reporting my Android bugs to Twitter because it was getting too depressing.

As Birchler points out, everyone’s bug experiences are different because, even with the relatively limited configuration options available for mobile devices — compared to, say, PCs — there are still billions of possible combinations of languages, WiFi networks, apps, settings, and so on. In light of recent iOS bugs, though, it’s remarkable to recognize that there’s still a lot of work to be done all around. Bugs shake the trust we place in our devices and may even make us consider switching, but there’s nothing like hearing user reports like these that acknowledge that it’s not any more stable. I’m not mocking Android users here or the OS itself; it’s just something worth recognizing.