If you wander into the tech enthusiast alcove of the internet, you’ll eventually see someone saying, “Man, I hate this phone, and I’m never buying this brand again. There are too many bugs!!11!!!“
I get it, and sometimes I feel that way, too. In fact, I care more about the software powering a product than the hardware, so it might even hit me a little harder. It seems like companies are getting worse and churning out products that are more buggy than ever.
They’re not. You just know about them all, thanks to the information superhighway of the ‘net.
It’s good to be informed; there is no denying that. But sometimes, we can lose focus and fixate on the problems, even when we’re not experiencing them. Whether it’s old information on a weather widget, a magic green line appearing on the screen after a software update, or Bluetooth dropping and then reconnecting every few minutes, you know all about it.
It has always been this way. There was a time before Reddit, before every tech website on the internet (including this one) rushed to write an article about a software bug, and phones still had them — lots and lots of them. Coming from BlackBerry, I know what lots of bugs look like.
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This isn’t a brand or operating system issue, either, because they all are like this. The iPhone and iOS are filled with bugs, just like Google’s own Pixel phones are. Android on your Samsung or OnePlus phone is filled with bugs. Windows Phone was filled with bugs. Even Palm and Nokia phones were a mess.
You either didn’t care or (more likely) you only knew about the ones you noticed. I’ve been writing about tech for a long time, so I probably get extra exposure to these issues, but I can tell you that there are plenty of reported and verified problems that I’ve never been able to see for myself.
This is the new normal. It’s not even a bad thing. It can become a bad thing when unhelpful people who might be endeared to a particular brand a little too much chime in with things like “I don’t have the problem, so it must be user error, or you probably just need to restart your phone,” nonsense that inevitably pops up in places like Reddit or article comments and forums.
It’s important to know about potential problems, though. For instance, if you have a Pixel, you should install a different alarm clock. Do it before things happen.
We want to think of this as a new phenomenon. It’s as if phone makers are purposefully releasing products early, knowing that the software is still a wreck, and they don’t care. Just ship it!
That’s probably partially true, but it has always been true. You probably never had the displeasure of using a BlackBerry Storm, but it was rushed to market when the first iPhone came out, and RIM (the company that was BlackBerry) eventually admitted to it. They wanted a big touchscreen phone on the market and did not care that it sucked.
That’s just one example from the past, but there are plenty more from every phone maker. Most of the time, they eventually get it right; you just get to use an unfinished product for six months or so.
It’s always going to be this way. Apple rushed its AI suite before it was ready. Samsung is doing everything it can to push One UI 7 out and will “allow” more bugs than we want to make it happen. Google needs a refresher on processor throttling and power management if it wants to keep designing chips.
We love to hate it, and sometimes hate to love it. But we need to get used to it. This isn’t just a phone problem — everything you buy with a battery and a microprocessor is this way and will always be this way. And Reddit will have every person affected talking about it for you to read.